Yesterday, Lena Dunham posted the cover of Tentaciones to her Instagram, along with a few words which included: "this is NOT what my body has ever looked like or will ever look like- the magazine has done more than the average photoshop. So if you're into what I do, why not be honest with your readers?"
As it turns out, Lena's body does look like this, as Tentaciones have come out insisting that she was not altered to that extent. Well, not to their knowledge anyway; they merely cropped what was sent to them by the photographer, Ruven Afanador, who took this image for Entertainment Weekly back in 2012.
According to The Guardian: "In an open letter to Dunham published on El País’ website on Tuesday, the magazine clarified it had only cropped Afanador’s original photo as it was licensed through the Corbis agency - not retouched it. 'Of course, we are aware that any media outlet needs to be responsible for what it publishes, but this photo was previously approved by the agency, the photographer and your publicist ... we used the original that they sent us without applying any kind of retouching. Those who are familiar with and follow our magazine will know that we do not use Photoshop nor other digital tools to change the physical appearance of our cover stars, nor in the features to be found inside. On this occasion, the only thing we did was to crop the image to adapt it to the format of our front page'.”
Lena has since posted the above unaltered image with the following response:
"Hey Tentaciones- thank you for sending the uncropped image (note to the confused: not unretouched, uncropped!) and for being so good natured about my request for accuracy. I understand that a whole bunch of people approved this photo before it got to you- and why wouldn't they? I look great. But it's a weird feeling to see a photo and not know if it's your own body anymore (and I'm pretty sure that will never be my thigh width but I honestly can't tell what's been slimmed and what hasn't.) I'm not blaming anyone (y'know, except society at large.) I have a long and complicated history with retouching. I wanna live in this wild world and play the game and get my work seen, and I also want to be honest about who I am and what I stand for. Maybe it's turning 30. Maybe it's seeing my candidate of choice get bashed as much for having a normal woman's body as she is for her policies. Maybe it's getting sick and realizing ALL that matters is that this body work, not that it be milky white and slim. But I want something different now. Thanks for helping me figure that out and sorry to make you the problem, you cool Spanish magazine you. Time to get to the bottom of this in a bigger way. Time to walk the talk. With endless love, Lena PS I'd love the Tentaciones subscription I was offered!"