Keira Knightley Says Get Your Digital Mits Off My Body

The second highest paid actress in Hollywood is telling the publicists for her latest movie, The Duchess, to keep their airbrushing hands off her breasts. In previous films she was stunned to find her breasts digitally enhanced, but this time she’s insisting it be different. I was asked to comment on this and related issues (body image, media etc.) on Good Morning America, which is supposed to air tomorrow morning for those of you with fancy television recording devices.
I’ll probably be on screen for all of two seconds, but what I would like to say is this: Keira isn’t telling young women anything they don’t already know. We’ve watched Next Top Model. We’ve taken media literacy classes. What she is doing–and it’s significant–is reminding us to honor what we already know: namely that the images we see every day on television, in magazines, online, are notoriously technologically-altered and unrealistic. It’s not willpower that makes these women’s bodies perfect–it’s money, money, money, and a splash of genetic predisposition.
It’s important that someone inside the system, someone that has benefited from the system, has the balls to come out and remind us of our own wisdom. Thanks Keira.