Why Nicki Minaj's War on Airbrushing is Flawed

Elise Solé
ESPN

Rapper Nicki Minaj is not happy. On Thursday, the singer took to her Instagram account to scold ESPN The Magazine about alleged re-touching applied to her cover photo with Kobe Bryant for the magazine's music issue.

Minaj posted an original photo from her shoot, captioning it, "When retouching goes wrong" and added, "I love my personal un-touched photos where my forehead doesn't mysteriously grow in length." The photos she posted weren't shot from the same angle as the cover shot, but Minaj does look considerably different - on the finished product, her forehead and nose look pretty lengthened.

Here's the thing: While it's worth paying attention to any celebrity who brings attention to extreme airbrushing, doing so for the right reasons is just as key. Minaj's fans cheered the singer for "calling out" the magazine for airbrushing, but back up - Minaj doesn't claim to be against re-touched photos; rather, she doesn't appreciate when retouching "goes wrong." In the ESPN photo, the rapper's torso appears shorter and slimmer, creating the allusion that her legs are growing out of her stomach - yet Minaj had no comments on her vanishing digestive system.

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Similarly, back in 2012, Keira Knightly, shared her disappointment with Allure magazine about how much larger her breasts looked in the 2004 poster for the film King Arthur. The modestly endowed actress was depicted with much larger assets, a detail Knightly didn't mind per se - as long as they looked perky. "I was only angry when they were really, really droopy," she told the magazine. "I thought, 'Well, if you're going to make me fantasy breasts, at least make perky breasts." Other celebs send mixed messages. Take actress Jennifer Lawrence, who is infamous for her healthy body acceptance- in February, she balked at her new Dior campaign, exclaiming, "That doesn't look like me at all!" then curiously added, "I love Photoshop more than anything in the world." Another example: In December, Lawrence told Barbara Walters, "I just think it should be illegal to call somebody fat on TV," yet earlier that year when an unflattering shot of her wearing in a bikini circulated, Lawrence told David Letterman, "It's not my butt and I will not take responsibility for it. It's a 90-year-old butt that's been photoshopped onto my body, and is posing as my butt."

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To be fair, for every celebrity that takes issue with badly doctored photos, there's one who would rather not be re-touched at all. In November, while giving a speech at Glamour magazine's 2013 Women of the Year Awards, Lady Gaga took the magazine to task for alleged excessive retouching, saying "The picture, which I'm very grateful for and very happy to be on this cover -- I felt it was too beautiful. I felt my skin looked too perfect, and my hair looked too soft. This is not usually how I dress or how I carry myself." Even Kourtney Kardashian stood up for post-partum moms everywhere after OK! Magazine slimmed her down following the 2010 birth of her son Mason, tweeting her annoyance with the digital image. "And I gained 40 pounds while pregs, not 26...But thanks!" she added.

But while Minaj's remarks may not do much to extinguish the body wars, does it ultimately, matter as long as her words further a dialogue about body image in Hollywood?

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