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Helpful or harmful? Artist Photoshops female celebs to make them look bigger

Alison Brie (Courtesy David Lomera/Facebook)

Sick of seeing Photoshopped images of unrealistically thin celebs?

Spanish artist David Lopera is using the editing tool for a different reason – to plump up our favourite stars, hoping to show that plus-size woman “can be beautiful, too,” he tells the New York Daily News.

But can an image of a plus-size Kim Kardashian really challenge current beauty standards?

“Look at my pictures and you will see that big is beautiful…but there are many people today who don’t agree with that,” says 20-year-old Lopera, who has up-sized everyone from Iggy Azalea to Mila Kunis to “The Little Mermaid"’s Ariel.

“However, when they see my gorgeous, fat celebrities, I think they might realize how wrong they are.”

Since his first Photoshopped image — one of Katy Perry — went viral last year, Lopera has received more than 200 requests for plumped-up celebrities.

However, some aren’t convinced that Photoshop is an effective tool in promoting body positivity and size acceptance.

There are plenty of beautiful unaltered images of women of all sizes online. Why do we need someone to alter women’s bodies into shapes that aren’t their own?

“I think it’s totally inappropriate for a thin man to be manipulating the image of women in this way. Yes, of course ‘fat women can be beautiful too.’ But there are loads of fat women making this point all over the internet, without instrumentalizing other women’s bodies to do it,” U.K. blogger and journalist Bethany Rutter tells Bustle’s Marie Southward Ospina. “It shows the real problem is that there are next to no fat female celebrities that are portrayed as being attractive, so filling the public eye with beautiful fat women is the way to combat this. Not by manipulating the image of other women.”

The majority of the 200-plus celebrity requests have come from men Lopera describes as “chubby chasers.” Lopera himself is in a relationship with a “plump” woman.

And if these fattened-up celebrity images are simply catering to men’s fantasies, it’s not exactly a step forward for women, is it?

“We’re all for promoting positive body image, and there’s no doubt that women with curves are beautiful, but this doesn’t really feel like a win for feminism,” writes StyleCaster’s Jasmine Garnsworthy. “The photography project essentially alters women’s bodies to fit the fantasies of men, and there’s nothing empowering about that.”

Not only are the images catering to fantasies, they end up body-shaming their subjects: we either laugh at the fattened figures — it’s easy to assume the photos exist to make fun — or conclude that the altered bodies are superior to the unaltered ones.

In fact, in an interview with the Daily Mail, Lopera criticizes the women he Photoshops, claiming that the singers’ and actresses’ bodies, as they are in real life, need his digital assistance.

To him, big is beautiful — and thin isn’t.

“For example, Mila Kunis is much sexier with chunky thighs and a bulging belly that hangs around her waist,” he claims.

“These women look much better when they’re overweight.”

What do you think: Does a photo series like this challenge our current beauty standards? Or does it just tell women, once again, that they’re not good enough as they are?