Shape Will Publish Those Erroneously Rejected Bikini Photos

After much unwelcome attention over their apparent decision to reject a bikini photo of weight loss blogger Brooke Birmingham Shape magazine says they’ll be featuring Birmingham in a spread in the magazine, along with five other “real” women.

As part of their Dove-sponsored series Love Your Selfie: Reclaiming Beauty, The Today Show got Birmingham and Shape to kiss and make up on Friday. According to Editor-at-Large Bahar Takhtehchian, the whole thing was just a “miscommunication” that happened with a freelancer they want yet again clarify does not work for Shape:

It was a miscommunication with a freelancer who is not employed by Shape. Unfortunately she said there was an editorial policy that simply doesn’t exist. So that’s where things went awry a little bit.

Takhtehchian went on to clarify that Birmingham and the five other women will be featured in bikini shots in the magazine to explore how “there is a journey after the weight loss journey.” Thus far their search has publicly consisted of one tweet:

“We are excited to make this into an impactful discussion about weight loss and the realities,” Takhtehchian added. “We want to turn this into something positive.”

On her own blog, Birmingham wrote that she was also excited about the conversation:

I am so happy that it all turned into this. When I posted the blog post, I wanted a conversation to happen and wanted to spark a change in magazines today. That is exactly what happened. I’m excited to now be working with Shape to feature women who have gone through an extreme weight loss and showing their readers what can happen not only physically, but also mentally when doing just that.