If you use the same word (airbrushing) for taking out a model’s cellulite as well as removing heads of state from photographs, you trivialise what’s been done. Digital editing is only going to become more and more common, and it’s important to find the right words to explain how a photo has been altered.

Sure, better to be misogynistic and HOLY, then honest.

What is striking to me is how many photos of governments even in democracies that allow women to vote would look an awful lot like the second photo from the Israeli newspaper…without any airbrushing. And even if you left the women IN–I’ve seen many photos of important officials of various countries in which women (as well as racial minorities) are often nearly non-existent, or hold the positions traditionally allotted to members of their group (so there’s a woman in a cabinet position related to the family or something like that, since clearly that’s a “women’s” position).

p.s. Dubi, there is a woman, in the first photo, who is in a wheelchair. Her face was cropped out, along with the woman above her. I would agree from an early statement that this is ableism at work. While I don’t know a lot about the political side of this, I feel as though I can understand the argument about, how politically and sexist driven, was the reporting of these papers. In the first photo (unless this photo is not an accurate), statements are made about who is allowed to take up public space. Many of the women in the first photo are not made clearly visible. Without cropping, in my opinion, this photo shows how patriarchy scripts how these (very powerful) women, are viewed; not ever to be as powerful as men.

Now, about the picture as a whole, let’s make a few things clear:
This paper, Yated Neeman, serves a very small population in Israel (I estimate about 2-3 percent of the population of Israel is in the target demographics). Their practices are in no way indicative of the general Israeli media, and the picture as it was originally taken appeared in many more copies than in the touched-up version.
Drawing any conclusions from this extremist group about “gendered spaces”, I feel, is as sensible as drawing conclusions about public sentiments towards psychiatry from a scientology convention.

An interesting note: Livnat, the minister standing between the (sitting down) PM Netanyahu and President Peres, was replaced with one of the ultra-orthodox ministers who was positioned at the edge of the picture – thus giving him a far more prominent position in the image(*). I don’t know if this image is a copy of the complete picture as published in the paper – a couple of the ministers on the right hand side are cut out — it’s a big government! — while people on the left were just sort of squished together – but I thought this particular choice was an interesting one.

(*) Yahadut Hatorah, the party that represents the public of Yated Ne’eman, is not in the coalition, and even if they did, they oppose having ministers (because that would make them part of the Zionist state, which they oppose), preferring to have vice-ministers in departments that don’t have any ministers – sort of having their pie and eating it too. The minister who replaced Livnat is from Shas, representing the Mizrahi (Middle-Eastern) ultra-orthodox public. These two groups are not very fond of one another most of the time, but still.