Earlier this week, Rosamund Pike - winning rave reviews for her new film I Care A Lot - cast her mind back through her career during an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, discussing the posters for films like Radioactive and Johnny English Reborn. The former, she explained, inexplicably changed the colour of her eyes. The latter gave her cleavage not reflective of her actual bust size.
We have seen this sort of thing happen in the way that films are marketed for decades. Look at posters for films like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix starring Emma Watson, Disney's Cinderella with Lily James, Lara Croft And The Cradle of Life with Angelina Jolie, and Terminator Genisys with Emilia Clarke. In all cases, the proportions of the women featured just don't seem true to life. Breasts appear larger, waists slimmer. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes less so.
Keira Knightleyexperienced it many times, with varied results. 'They always pencil in my boobs,' she told Allure in 2012. 'I was only angry when they were really, really droopy. For King Arthur, for a poster, they gave me these strange droopy tits. A: I don't have tits anyway, and B: they digitally made them, and I thought, "Whoaaaaa! It's my face on that poster." I thought "Well, if you're going to make me fantasy breasts, at least make perky breasts".' It's clear from Rosamund and Keira's comments, then, that these women aren't signing off on the way in which they are presented. They find out how they are being depicted when it's too late to do anything about it.
So, why are such manipulations so prominent? The phrase 'sex sells' is common and widely accepted. But does increasing the bra size of a famous woman on a poster truly increase the chances of the film finding an audience? Would a teenage boy or twenty something man, for example (presumably the key demographic for films like Terminator Genisys or King Arthur) genuinely be more likely to buy a cinema ticket because the female star - not necessarily the lead - has large breasts? Perhaps this is true. Or, perhaps, Hollywood executives never gave the original images of these beautiful and talented women the chance to prove themselves.
Is the audience to blame? Is the creator culpable? Or is it a combination of both? Whoever is to blame, it needs to become a thing of the past. When creating images that will end up on billboards, I doubt anyone would turn down the opportunity to have an out-of-place hair airbrushed out or a pimple removed, but manipulating images of women in such a way tells their fans that these Hollywood goddesses are imperfect, and require upgrades. And, by association, so do the women at home. It's a slippery slope, similar to the one we're on with social media filters.
Actors like Rosamund have taken these slights on the chin, and not kicked up a fuss. But with every new poster, our eyes are opening to the dangerous practice that has been occurring for far too long. We need to make sure that it's a thing of the past.
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