That's one helluva diet - lose one rib in the time it takes to change bathing suits!

Apparently Victoria’s Secret is hiring retouchers from the same place as Ralph Lauren, but wherever they come from, someone’s been abusing the deformed Photoshop filter again (comes in the Fashion Freakshow Basics brush and filter pack, right above the tapeworm tool, and below the de-rib filter).

On one hand it’s nice to know that not even Victoria’s Secret models look like Victoria’s Secret models. On the other, much larger hand (we can Photoshop a picture of that, or just wait for VS to get around to it), the point of having models is to give women an idea of what the clothing you’re selling might look like on them. Somewhere out there, we’re sure there are some women with tragic deformities that give them sharply angled hips and 14-inch waists, but we’re not so sure they represent most of the Victoria’s Secret buying audience. We know – even in real life, the Victoria’s Secret girls probably don’t look like the average Victoria’s Secret shopper, but at least they look like they were on the receiving end of genetic fortune instead of a genetic accident.

In the 2nd and 3rd photo it’s not impossible that it could be the result of how the model is posing – we don’t doubt that small waists can exist without Photoshop foolery, but we draw your attention to them to compare just how terrible the Photoshop abuse is in other photos (specifically the pink lace top, blue dress and white bandeau top). Though when we compare a Mario Testino photo of Candice Swanepoel with a Victoria’s Secret photo? Pretty sure those precise, strangely smooth, Gumbyesque curves are difficult to achieve outside of a computer lab.

While we don’t think the fashion industry alone can be held responsible for eating disorders and distorted body images, this certainly doesn’t help their case. We would love to do first hand investigation into the saying that you can never be too rich, but there has to be some acceptance that there is such a thing as too thin. These praying mantis style figures are neither natural or humanly possible of anyone over the age of 12. Fantasy in fashion is one thing, this type of fiction is another.

When the luxury extraterrestrial market opens up, images like these will no doubt spark interest. Until then, it’s obvious someone in the “retouching” department needs to come back down to earth. For comparison’s sake, the black and white photo is of a woman who survived Holocaust-era starvation experiments. Her hips and torso are larger than those in the heavily altered image of Zelyaeva.

Read more {Huffington Post}

While Photoshop Disasters’ webhost has removed the original post after receiving a DMCA takedown notice for copyright infringement, BoingBoing’s provider didn’t cave. Within 24 hours, the story – and advertising photo, have hit the homepage of Digg, been reblogged on numerous other sites, and sent around the twitterverse over 1300 times. Legal action and threats to feed the models are going back and forth, but at the end of the day BoingBoing is on firm legal ground. Fair use in the US has long held for the incorporation of copyrighted materials for criticism or parody, even on the wild wild web.

Read more {Boing Boing}

Read more {Photoshop Disasters}