Karol G Speaks Out Against Photoshopped GQ Mexico Cover Shoot
Karol G is taking a stand against harmful beauty standards for women in real life and in the entertainment industry
Photo: Instagram/@karolg/GQ
Karol G is taking a stand against harmful beauty standards for women in real life and in the entertainment industry. The 32-year-old Colombian singer has had many highs so far this year including making history as the first Latina to headline Lollapalooza and her record-breaking album Mañana Sera Bonito.Being asked to be photographed for the most recent cover of GQ Mexico should’ve been yet another accomplishment under her belt. But soon after the images from the photoshoot were released to the public, Karol G took to social media to confirm that her likeness had been so heavily photoshopped that she was unrecognizable. Her face had been sculpted to remove fat, and her body looked much smaller than what her followers usually see on social media. Despite her being unhappy with the end result and allegedly asking the magazine multiple times to undo the editing before publication, no changes were made at the time this article was published.
“Today my GQ magazine cover was made public, a cover with an image that DOES NOT represent me,” she said in an Instagram post she wrote in Spanish. “My face does not look like this, my body does not look like that and I feel very happy and comfortable with how I look naturally. I thank the magazine for the opportunity because I was very happy when they confirmed it would be there, but despite making clear my discontent with the number of editions they did to the photo, they didn’t do anything about it, as if to look good I needed all those changes. I understand the repercussions this can have, but beyond feeling it’s disrespectful to me, it’s to the women that every day we wake up looking to feel comfortable with ourselves despite society’s stereotypes.”
The cover shoot was part of a larger campaign to celebrate the magazine’s first-ever Global Creativity Awards, which spotlights various changemakers and leaders in various industries, including music, fashion, and film. GQ Mexico hasn’t posted the images of Karol G on their Instagram account but they’ve been receiving backlash in the comment sections of their other recent posts from her fans in support and solidarity with the singer. They have yet to release a statement regarding her comments.
Young girls and women everywhere are regularly exposed to images that, when photoshopped heavily or only feature certain skin tones and body types, can lead to feelings of low self-esteem, poor mental health, insecurity, and even eating disorders and dysphoria. It’s important to fight back against Eurocentric beauty standards that only end up hurting all of us, and we’re grateful to Karol G for speaking up instead of staying silent and doing the hard, scary work of standing up for herself. Since sharing the post yesterday, she’s received more than five million likes and 90K comments with many both supporting her and thanking her. This level of openness is not new for La Bichota who opened up about embracing imperfection and how being a bichota has evolved for her.
“There came a point when I got tired of being the “bichota” for everything. At some point I had to recognize that I was an even bigger bichota if I admitted to myself that it wasn’t OK to pretend that everything was perfect when it wasn’t,” she previously said in an interview with Billboard to promote her album.
Karol G’s post is a major step toward calling out the dangerous effects of photoshop and by using her platform she’s undoubtedly helping dismantle heavily edited images from affecting the self-esteem of millions of women. That’s a bichota move was are 100 percent in support of.
