Actress Keira Knightly Takes Stand Against Digital Enhancement

From ABC's Keira Says No to Bigger Bust (7/28/08):

Call it truth in advertising: Waifish actress Keira Knightly has balked at having the digital wizards enhance her breasts in publicity photos for her new film, "Duchess."

The actress objects to her cleavage being altered in publicity photos.

The sultry star of "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Atonement" feels she doesn't need cleavage to be sexy and insists on being portrayed as the A-cup beauty that she is rather than being air-brushed into a more voluptuous C-cup.

"Keira Knightly is essentially giving young women permission to stand up in their communities and their schools and their families and say, 'Look, this is the way I look and it is OK," said "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters" author Courtney Martin.

The 23-year-old's chest has been the subjected to scrutiny before. In promotions for "King Arthur" in 2004, the actress' A-cup was morphed into a C-cup on posters. At the time Knightly admitted, "those things weren't really mine," though she still went along with the publicity campaign. "I think that's incredibly brave and could have a huge impact on young women," Martin said of Knightly's decision.

Actress Keira Knightly has balked at having the digital wizards enhance her breasts in publicity photos for her new film, "Duchess."

One of the enhancements is pictured above. I have to agree with feminist author Courtney Martin on this one, though calling Knightly's commendable action "incredibly brave" is a bit of an overstatement. I think that unrealistic beauty standards do have a negative impact on women, and also on men.

Raising beauty standards means that men will be attracted to a smaller cohort of women. This increases the competition for the women deemed attractive, and means more men will be lonely and feel rejected. Similarly, as more women are excluded from the "attractive" cohort, they will also feel lonely and rejected.

On this case specifically, if Keira Knightly isn't attractive enough for you, your standards are way too high.

Courtney Martin's www.feministing.com post is Keira Knightley Says Get Your Digital Mitts Off My Body. She writes, "It's important that someone inside the system, someone that has benefited from the system" is taking a stand, and I agree with her.

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