The Unretouched Images Victoria’s Secret Doesn’t Want You to See

Jezebel ^ | Oct 17, 2012 | Jenna Sauers

[jwsea55]

Back in August, Victoria's Secret accidentally published a set of two dozen raw, unretouched images from a photo shoot with supermodel Doutzen Kroes. Although we had to take down the unretouched images from our post after some kind of legal crap from VS, we knew the publication of the retouched versions in the brand's catalog was only a matter of time. And now we can show you all the images, both before and after the VS airbrush job.

Many of the differences between the retouched and raw photographs are not terribly shocking. There aren't any missing limbs, or drastic alterations to the shape of Kroes' body — she's a supermodel, after all, and the woman sure knows how to pose. This is, to be honest, mostly pretty subtle, "good" Photoshop. The biggest change by far is that Victoria's Secret brightened up the colors and corrected for lighting conditions that had some of the raw shots looking a little washed-out or dull. Now, it comes as no great surprise that a company should want its products to be seen in the best light possible, even if that is the magical, fake, golden light of Photoshop. An advertiser using lies to make a product seem more alluring than it really is? Well, I never!

But it's still interesting to see exactly what changed — and what didn't — during Victoria's Secret's post-production process. The retouching of women's bodies in advertising is normally intended to be invisible: it takes advantage of the presumed objectivity of photography but instead gives us an image that has been highly manipulated. The standards to which images are edited vary from brand to brand and magazine to magazine, and in a world where virtually every image of a woman we ever see...

[zeugma]

bfl

[hadaclueonce]

IBTHTP

In Before The Helen Thomas Picture...

[TheThirdRuffian]

Yeah, I don't get the whole looks-like-a-10-year-old-boy thing. Like athletic girls, with curves.

[Revolting cat!]

Victoria's Secret beauties:

[a fool in paradise]

Of course the catalog photos were shooped. They have to write the word SEX all over the waves and clouds and glasses of iced beverage.