Cindy Crawford Says Her Celebrated 'Untouched' Photo Was Altered and Maliciously Leaked
CelebritiesDirt BagIn the latest issue of Elle Canada, supermodel Cindy Crawford, for the very first time, is addressing the supposedly untouched photo of her that leaked in February. “Why would seeing a bad picture of me make other people feel good?,” she asks.
Via Elle Canada:
Last February, a news anchor for the U.K.’s ITV News posted what she suggested was an unretouched image of Crawford taken from an old shoot with Marie Claire. It became a viral sensation. “I felt that [the journalist] was inauthentic because she acted like this was great but she didn’t check if I wanted this out or if it was a real picture. Why would seeing a bad picture of me make other people feel good? I felt blindsided. I was very conflicted, to be honest. The story had run a year and a half before, and the picture of me in that outfit was from the bust up. I know my body, and I know it’s not perfect, but maybe I have a false body image; maybe I think I look better than I do. I think that most women are hard on themselves. We think we look worse than we do. So I assumed I fell into that category, even though that picture didn’t reflect what I saw when I looked in the mirror—even in the worst dressing-room lighting.”
While the image was met with adulation by most online women communities and celebrity gossip sites, Crawford (and the Marie Claire photographer) denied that it was real, claiming that the photo had indeed been photoshopped with the purpose of making her look worse. The model reiterates that the photo had been altered to Elle Canada:
“We spoke to the photographer, and he was very upset because he didn’t put it out there. He said: ‘Cindy, I’m going to send you the real one and it’s nothing like that. It’s clear that someone manipulated that image to make whatever was there worse.’ It was stolen and it was malicious, but there was so much positive reaction [to the image].”
Despite feeling hurt that the image was altered and leaked, she is happy that it’s had a positive effect on women’s lives: