Stretching the truth

The Gothamist spotted this huge bit of digital manipulation, which no doubt helped to fat shame women even more than it already does.

It shows Mad Men bombshell Christina Hendricks at Sunday's Golden Globes.

On the right, the original. On the left, as published.

Everybody knows Hendricks' globes and everything else about her are golden. She works them all as part of her role on the incredibly successful series about the ad bizz in the 1960s.

But in this big fat lie of a photo -- Gothamist has a screen grab of the original -- she's distorted, ostensibly to make the writer's point that Hendricks made a fashion faux pas:

... pretty Christina Hendricks in Christian Siriano’s exploding ruffle dress. (As one stylist said, 'You don’t put a big girl in a big dress.')"

Now, if this was performed by some celebrity trash tab or bitchy gossip site, it would be one thing. But no. It was in the New York Times.

All the news re-sized to print.

H/T Dammit Janet!

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: One of my Tweeps suggested this may have been the result of some clumsy page lay-out. Maybe. A very interesting one, no?

Comments

[hysperia]

"The NY Times has now replaced the image, saying: "The photo was slightly distorted inadvertently due to an error during routine processing."

BWAhahahahahaaa, slightly distorted!

[deBeauxOs]

It's the NYTimes' assumption that anything trashy goes when commenting on women's physical appearance, that is distorted.

Are they competing with the Huffington Post now? Or the NYPost's page six?

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

But as the last few years have shown, the New York "Times" has fallen below some "celebrity trash tabs or bitchy gossip sites" in reliability.

[Wayne Smith]

There's an old corollary of Occam's Razor that holds you should never posit a conspiracy when incompetence will explain the facts.

[Luna]

It just looks to me like the graphics dept screwed up. Some of the graphics goofs I see in the local paper are spectacular. I'd have expected these doofuses to know better. Probably cutbacks, and they hired cheap labour.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Luna mo Run,

.... cheap (immigrant) labour? If you cut off the source, that will bid up the price of labour, and they'll have to pay Canadian legal residents more ...

no, no, honest, it really has worked in the States ....

.... so do we agree on something?

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Wayne,

"you should never posit a conspiracy when incompetence will explain the facts."

You can simplify yet further. Most conspiracies are dreamed up by incompetents whose plans go wrong halfway through ... they just do a lot of damage in the failing.

[Jasmine Singh]

There is a certain element of the population that is pushing modesty, or a return to that certain glamorous age when women's validation included a right to their own mysery, insofar as such a concept counts for women's own privacy. Although this photograph may have been an error, hat's off to those that would further this intriguing and uniquely feminist concept. Naomi Wolf has been writing about this with great alacrity recently, just in case anyone has some room for a contemporary feminist's examination of such things. As to the rest of your blog: thanks as always for the wonderful reads, Antonia.