It’s no news that photo editing, which was originally for correcting the quality of a photo, is now used for adjusting basically everything there is to adjust on the human body. Time and time again,magazines and advertisements are called out for botched Photoshop jobs, but it’s not just those accused of over-the-top Photoshopping who are using editing tools. Even things you’ve never noticed before have possibly (most likely) been Photoshopped.
Refinery29 spoke to someone who makes a living out of retouching photos for brands, most notably Victoria’s Secret, about what really goes into making the finished product. Here are six secrets from the anonymous woman, who now sets boundaries with clients on what she will Photoshop because she says, “I know what I’m doing is wrong.”
1. Before they even start taking pictures, the swimsuits are stuffed with pads and inserts. The Photoshopper says, “If you hold up the bathing suit in your own hand, it’s so heavy because they have all this shit sewed into it.”
2. Models wear bras under swimsuit tops to get better cleavage during the photo shoots. “We retouch out the bra … a lot of [staffers] would complain because they even did it with strapless stuff.” Everyone knows strapless stuff is the literal worst, so that explains how the models’ boobs float like magic in those bandeaus.
5. Surprisingly enough, they don’t make the models skinnier in Photoshop. They make them curvier. And they soften bony parts. So why don’t they just hire curvier models? The Photoshopper says brands have tried that before and customers didn’t respond well. Moral of the story is to support brands that feature the kinds of models you’d like to see more of, which you should be doing anyway.
6. They also switch bodies (!). The woman says it’s common for brands to request for a model’s arms to be switched with someone else’s, though most of the time this is done to fix a weird pose rather than untoned arms or something.
I know I should feel horrible now knowing all of this, but I actually feel better. Turns out nothing and no one is real, and striving to look like Victoria’s Secret models is a waste of everyone’s time — because not even they look like that.
Originally appeared on Cosmopolitan.co.uk