Ayuso's breasts enter the campaign

Headline in El Mundo: “The photo of the boss Isabel Díaz Ayuso that everyone is talking about”. In the text, there are cringe-worthy phrases –and blatant sexism– such as “Nobody can deny that Ayuso looks beautiful and, perhaps because of that, the photo has spread like wildfire”. But the photo didn’t spread (only) because of that. Several users have accused the Popular Party, who were the ones sending the image with the boss message, of using artificial intelligence to increase the volume of the Madrid president’s breasts and to make her nipples more visible behind her tight blouse. Certainly, in some frames of her speech before the Madrid Assembly that day, her bust seems less voluminous, but, without being an expert, everyone knows that the chest has the curious ability to become more or less prominent depending on the posture, the movement, the angle, or the air inserted into the lungs.

The issue here is not Ayuso’s chest circumference, but the deliberate use of the image, both by the Popular Party and El Mundo, if you’ll pardon the redundancy. And it is curious how, out of a kind of strange modesty –regarding body issues, because in politics the lack of restraint is pornographic– the newspaper omits any direct comment on the fact that what “everyone is talking about” are the protagonist’s prominent breasts and marked nipples. The newspaper knows it, of course, but to avoid saying so, it performs the cowardly maneuver of highlighting comments from users who responded to the message on social media: “Always with the lights on”, “Those two little points would look great on Málaga" or “Isabel always taking the lead”. The only thing missing was Bigote Arrocet appearing to say she has great chest-onality to finish turning the elections into a Berlanga film. In this era of filters, whether the image was retouched with AI or not is irrelevant: what matters –the finger and the moon– is the trivialization.