Lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret are renowned for their photoshop disasters.
The imagery in their catalogues feature everything from over zealous airbrushing to missing limbs (you can see more in the gallery below), so when these unretouched shots of Victoria’s Secret models came our way, we rejoiced a little.
Left is Alessandra Ambrosio, Crystal Renn and Brooklyn Decker on the beach in St. Barts.
Sure Crystal Renn is a ‘plus-size’ model (we hate that term too) but seeing photos of models with naturally round tummies, breasts that aren’t perky and imperfect red skin (we’re still debating if this one is actually sunburn) is refreshing when compared to ones like a heavily airbrushed Demi Moore, which you can see HERE.
Check out Victoria’s Secret models along with other celebrities before and after photoshop
Folds of skin along Kroes' side have been smoothed out (1), along with veins in the crook of her arm (2) and the area around her armpit (3). Shadows have been deleted from her abs, making them look less toned (4). The nude underwear is gone (5).
Victoria’s Secret photoshop fails
Candice Sswanepoel in a VS swimsuit campaign image. Notice how her torso is incredibly straight (next to the arm with bangles)?
Comments
88 Comments so far
#8 doesnt have a belly button either!
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Wow, they really took off a lot of Jessica Alba’s waist and hip. Like probably 15 pounds! That is crazy..
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This is the biggest load of crap i’ve ever seen. There is nothing wrong with the photos you can see. You’re obviously not taking into consideration that when you lean on one leg, it’s going to look different to the other, as they’re both in different poses, and the lighting can also make body party look different. You’re trying way too hard to point out ‘fails’ when in fact they’re just absolutely beautiful women, you’re going to have to accept that and move on to the more important things in life.
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Actually there were some of them that were really airbrushed. Did you even look at the other pics? Look at Jessica Alba’s airbrushing. They literally took like 15 pounds off of her waist and hip. Look at Katy Perry. They airbrushed her already skinny legs and made her knees and thigh look a little thinner. What type of message do you think that sends? These women are all beautiful but the magazines still feel the need to “correct” them. That is the whole point. That is why women do not feel good about themselves. IT IS REALLY SAD!
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there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to look better. Nor is there anything wrong with wanting to better yourself to look like these models. It promotes health, fittness and happiness.
You want to talk consumerism? stop sitting there with your bag of potato chips bitching about how enhancing already beautiful people is bad for your self esteem and makes you feel fat. Get off you ass, step away from the computer and go for a walk!
no wonder Australia has taken the number 2 position of the fattest nation in the world!
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This is the biggest bullshit lol, notice how every “unedited photo” was somewhat gradiented the same? Every one is grainy, not one isn’t. So I think the “unedited” ones are in fact, edited. Don’t believe anything these websites post.
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Very sure many of you missed the whole point. No where did it say the women arent beautiful before photoshop, merely that lots of photoshopping is used. More women need to see this because only until you all stop buying the magazines and supporting the stupid E! shows bitching about how women look, will the ppl within these medias stop using it.
Add to it that women honestly think it is mens fault and that men are to blame. This is all done for women, and much of the time by women, supported continually through sales by women. Only we can stop this shit, by stopping the support of magazines and labels and shows that encourage photoshop and that abuse and berate women when they are in their natural state.
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Alessandra Ambrosio,Crystal Renn, Brooklyn Decker,Miranda Kerr,Marisa Miller, and most other victoria secret models and other models are beautiful with and without make up. All of you guys that say that they are ugly with out computers and makeup is horrible these girls are beautiful. People that hate on them have body image problems. Everyone is beautiful in they’re own way, but the fact that u say how ugly they are with out makeup and photoshop is horrible because they are amazingly beautiful. the fact people waste time worrying about how they don’t look like a barbie doll is crazy to because as long as your healthy and happy thats all that matters. Please don’t call any models fat or ugly because they have worked so hard to be where they are and it it really hard to be a model.
