27 Sep In defence of airbrushed cleavage

Contrarian finds itself in the awkward position of having received 30,000+ hits for  a throwaway post about an MP who airbrushed* a modest trace of cleavage from her official Parliamentary photo. The two complaints I’ve received have  not dissuaded me from my initial judgment the story was both funny and peculiar enough to be worthy of posting. In the interests of equal time, though, here is an alternative view from Edmonton restaurateur and local food activist Jessie Radies:

The only reason you find someone airbrushing their cleavage funny, is because you are not a women with cleavage.

I’ve done exactly the same thing. Go for a photo shoot, get the pictures and then realize, “Oh, I love this picture but it has too much cleavage and it is not appropriate for a business head shot.” And have the photographer retouch the picture.

I bet it had nothing to do with Tamil culture or modesty. It is a professional making a decision about how she wants to be presented and what is appropriate.

(Radies supplied the photo shown here, the airbrushed image she describes in her comment. She no longer has the ‘before’ picture.)

I’m happy to close this thread now.

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* MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan isn’t saying, but the evidence seems to be that she or her staff ordered the retouching.