In case you haven’t yet seen this photo (thanks Sonia) you may be hugely surprised when you find out who it is……

It’s Julie from Masterchef as she appears this month in the Australian Women’s Weekly. According to the Herald Sun, Masterchef winner Julie Goodwin received a makeover (they called it ‘an extreme makeover’ which I think is a bit…extreme and also insulting) as part of a fashion shoot she did with AWW for their latest issue:

….Goodwin, 38, looked like a sweet treat herself as she posed for the cameras. She said it was wonderful to play dress-ups for a day and feel like a movie star.
“It was so much fun and everyone was just so nice and made me feel so comfortable,” Goodwin said. “They all went to so much effort and even had a blowing machine sweeping back my hair.”

Women’s Weekly fashion director Julie Russell said Goodwin was comfortable in her own skin, and just needed a few fashion tips to help accentuate her figure. Ms Russell wanted to make sure Goodwin felt her best for the MasterChef wrap party in Melbourne. “I helped her out with an outfit for the party,” she said. “It’s all about being true to your size and not squashing into something.”

Ms Russell said the stay-at-home mum wasn’t shy, but she didn’t dress to suit her figure. “As a size 16, Julie would often wear really loose-fitting pieces to cover herself up on the show,” Ms Russell said. “She has a big bust so I thought rather than hiding it, why not embrace her curves.”
Ms Russell said more Australian labels were making dresses to accommodate women of all shapes and sizes. Hair and make-up artist Laura Nolan said it didn’t take much to transform chef Goodwin.
“All it took was a few individual hair pieces to add some volume, lashings of mascara to enhance her beautiful eyes, and a little bit of foundation around her eyes to even out her skin tone, because she has gorgeous skin,” Ms Nolan said.

Apparently there has been quite a bit of talk-back chat about Julie being overly photoshopped and people grumbling that she looked fine before and why did the magazine have to go and make her look so fake and wasn’t she beautiful naturally etc etc etc

I haven’t seen the photos in the actual magazine so I can’t really comment about re-touching although I’m sure – like EVERY photo in a magazine, they have been re-touched and if so, that sucks hard.

HOWEVER.

I know we’re all a bit shitty with the way the media doesn’t portray a particularly realistic or diverse image of women. I am pretty much captain of the Shitty Team in that regard. But I think it’s really important to acknowledge the fact that most of us DO like getting a bit glammed up for a special occasion and there’s nothing wrong with that. By giving Julie a bit of a pamper and styling her hair and doing her make-up and putting her in a fancy frock, are AWW really saying she looked terrible before?

I certainly hope not and that’s certainly not what I think when I look at that picture.

Julie Russell, the fashion director of AWW who is quoted in the article above was the fashion director of Cosmo when I first became editor all those years ago. She has a knack of making ‘real’ women (as opposed to models and actresses) look fantastic and choosing clothes that are both stylish and flattering. And I think she’s done a bang-up job with Julie Goodwin. As a working mum with three kids, I imagine it was a huge treat to get the ’star’ treatment for the day of the shoot.

There’s nothing wrong with playing dress ups to have your picture taken or to go to a party or a wedding or to have a night out with your girlfriends. It feels like those who are criticising these pictures are well-meaning in trying to defend the way Julie looked ‘before’ but do we really have to choose? Can we not, as women, be real and also glam occasionally? Does one cancel the other out?

I think she looks fantastic in this outfit. I think she looks fantastic without all the hair and make-up and styling. And I think there’s a place for both kinds of images in the media as well as in our lives as women.

Obviously the air-brushing issue is a different one and if the images are re-touched to death then it makes it much harder to defend them.

What do you think?