Voices: Stop picking on Kim Kardashian – let he who has never used a filter cast the first stone

Kim Kardashian is in trouble again with certain corners of the internet after being accused of Photoshopping. Fans are up in arms over the notion that Kim – who at 41, would look incredible in a bin bag – may have digitally altered a series of shots she posted on Sunday night to Instagram.

In a series of three pictures, Kim stands next to a pool, Venus-like, her arms raised above her head, alongside the caption “Sunday in my @skims” (a reference to the model and TV personality’s underwear and sportswear brand).

But eagle-eyed critics were quick to point out that Kim’s body looks a little different to everybody else’s (no s***, Sherlock): namely, that she doesn’t appear to have a bellybutton. “You forgot to leave in your belly button,” one follower commented. Another responded with: “Skin looks weird too. Right?”

The editing gaffe has prompted fierce speculation, including whether or not her underwear is pulled up over her belly button, but then “her belly button would have been weirdly high up”. Rival factions in the comments section, however, maintain “you can see the shadow of it underneath”; while others state that bellybuttons are “only for the pheasants” [sic] (full disclosure: that one made me “lol”).

It seems to me that there are two important points to be made here: the first is that presenting an unrealistic and unattainable image of a desirable female body can be genuinely damaging and dangerous to legions of young women who may then feel they have impossible standards to live up to; who believe, wrongly, they should look the same, and that they should diet and work out and starve themselves to imitate their idols. Photoshopping waists (if that is what Kim has done here) to make them into a caricature of what a woman is, or “should” be, isn’t okay. Especially when you have 304 million followers on Instagram.

But my second point is this: it isn’t real. It is the cartoon-esque world of A-list celebrity, not real-life. And, I’d hazard, most of us know this all too well. We know (or should know) nobody looks like that, we realise that celebrities tweak pictures of themselves, just as magazine covers and billboard advertisers have been doing for decades. We know what we see on the page or screen isn’t what they’re like at home, with the cameras off, because it can’t be. Because it’s all a fallacy.

And it feels a little ironic that we can condemn and revere people in the very same breath; that the reason we damn people like Kim Kardashian is the same reason we pay attention to her in the first place. We’ve all created the monster.

So give her – give all of us – a break! It’s Kim Kardashian of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, for goodness sake: do any of us really expect her to post pics of herself immediately on waking; with panda-eye mascara, a bit of an eye bogey, and unwashed hair scruffed up into a scrunchie? Do we really want Kim (and people like her) to exclusively post pictures of themselves beneath glaring strip light, the kind you find in an underground car park, a classroom or a police interrogation room?

Do we really want Kim to look “real”, all of the time – and wouldn’t that ruin the magic of it all? Is it not the case that we don’t, actually, want to see our favourite celebrities as anything other than ethereal; we don’t need “warts and all” revelations of the ravages of age and everyday life, because we can look in a mirror for that. We’re not looking for reminders that those in the red-carpeted public eye are every bit as freckled and age-spotted and puffy-eyed as the rest of us. That isn’t what they’re for.

Celebrities, like them or not, are modern-day gods: they’re unrealistic, idealistic icons that we revere and dissect because we know that who they are isn’t who they purport to be. We aren’t stupid, we all know that the image Kim, Britney, Paris and co put out isn’t a reflection of the person behind the layers of gloss and fake tan; we love (and some of us love to hate) them because they give us a form of escapism from the banal mundanity of our own unkempt, unglamorous lives.

Expecting people like Kim Kardashian to post the brutal truth on social media would ruin the magic. So why are we so surprised when she doesn’t?

Let he who has never used a filter cast the first stone – show me someone who claims to have ever put anything on Instagram without a quick scroll first through Clarendon or Valencia to pose it in slightly more attractive lighting (upping “contrast” is good for all of us) and I’ll show you a liar.

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Granted, there is a difference between Photoshopping your physical proportions and adding a bit of a sunkissed filter to a selfie, and it’s not the first time Kim has been accused of altering photographs. In January, the star deleted a shot of herself in a bikini with the title “long time no sea” after being called out for her “warped leg”, only to repost a different picture again later with the same caption; and on a separate occasion, keen viewers fans noticed her “third hand” in a snakeskin-inspired photoshoot. “You left an extra hand in your hair,” one person posted on Twitter.

In March, her seemingly-candid snapshots of herself with her lover, Pete Davidson, came under fire for apparently Photoshopping... the carpet; and earlier this month, critics slammed the fact that her clothing brand, Skims, appeared to have heavily tweaked the body of model Tyra Banks in a photoshoot. In June, Skims removed a video ad for its shapewear after fans accused its founder of Photoshopping her waist to make it smaller – she was given away by a distorted finger.

It’s a hard call between reality and fantasy, and while I don’t think reasonable adults should have a problem with it, I do have an idea of how we could protect our children and young people from the dangers of being shown unrealistic bodies: make Kim, and people like her, put content warnings on the photos that they’ve edited.

If they use Photoshop to slim down their waists or hips, tell us about it. Let kids know it’s not real – in the same way that influencers now have to carry #Ad warnings or “paid ad partnership” to Instagram posts. Then we’d all be able to do what we should do: take these kinds of stories with a hefty pinch of salt. View them as pure, made-up, frothy escapism; a bit like watching a trashy movie or a Disney princess story. Kim Kardashian is the Jessica Rabbit of our modern age.

But let he who has never used a filter cast the first stone. Because, let’s face it, it’s a bit ironic that we’re damning someone (anyone, even Kim Kardashian) for failing to show their true selves, when we’re all using Perpetua anyway.