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What’s the secret of Victoria Secret models? Do you have any idea guys? http://www.ranker.com/list/every-victoria_s-secret-model-/greg
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hahahah all these girls are pretty but without photoshop lots of them are umm? gourgous:) TRUE BEAUTY…..
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i agree…some of them are really not that big of a deal. who cares if they enhanced the color a little and removed some shine. some of the girls are pretty to start off with. photoshop is just used to enhance the beauty that is already there.
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some of them are total bullshit
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This stuff should be placed in Mens magazines. Then and only then, would they realise that the woman they are married to, dating etc is just as beautiful as the air brushed variety. Then I think women would feel more comfortable about their bodies.
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How interesting that Cameron Diaz has been airbrushed to make her look less bony! Can’t win.
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except that is muscle..not bones. which i think makes it so much worse.
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Sure Crystal Renn is a ‘plus-size’ model (we hate that term too) but seeing photos of models with naturally round tummies
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Is it just me or does Julia Stiles look pretty much the same apart from some colour correction – which is hardly something I would be made about in magazines…
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look at her arms…
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I was at a skincare/ makeup party recently, (think Tupperware style) and the hostess mentioned that all the women in the catalogue were over 40 and actual sales reps for the skincare range ( ie not models). Now all of us attending the party were late 20s/ early 30s ladies, all well educated, yet when the host said this everyone started fawning over the catalogue, and saying how effective the products must be for them to look so good. I sat there thinking I couldn’t believe how photoshopped they were and I still can not fathom how everyone else was so duped.
I wish I had of spoken up, but I didn’t want to be a killjoy. I just hope that others were thinking the same as me- none of the catalogue image women looked over 25. Thanks to posts like this, I feel so much more educated about photoshop. How can intelligent, smart and educated women still be fooled like this?
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I agree Futari, smart women are also fooled by photoshop, but just maybe they did know but didn’t want to be killjoys either?
Either way these are great shots to save and show my daughter if/when she starts to feel the pressure to be just like those in the media
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As an active person who loves her fitness, I find the most outraging thing the fact they TOOK OUT Cameron Diaz’s “v” muscle line on her abdomen…
How can that line represent anything other than health, fitness and strength…
Can beauty really only be delicate, submissive and in need of saving in the pages of a magazine? So sick of the Victim-Princess Complex purported by media.
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yep I noticed that too and was outraged. You don’t ERASE muscles… gees
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mmm, i was wondering if cameron had approved ‘that’ touch-up. it strikes me as something she’d be proud of, not something she’d want erased…
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What people forget is that cameras are nasty, they no more reflect real life than photoshop does. Instead they reflect every little flaw with none of the personality or movement which makes a person. This is why it is so important for models to be ‘photogenic’ as most of us aren’t. Even some famously beautiful women are less attractive on camera than they are in real life.
Photoshop should make a person look as attractive as they would to the eye, of course the almighty dollar has spoken so that is not what is happening.
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It is true that I am waaaaaaaay hotter in real life than I am in pictures.
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That one of Mariah Carey is particularly ridiculous!
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TRUTH IS BEAUTY
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I hate to tell you this Mia, but you might owe that “Silver-hair” on the plane (U on Sunday April 1, 2012) an apology. I believe she is right! You DO need to turn your phone off. Flight mode is for when you ARE allowed to use the electronic items on board. You are endangering everyone on board through your ignorance. I have done the same as “Silver-hair” and asked the passenger next to me to turn her phone off. I believe Flight Attendants should be more specific about this when they do their safety spiel. I look forward to you researching this for confirmation and making a mention in your column and hopefully on this website also. I enjoy seeing you on the Today show; keep up the good commentary, Mia.
