True Love shows true colours by 'body-shaming' Lerato

25 May 2016 - 02:00 By PEARL BOSHOMANE
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Lerato Kganyago is gatvol of people who wish bad on others.
Lerato Kganyago is gatvol of people who wish bad on others.
Image: Via Lerato's Instagram

True Love magazine's frankly misogynistic decision has proven they are not here for us regular ladies, writes Pearl Boshomane

When US actress Kerry Washington recently graced the cover of AdWeek magazine, the star was barely recognisable. The mag had not only lightened Washington’s skin, but her nose and cheekbones looked completely different to how they’d ever looked before.

The Fixer actress took to Instagram to voice her disappointment:

“I’m no stranger to Photoshopping. It happens a lot… I don't always take these adjustments to task but I have had the opportunity to address the impact of my altered image in the past and I think it's a valuable conversation.

Yesterday, however, I just felt weary. It felt strange to look at a picture of myself that is so different from what I look like when I look in the mirror. It's an unfortunate feeling.”

AdWeek were very quick to respond: “Kerry Washington is a class act. We are honoured to have her grace our pages. To clarify, we made minimal adjustments, solely for the cover’s design needs. We meant no disrespect, quite the opposite. We are glad she is enthusiastic about the piece and appreciate her honest comments.”

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Would it really have killed local magazine True Love to respond similarly to AdWeek when their latest cover star, Lerato Kganyago, voiced her disappointment at the way she looks on their June cover?

Instead of offering some sort of apology or admitting any wrongdoing (however insincere), the folks at True Love decided to react in a very petty manner by sharing the unedited pictures from their shoot with Kganyago, accompanied by an article telling the readers that they wanted to put Kganyago’s criticism “in perspective and give you a full picture”.

While Kganyago by no means looked terrible in the “before” images, it was clear that True Love’s intention behind sharing those pictures was to shame and humiliate her. The only thing missing from those shots were circles highlighting her cellulite and blemishes (you know, Heat magazine-style).

That poor – and quite frankly, misogynistic – decision showed the magazine’s true colours, if anyone had previously doubted them. For one, the magazine has been accused of too much Photoshopping before, most recently for their December 2015 cover featuring Khanyi Mbau.

Let’s not even talk about some of the “empowering” articles they have published in the past. “You are the reason your man cheats,” one of their cover lines shouted at its readers (and the article said exactly that, too).

Yet in a statement accompanying the Kganyago images, True Love editor Dudu Mvimbi Leshabane said that the magazine “stands for women empowerment”, continuing: “True Love would never intentionally do anything to compromise women and their public profile. We have a responsibility not to tarnish our cover star’s image, to produce authentic content for our readers and to uphold the brand’s integrity.”

Those are very loaded words.

For starters, do women need to look a certain way to be considered empowered? If the mag was truly about the empowerment of women, why would they respond so maliciously to a woman exercising her agency by voicing her displeasure about how they treated images of her?

block_quotes_start It’s incredibly shameful that in 2016, magazines still think women need to look like fembots in order to be considered attractive block_quotes_end

Why would they try and body-shame her into silence?

As for this “responsibility not to tarnish [their] cover star’s image”, is the magazine implying that Kganyago being less-than-perfect stains her as a woman and as a celebrity? By showing her cellulite in its full glory, was the magazine expecting us to say: “Oh, okay, they did her a favour”?

What the magazine’s short-sighted action has failed to take into account is that most of their readers are “ordinary women”: we have cellulite, scars, stretch marks and/or blemishes.

We are by no means beauty industry-standard flawless, and by trying to shame a woman for being a human being, True Love has proven that they are not here for us regular ladies.

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Of course, the problematic women’s magazine industry was not created by True Love: the majority of women’s magazines stopped being empowering to women a long time ago (if they ever were in the first place).

But you’d think that many of these magazines would latch on to the resurgence of feminism in mainstream conversations, and that they really would change their outdated ways by providing content that enriches our lives rather than sneakily bashing us for our perceived flaws.

It’s incredibly shameful that in 2016, magazines (and the beauty industry in general) still think that women need to look like fembots in order to be considered attractive, that we’re still telling women how to fix everything “wrong” with them (“Drop 2 dress sizes in 2 weeks!”) – not to mention the constant barrage of articles teaching us how to “get” and “keep” a man. 

The women’s magazine industry is patriarchy’s greatest Trojan Horse: sexism and misogyny dressed up in cute lipstick and glossy paper. It’s about time that changed.

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