Lean In Gives Fake Women a Real Makeover

When you see a photo of an unidentified woman alongside a magazine or website article, odds are you're looking at a stock photo. Usually there's something slightly unbelievable about that woman in the photo: Maybe she's enjoying her bowl of salad a bit too vigorously, or she's exasperatingly vacuuming, holding a baby, and anchoring a rotary phone with her neck. For years, these unrealistic, laughable images of women have done a disservice not only to the stories they accompany but also to the women they represent. So Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In organization has decided to do something about it. On Monday, the activist group partnered with Getty Images to provide a collection of more realistic stock images of women. “When we see images of women and girls and men, they often fall into the stereotypes that we’re trying to overcome, and you can’t be what you can’t see,” Sandberg tells the New York Times. The new joint database, according to a press release from Lean In, will eventually offer more than 2,500 images — fresh, diverse reflections of modern-day women and girls (and parenthood, including dads depicted as actual caregivers) — some of which are available to media outlets now. We entered some classic search terms in a standard stock photo site and compared the results with Getty’s Lean In–curated photographs. Check out the differences.