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This is an absolute myth. An active phone is no risk anyway but to suggest that an iPhone in flight mode which is not transmitting can have any impact on anything is ludicrous. It’s like the nutters that think a mobile phone can ignite fuel at a petrol station. Somehow these urban myths gain traction. Don’t feed it
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As someone who works in a petrol station it is not the phone transmitting that is the danger it is the spark created by the battery which, when mixed with petrol fumes could be dangerous. If someone drops their phone while juggling that and the pump or it falls out of their pocket it could spark. It is a safety issue, it has nothing to do with us being “nutters”
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There is zero chance of a spark from dropping a phone. As someone who doesn’t work at a petrol station but does understand physics, the danger of ignition comes from getting in and out of the car multiple times and creating a spark from the static that can build up inside the car. If you’ve ever gotten out of your car and been shocked when you touched the door to close it, that’s the issue. Phones have no bearing whatsoever on gasoline fume ignition at petrol stations. (Nor do they generate signals that can actually interfere with aviation equipment.)
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Mia and team,
I’m 22 and I’ve been flicking through magazines for years and I am a fairly confident person but I HAVE thought (especially when I was even younger) “she’s gorgeous, I wish my skin was like that” etc etc and after reading article after article highlighting photoshopping here I FINALLY see these images and it’s so much clearer now how fake they are. It doesn’t seem real, I wonder if photoshopping was this bad 10 years ago when I was first peeking in my older sisters magazines. It is shocking nowadays! Shocking as in I can’t believe we are meant to fall for it! And yet I had been falling for it. I considered myself smart (ish) and aware of photoshop but it was as if I just knew it existed but now I SEE it! I can SEE the photoshop and it’s really really liberating!!!!!! I feel a lot better these days! My point, I do have one, is that I want to thank you Mia for championing this cause even though it is an uphill battle and you are constantly met with “get over it, stop talking about photoshop, your site runs the same story every day wah” because (I’m going to go ahead and sound really dramatic here) I honestly feel like my life has changed! I don’t look at images and think “I should work out more to look like that” or “I wish I was that gorgeous” I feel FINE I don’t care! It’s been such an amazing thing to realise!! I see GORGEOUS women in real life every day and I love that! But I love that the gorgeous women of magazine/advertisements don’t have the power they once did.
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Thanks Kathy!!!! Xxx
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yeah…they’re all still gorgeous
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Some of them (madonna) it’s like ooohh myyyy.
And some of them (penelope cruz) you realise how stunning they are without photoshop!
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exactly! beauty does not equal photoshop! there is a formula for beauty, technically, but honestly, it is so open to interpretation (I like to think every woman is beautiful) that photoshop is demeaning in a way. These women make their fortune on “being beautiful” so let them actually earn their money by being beautiful WOMEN! Not computer images
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I can’t get enough of this stuff. Thank you.
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Looking at pic 20 in the first gallery… it’s a shame they couldn’t photoshop a smile onto Kristen Stewart’s face…
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Why are we talking about this photo now? It’s from March 2010. We’re a bit late!
That said, I do like it.
Although, I wasn’t overly impressed when the Morning Show discussed it today and the guests (some comedian and a woman I’ve never heard of) happily and casually pointed out how unattractive Alessandra was and how this photo was evidence that women look better with “extra softness”.
Preference is fine, but if they had said something negative about the other 2 you can imagine how out of line that would have been.
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Ah the double standard – making negative comments about the ‘skinny girl’ is ok apparently!
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wish the bikinis were not so skin tight on all three models on the top photo!!
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Miranda Kerr’s cleavage wasn’t enhanced (that much) in that photo – she was pregnant on that shoot.
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I couldn’t figure out the ‘photoshop fail’ in that pic?
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I’ve always thought that the “photoshop outrage” expressed on Mamamia was a bit melodramatic. I consider myself an educated, intelligent woman so surely I can look at images in magazine and realise that they’re cleverly crafted fantasy? However seeing the celebrity before and after shots really resonated with me – now I finally get it.
I don’t care that much if a model I’ve never seen before has had cm shaved off her thighs but 5 mins ago, I honestly thought that Cameron Diaz and Katherine Heigel looked in real life the way they do in their after shots. Now I feel duped
So thanks Mia for always banging on about disclosure for photoshopping – now I finally understand why it’s so important.
