Ladies, I think you all know exactly what I am talking about when I say those horrible two words “thigh gap,” that space that we are all supposed to have between our legs. I have recently learned of a new one called the “bikini bridge,” which is when a girl is laying on her back her hip bones should stick out so far that her bathing suit bottoms form a bridge over her waist. These new trends have got every girl standing in her full length mirror wishing her legs didn’t rub together when she walked and that her bathing suit didn’t actually touch her skin. Well I am here to tell you girls, THAT IS NORMAL.
Recently Target put out an advertisement for swimsuits in which they clearly edited the model’s body so drastically that they cut out her crotch trying to give her a bigger thigh gap.
No one’s body looks like that! And look at her arm, it’s almost nonexistent, and her hip has had a chunk taken out of it. First of all, this photo editor should be fired for the botched job he or she did on this picture, and second, someone needs to tell him or her that this model looked absolutely fine the way she was, without the edits.
What’s worse? There’s more like this:
Poor girl actually has a rectangle cut between her legs, and what is that pointy thing under her arm?
One good thing did come of these photos though, and us women can learn something from it. If you didn’t already know, the ladies on the front of magazines and even in Target ads do not look like they do on paper. This extreme editing creates a completely false idea of what the “perfect body” looks like. This false idea has created an obsession with silly fads like a thigh gap and a bikini bridge among women. Even supermodel Cindy Crawford once said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford.” Let that sink in.
You can find evidence of this everywhere. Jessica Alba who is a gorgeous, curvy woman was edited in the magazine shoot above. The color is obviously enhanced but more importantly, look at her waist — it is disproportionately small, her boobs are lifted, her arm is skinnier, and her collar bones more pronounced. What notion has convinced us that the image on the left isn’t beautiful as it is, untouched? I would kill to look like the REAL Jessica Alba, not the edited one. These advertisements make women, even celebrities, think they are ugly and fat.
Jennifer Lawrence has been an outspoken advocate for being portrayed just the way she is (which is in-shape and healthy) and she was not pleased when she saw that her cover shot for Flare magazine was edited just like all the others. I have literally watched this GIF hundreds of times and each time I find one more thing that has been changed about her. She has been made thinner through the waist, her neck has been lengthened, her hair fluffed, her face thinned, and even her armpits have been made smaller. I didn’t even know armpits were a thing to be changed?! The most important thing I noticed while watching this has been that she looks better without the edits. She is perfect the way she is and Flare did her an injustice by editing her in this way.
So girls, when you stand in the mirror don’t be so hard on yourself, pick out what you like about yourself instead. If you have a thigh gap, love that about yourself. If you don’t have one, love that, too. If you want to change something about yourself, develop a healthy plan and change it. But please, please know that even the celebs don’t look like celebs, so start using real people as your inspiration.
With that, I want to leave you with some of my fave J.Law quotes…