One More Reason Thigh-Gap Photoshopping Is Still an Issue

You’d think after all the thigh-gap backlash fashion brands would be a little more cautious with their Photoshop tool, but evidently that’s not the case. The Gloss alerted us to the latest egregious Photoshop blunder, and this is one we just couldn’t turn away from.

We’ve seen some bad thigh gap Photoshopping before, but this Macy’s ad might be even worse than Target’s Rectangle-Thigh-Gap-Gate. (No, we will never forget that.) Here’s the man-made disaster in all its “Wait, someone who gets paid a living wage to promote clothing for a major retailer actually APPROVED this advertisement?” WTF-ery.

If you’re thinking “Wait, did the person who Photoshopped these thighs do so with MS PAINT?!!?!” you are not alone in your thoughts, I’m thinking this too, every person who sees this picture is thinking that.

The question of course becomes HOW in the name of everything that is good and holy did this happen?

There’s been a cultural obsession with extreme thinness since Twiggy first twigged in the 1960’s, but only in the last few years has that obsession reached a fever pitch with a focus on achieving a “thigh gap,” which is when a woman stands with her knees together and there is a space between her thighs. According to everybody’s best friend, Wikipedia, the thigh gap craze came out of the gates swinging at a Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in 2012 that received a bananas-ton of media coverage because the models boasted extreme thigh gaps. The Internet became obsessed with the gap, both pressuring women to diet and exercise in crazy and unhealthy ways to achieve the look and, when this wasn’t enough, Photoshopping images to put as much space as possible between a model’s thighs.

Yes, this Macy’s ad appears to have fallen victim to a ridiculous Photoshop job and it’s tons of fun to cut up about, but once we get past all the jokes (and there are SO many jokes to make, I have, like, seventeen more) what this advertisement suggests is downright depressing. These are the lengths major retailers go to in order to prevent us, their consumers, from seeing what these models’ legs really look like. And for what? Un-Photoshopped legs are not pee-your-pants horror-movie monsters. They’re LEGS. They’re ANATOMY. There’s nothing scary about the design of the human body. What’s scary are those messed up attempts to redesign what was awesome to begin with.

(Image via)