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I’m not too phased with the photoshopping as long as it’s not too extreme – removing a bruise here, a pimple there, some shadows etc. is understandable and (I think) acceptable.
I do think with beauty/hair products that photoshopping the actual area of the product is unfair – that’s just false advertising!
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I’m sorry but those Victoria Secret ‘photoshop disaster’ images are ridiculous.. most of them look completely normal to me. who ever put this together is really trying to look for something.. anything!
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Gosh. How do you go at ‘where’s wally’?
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I wonder what size Crystal Renn is?? I’m a size 10-12 and she looks a hell of a lot better in a bikini than I do!
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I agree! It would be interesting to know what size she is…I always thought plus size models were a size 14-16.
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Sadly I believe plus size models are anything size 12 plus.
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I can’t be 100% certain (since Tyra Banks is not the omnipotent knower-of-all-things) but she said on her show that in the modeling business, anything a size 6 or bigger is considered plus size. Just to give everyone an idea of how absolutely stupid the fashion industry is.
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Size 6 in the USA is about a size 10 here, just FYI
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Miranda Kerr is just divine pre and post air brushing. I saw Jessica Alba in NYC. She is beautiful in real life too.
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I prefer Cameron Diaz pre-photoshop. Why would they remove her awesome surfer curves??
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What I learnt from the photos..
1. The worst ones were the ladies over 40 being airbrushed to look 20. Who are they fooling?
2. A lot of them just had lighting tweaked, which I don’t think is airbrushing.
3. Saddest was making Katherine Hegel thinner, seriously? She’s gorgeous.
4. VS models don’t need airbrushing to look “perfect’
5. I think it’s unfair to compare people in photo’s where the poses are different. My boobs look bigger in different poses/bras too!
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I totally agree! Especially with point 5.
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From this man’s perspective images of (presumably photoshopped) models can be appealing, but only in an unreal, imaginary friend sort of way. What I find really sexy is the familiar and the imperfect. A woman with smiling eyes, or a slightly too big nose. I love confidence. I love mysterious. I love warm and interested. I love a woman with a laugh in her voice. I love real.
There is no typically beautiful woman. Some ordinary women seem more beautiful the longer you know them (inner beauty), some women who look like “models” I just couldn’t sleep with, they make me feel cheap or they are so aloof it would be like sleeping with someone you don’t like.
I’m glad to see you smiles are the sexiest thing of all.
Most men you meet never have fantasies about models or girls in mags, generally they are thinking about a girl at the office or the wife of a friend – but no disrespect is intended. In fact, I have admitted to my bromance that I have had fantasies about his wife, and he has said the same to me. Is this something girls admit to?
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I don’t think girls admit to fancying each others husbands/ boyfriends, at least not in my circle- although that could be because we don’t
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Amazing. Please keep publishing these before and after shots. Everyone needs see this.
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Am I weird for thinking the “before” shots look better?
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Once heard a guy say that your meant to see sunlight in between a girls legs – wonder where he got that impression from?
Also, Mammamia I love your blog – seriously love love love your blog – but it would be really nice to scroll through your gallery instead of having each image open over the top of the article (this may be a Chrome thing). A slideshow feature would be golden
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hah, just checked in Firefox and the gallery works. *facepalm* what a dork
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Still, we should have it working in both, so thanks for alerting us to the problem!
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I think it may be a Chrome thing as we have a slideshow feature – I’ll flag it with our developer and try to get a solution for you.
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It is also pretty buggy in iPhone mobile safari- wrong captions and uncontrollable transitions. This happens for all the galleries. Thanks!
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It doesn’t work for me on Firefox 11 on a mac with osx 10.7.3…
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After doing a short stint of work experience in a publishing company and seeing what they did to photos, I was shocked.
