Victoria's Secret is under fire for this photo - and it highlights a big problem for the business
To see the full photo and all of its unfortunate gaffes, (Warning: It's NSFW) click here.
Commenters are appalled at how poorly the company edited the photo. The backlash highlights how Victoria's Secret is at risk of losing potential customers by editing photos of already-thin models.
"Man, why can't they just leave photos alone? I can see removing a distracting mole or pimple but that should be it," one woman wrote.
"Her left butt cheek is missing and a chunk out of her right arm," another woman wrote.
"What a strange picture. Certainly not normal looking and the touching up is very obvious. Why? This is just weird," a third woman wrote.
We reached out to the company for comment.
Victoria's Secret has a history with poorly altered photos of its models. In a recent roundup of some of the worst retail Photoshop disasters of all time, the lingerie retailer made the list several times.
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Since Aerie has abandoned Photoshop, sales have soared - in the second fiscal quarter of 2015, comparable-store sales (sales at stores open at least a year) skyrocketed 18%. Sales at Victoria's Secret's have not decreased, but same-store sales increased by just 3% in the second quarter.
Even though Victoria's Secret is known for its super-svelte models, its customers are far too savvy to the magic of Photoshop.
Further, flawed photo editing makes consumers not want to trust brands like Victoria's Secret, University of Southern California marketing professor Jeetendr Sehdev, a branding expert, told Business Insider this summer.
"We have seen the backlash - those perfect bodies are not even the bodies of the Angels," Sehdev said, using the name for Victoria's Secret's models. And people know that now ... people are fully aware, consciously or subconsciously, whether they are looking at a Photoshopped image."