A Celebrity Retoucher Tells All, and It's as Depressing as You'd Expect

"I've had instructions like, 'Remove this, it's distracting.' It's the woman's collarbone, for God's sake."

 

 

In a revealing new interview over at xoVain,a celebrity retoucher explains many of the tricks of his Photoshop-heavy trade. As expected, he said there's a much greater expectation on his bosses' part that female celebrities be retouched, versus their male counterparts. "It's always "do more, do more, do more" to the women celebrities than the men," he said, adding that "male celebrities have actually told us that they don't want to be retouched at all" — a condition that's apparently respected. (The only female celebrity who's apparently refused to be retouched, in his experience, is Mary J. Blige.)

"With women they always want too thin," he continues. "They always want thinner waist, thinner legs. And these women are already skinny. Women that you would even think are kind of too thin and they still say, "Thin her thighs out a little bit." And I'm thinking, What are they seeing? I'm a student of anatomy ... and you have to really know your anatomy when you're messing around with people's bodies." He adds that he often feels he's forced to take too much weight off a celebrity or model's frame. There's more:

"I've retouched Victoria's Secret catalogue images — the most beautiful women on the planet. You wouldn't believe the stuff you have to fix on a regular basis. There are disgusting terms that retouchers have coined over the years — 'vagina armpits' is one."

His (and his colleagues') proficiency with Photoshop means the purview, and expectations, of retouchers is on the increase. In addition to waist-whittling, they can now clean up your hairdo, add highlights, buff your nails, hide your pores, throw on some lipstick, sculpt your brows, remove your collarbone ... Wait, what was that last one? Oh right, says the retoucher: "I've had instructions like, 'Remove this, it's distracting.' It's the woman's collarbone, for God's sake. Is she not supposed to have bones? So when it's time to fight and say no, I'll do it."

And in maybe the most depressing quote of all though, even considering vanishing collarbones and the phrase "vagina armpit," he says that the prevailing mindset in the industry now is often that, with retouching, you're doing the celebrity a big favor:

"You're not being asked, but you know that's a very popular person and you know that they should be presented in the best possible light. So you feel like, OK, I'm going to tuck in this person's stomach and I'm going to take a few pounds off their hips. You kind of feel like you should do this for them as a person that people really like.
I actually retouched a picture of Martha Stewart even though nobody asked me to, but I felt like I had to do it because it was just such a horribly taken picture. There is a professional courtesy that you do a little when you're not asked."

Read more over at xoVain.com.

Note: The lede image is from a 2009 Complex photo shoot featuring Kim Kardashian. After the unretouched photo accidentally leaked online, Kim seemed unbothered. "So what? I have a little cellulite," she responded, "What curvy girl doesn't?"