should we care about miranda kerr’s photoshopped body?

In case you missed it, the annual Victoria’s Secret fashion show happened last week. This show consists of the world’s top supermodels showing off superbrand, Victoria’s Secret lingerie, accompanied with slightly over-the-top angel wings – hence the branding of these women as ‘Victoria’s Secret Angels’.

This year’s show was worth mentioning as it was the first time in six years that Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr has not featured —  her contract ended in April this year. Although Kerr was not modelling at the event, this did not mean that her name was absent from the festivities.

Prior to this year’s event, Kerr posted an Instagram photo of herself with two of the current Victoria’s Secret Angels, Doutzen Kroes and Alessandra Ambrosio, from last year’s show, when Kerr was still an angel. Kerr accompanied the photo with the caption ‘Sending love and best wishes to the #vsangels from Japan xxx’. Fairly innocuous right? Wrong.

It was Kerr’s followers who picked up on the fact that there was something not right about the image. They recognised it, given that Kerr had also shared the photo when it was taken the year before. But it was not the same photo. When looking at the photo from 2013 side by side with the original 2012 photo, it becomes crystal clear.

In the 2013 photo, Kerr’s body and waist are significantly smaller (small and thin enough that it’s almost medically impossible for anybody to naturally look like that). Also, her fellow angel, Kroes, appears to have a wider waist than in the 2012 photo. So, something is not quite right with this seemingly innocent post. It was clearly photo-shopped.

The issue at play here is twofold: who did the photo-shopping (was it Kerr or was it an outside source?); and why did Kerr post a photo-shopped image of herself and of fellow supermodels?

When Kerr was asked by her followers to address the issue (designer Ange Langton commented directly onto Kerr’s Instagram ‘@mirandakerr maybe address this image? It’s been photoshopped very obviously and it might be a good idea to communicate to fans why it has happened), her response was, once again seemingly innocent. 24 hours after posting the photoshopped image, Kerr posted the original image with the explanatory tagline ‘Hi guys, here is the original VS image! When I re-posted the photo this week to support the girls I screen grabbed it off the internet when I was working in Japan. I had no idea it was photo-shopped. All good intentions – sorry for the confusion and congratulations to the girls for such a great show!’

Harmless mistake, right? Wrong again. I partly agree with Lucy Greenway’s thoughts on this international modelling scandal, over at MamaMia. I find the message that Kerr issued accompanying this image to be a little bit hypocritical. Surely, given that she works and has championed an industry which is so focused upon her body and physicality, that she would know her own body well enough to know when she has been photoshopped, before effectively sharing it with the world? And surely it’s unnecessary to even bother with the photoshop when we’ve all seen Kerr’s body numerous times before in her previous modelling photoshoots? And how does this fit in with Kerr’s mantra of ‘Treasure Yourself’? Frankly, I am sceptical.

Should we really care whether or not Kerr’s body was photoshopped, and by whom?

[Image Credit]