Now Beyonce's unedited photos have proven that she's human, can we please stop cyberbullying her?
Just imagine if it was your slightly uneven skin that was being branded 'acne' by the press
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Your support makes all the difference.If Beyoncé's slightly unkempt eyebrows and blemished skin are "shocking" in today’s media world then I dread to think what my morning face would be called. Two hundred "unretouched" photos from a 2013 L'Oreal cosmetic campaign were leaked on a fan site called The Beyoncé World this week. It’s worth mentioning Beyoncé still looks incredible. But of course she does. She’s Beyoncé.
Celebrity tabloids and newspapers then caught wind of these photos and were frothing at the mouth at the opportunity to print them and caption it “I woke up like this". Some also referred to her as “the wife of music mogul Jay Z" (excuse me while I just bite off my hand in anger).
Reminiscent of those memes of Beyoncé "ugly dancing" during the Superbowl in 2013 (which her management subsequently asked to be removed), this was another chance prove how Beyoncé isn’t 100 per cent perfect. How she needs bringing down a peg or two. But sadly for the tabloids, this just doesn’t work. Not when you have online fan communities defending you in every corner of the Internet.
Fans were appalled at the website for leaking them, and praised Beyoncé for being an inspiration with or without the magic wand of Photoshop. The Beyoncé World responded by stating that they were “just posting the photos to share the fact that our queen is naturally beautiful, at the same time she is just a regular woman.” This is an awful example of backhanded shaming. Wanting to celebrate her natural beauty is one thing, but leaking the photos against the person’s will is something else.
Leaked photos leave people feeling vulnerable, and open to the constant scrutiny for being anything outside of traditional beauty norms. For example, everyone knows that perfect skin is a myth, and everyone gets small blemishes from time to time. Yet Beyoncé's slightly uneven skin was quickly branded as "acne" by the Daily Mail. Just imagine if that was you.
The media leaking unedited pictures is a glorified version of that bitch at school taking photos of you unaware and tagging you on Facebook. It’s online bullying. But when the media do it, we just rant and rave and roll our eyes.
Shaming women for looking human is not new. We’ve seen leaked unedited photos of Madonna in Interview magazine, Lena Dunham in a Vogue shoot, Lady Gaga in Versace's Spring 2014 campaign, and most recently Kate Middleton, who "shockingly" exposed two grey hairs. People even enjoy turning the before and after photos into shareable GIFs, spreading like a virus throughout the Internet.
It’s not ok to leak photos. But I can't help but feel that these ridiculous moments of shaming celebrities for being human brings out the positive power of fan communities. As the latest leaking has proven, it doesn't matter if Beyoncé is edited or not - in her fans' eyes, she'll always be untouchable.
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