Women’s Weakly

On Close Up last Friday night, it was impressive to see the local Kiwi version of Australian Women’s Weekly proudly declaring an all natural woman, sans-airbrushing, was going to grace its cover.

The move was a response to the backlash of hateful comments received after it airbrushed all traces of former news presenter Judy Bailey from her face on last month’s cover to the point where her own sister didn’t recognise her.

“The magazine is now trying a ‘wrinkles-and-all’ approach,” Close Up host Mike Hosking said in the introduction to the segment.

For this month’s issue, the magazine was putting a photograph of 45-year old former Miss Universe beauty queen Lorraine Downes on its cover without any Photoshop action.

Australian Women’s Weekly (NZ) editor Leonie Barlow said that readers had accused the title of deception, getting “quite nasty at times”, after Judy Bailey’s age and appearance was so distorted in the airbrushing for the January issue cover shot.

“We don’t want it to be smoke and mirrors, we do need it to be real. But we also want to inspire people,” Mrs Barlow said, adding that she was “fine” with her own image being published without airbrushing in this issue.

“I want it to be known that this does happen. There’s a business reason behind why this is done, we do have to sell magazines.”

Which can’t be a comforting thought to its target audience readers, aged 40-65 - that the magazine wouldn’t sell if Judy Bailey appeared on its cover as she does in real life.

“What I’m hoping to achieve from this is some sensible and reasonable debate about what our readers think about it and to create some transparency and some discussion about what actually really happens in magazines,” said Mrs Barlow.

Publishing natural (though professionally made-up and lit) photographs, especially on the cover, would be ground-breaking for a local weekly women's magazine.

It seemed an admirable stand to take and a fantastic example of a magazine listening to and respecting its readers. The title received 22 letters in support of the realistic cover shot in the first 24 hours it was on sale.

But towards the end of the segment, it was revealed that the unairbrushed cover was only a one off. Future coverwomen would be airbrushed, despite readers having told the publication they rejected the way it had Photoshopped the inspiring women it featured.

The magazine wouldn't have published a woman's image realistically at all, were it not for the uproar its readers created.

Responding to readers and taking a stand against airbrushing would be if it scrapped the digital removal of facial wrinkles for good, but publishing a one-off un-photoshopped cover image is nothing but a PR stunt.