Nigella Lawson reveals she has to tell US TV firms not to airbrush her 'sticking-out stomach'

Nigella Lawson has waded into the row over airbrushing photographs, saying that she has to ask US television companies not to get rid of her “sticking-out stomach”.

The television cook spoke out in response to Jameela Jamil, a British actress, who said the practice should be made illegal and urged her fans to boycott brands which edit photographs to make celebrities appear thinner.

Jamil, 32, a former BBC Radio 1 DJ who stars in The Good Place, the US fantasy television series, said: “For the last time, airbrushing is used as a tool for ethnicity erasure, colourism, ageism, fat-phobia, ableism, racism and sexism.

“It’s there to make you hate your real face and body. It made me hate my face, my body and my ethnicity for the longest time as a young woman.”

Lawson, 58, agreed, replying: “I’ve had to tell American TV stations not to airbrush my sticking-out stomach.

“The hatred of fat, and assumption that we’d all be grateful to be airbrushed thinner, is pernicious.”

She received support from her Twitter followers, with one of them writing: “British television has real people on it. US television is fake. All the power to you, Ms Lawson. You are the real deal.”

Another added: “I cannot for the life of me fathom anyone ever wanting to airbrush Nigella! You are absolutely gorgeous!” The cook and television star has spoken out against Photoshopping before, and said she would never want her belly to be digitally made smaller than it is.

When she presented The Taste, a US TV show, she appeared on billboards across the country, and refused to let executives get rid of her stomach. In 2013, she told The Splendid Table, a food blog: “I could see them wincing when they saw my tummy bulging out of my dress. And when I say bulging, I don’t mean huge. I just mean you could see the roundness. It was a tummy.

“I really didn’t want to become what I’m not. I’m all for taking exercise so that I can eat as much as I can without getting too huge but, nevertheless, I didn’t want to be turned into a plastic creation. As human beings, we are flawed, and it would make me more anxious to hide my flaws than to reveal them. So it wasn’t out of some lofty mission to be honest. It would just make me feel like, how can I walk into a room? There’s only so long I can hold my tummy in without breathing. I wouldn’t want to have to pretend to be something I’m not just for my own anxiety levels.”

She added: “That tum is the truth and is come by honestly, as my granny would have said.”

Jamil, who has spoken previously of her struggles with eating disorder as a teenager, has been leading the charge against airbrushing, and said earlier this month that she wants to “put airbrushing in the bin” because it is “a disgusting tool that has been weaponised”.