Thursday, August 16, 2012

Is This Victoria’s Secret Pic of Model Lais Ribeiro Yet Another Photoshop Fail For the Brand?




Does she look a little…off to you? Victoria’s Secret’s Facebook fans seem to think so.



The mega retailer posted this picture of swimwear model Lais Ribeiro on Facebook just 17 hours ago, and it’s already garnered 1550+ comments–almost all of them negative.



“What you did to this model’s body with photoshop is sickening,” Solymar Sol s- vila wrote. “She doesn’t even look healthy.”



“The top left of her stomach doesn’t match with the bottom left half,” agreed Kristy Yates. “Another example of VS’s extremely poor photoshopping. Sad, bc her body looks like it would have been awesome without it, too.”



Indeed, it’s hard to look at Ribeiro’s body in the above photo and not go a little cross-eyed. Her right hip doesn’t appear to match up with her torso, and her rib cage and upper torso appear to be disproportionally smaller than the rest of her body. But is photoshop really to blame? Some commenters have pointed out that Ribeiro’s natural body shape is not too far off from the one pictured.



“Not a photoshop fail, have any of you seen her in person or seen her walk in the VS fashion show?” Madeline Dawson wrote. “She has a very small rib cage and narrow hips and is healthy and in shape.”




“Perhaps she just has an extraordinarily long middle?” Sarah Butler ventured. “I do that pose and my lower arm isn’t far of [sic] horizontal.”



It’s true, a quick photo search does in fact reveal that Ribeiro has an unusually long torso and thin rib cage. Just check out the un-photoshopped picture of her walking the runway at the Victoria’s Secret show. It’s possible that the strange-looking image could be the result of an awkward pose and bad photo angle–if you look closely, you can see that it’s possible her left arm was merely covering part of her rib cage, making it appear smaller. Still, something does look rather disjointed about her hips and torso.



“It does look a little like it’s two photos stuck together and then stretched to make the lines match,” Butler said.



But regardless to whether the image is a result of photoshop trickery or merely an awkward pose, many Facebook commenters felt that it was an unhealthy image for Victoria’s Secret to be projecting.



“I hope this is a photoshop fail, otherwise this girl need to change jobs…” Ale Sama wrote.



“That looks horrible how skinny she is!! Shame on u VS!” Vanessa Johnson said. “Eating disorders are an epidemic with younger women because they have this ‘image’ of what is supposed to be beautiful… I know, I was one of them!”



“I wrote them a email once about how their models look sick,” Sierra Caccavale said. “They wrote me back and said they go for a ‘healthy young look.’”



While we don’t think it’s fair to pass judgements on Ribeiro’s health, it would be hard for even
Victoria’s Secret to deny that something does look rather off in the image–and that it has the potential to send a very unhealthy message to viewers. Perhaps it doesn’t matter whether it was photoshopped or not…


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