Now whenever any of my girlfriends point to ANY photos in mags (even random pics of women who aren’t celebrities) and say, ” I wish I looked like that”, I have to try not to scream when replying, “They don’t really look like that, it’s not real!”
Sooo many people have no idea that the pics are tweaked and re-tweaked over and over.
Thank you so much for posting this =)
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Oh Miranda. I spent a good five minutes trying to tell which was the before shot, she looked so amazing in both!!
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I found a couple of positive things in these galleries:
1. there are some brave models people out there being willing to appear without makeup, editing etc.
2. with some of the before and after shots they should be really encouraged about how little was needed to be done.
the new standard: “he said he didn’t need photoshop for me, just to fix the lighting”
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Even in the non-photoshopped photos, most of those women still looked impeccable. Their “flaws” made them seem that little bit more endearing.
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AHHHH I love this! my thighs look like that! little bit dimply! my arms look like that! not toned and shining to perfection!I know we get told it gets photoshopped all the time but to actually see the before makes me feel a whole lot better
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I am going to be honest, I looked at these photos and I judged, I compared their bodies to my own, I scanned for imperfections. Then I thanked god that I am not a celebrity/model, as the thought of women judging me as I had just judged them made me feel sick. I feel flawed, is this just human nature? Did anyone else judge?
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I did it, too. Without even realizing it. We’re all so programmed to judge a woman’s worth by her looks that I’m not sure we can even stop. The most I can do is recognize it and feel badly about it now.
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Oh I LOVE this!! I’m not as inadequate as the magazine’s make me feel! Ha! Who knew having thighs actually big enough to support your body weight was normal?? Ahhhh…..thank you
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There are always hundreds of candid pics of the VS models posing for the latest catalogue’s. Here in Australia, we’re much more likely to see those images on gossip sites or in trashy mags than the airbrushed ones in the catalogue. And of course there’s the VS Fashion Show every year. Most Australians have only ever seen un-airbrushed images and video of the girls modelling VS. They all look unbeleivably gorgeous without the airbrushing, particularly Miranda and Candice.
In relation to the gallery full of catalogue pics, the model has shiny thighs because make-up artists use oil to make the skin glisten. And of course those models thighs look different. If I stand with one leg straight and one leg out to the side, my straight thigh will look small in comparison too.
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I had a glamour photo shoot done recently – it was given to me as a gift and as I had never had one done before, I was excited.
well getting the hair and makeup done was lovely and I took some nice clothes with me to change into.
The shots were great and it was hard to choose which ones to buy.
When they finally arrived I was bitterly disappointed. I had told them to whiten my teeth- that was all. that was my only request.
they had photoshopped me to the point where I did not look like me, my own children barely recognised me.
I am not ashamed of my freckles and my wrinkles and my moles and I don’t consider myself unattractive. I was sorry to discover that they clearly thought so.
I feel like I wasted a large sum of money on shots that simply do not reflect who I am. I really wanted to give one to my partner but I’m pretty sure he’s going to have the same reaction as me. I’m not sure what to do with them really.
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Don’t pay for them, and make a complaint. Firstly to the company, as they should rectify this. If they don’t and you have paid, then go to the ACCC about the product not being as advertised.
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Agreed, they should have asked you to sign off on the final photos before they were printed. If you approved the final photos then there is not much you can do, but if you did not approve them and you are not happy then you should be able to ask for them to be re-printed without the extra changes. There are too many dodgy photographers getting away with terrible work because their clients do not complain when they are unhappy.
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Victorias secret models are beautiful anyway, they are renowned for having the most incredible bodies and gorgeous faces. They are a brand not just a model. It might not be realistic but I admire their determination and dedication to fitness but that’s just my personal view!
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Wow! Thanks for publishing that. I’m off to don a bikini at Monkey Mia this weekend and was quite hesitant and feeling self conscious until now.
It’s nice to be reminded what real women look like!
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The ones that make me sad are the ones where they’ve airbrushed out the sticking out ribs and hip bones. So unrealistic
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