Anna Good
Fans excited for Kim Kardashian’s new SKIMS ad are now outraged at the company for photoshopping Tyra Banks’s body to look like Kim’s.
One Reddit user shared a screenshot from Instagram account ProblematicFame’s Story showing a side by side of Tyra Banks in the brand’s video versus the photos they released from the same shoot, which show the heavy-handed photoshopping done to the model’s waistline.
“Appalled to see the amount of photoshop done to tyra banks’ body in kim kardashian’s new skims ad campaign,” ProblematicFame wrote. “For a brand that prides themselves on body positivity and inclusivity, this is low.”
One Reddit user commented on the post, saying, “There is a difference in retouching and photoshopping. This is photoshopping. Chunks of her waist are missing…not smoothed out.”
Another user said, “How dare they photoshop her like that? I’d ask to be pulled from the campaign. They’re literally telling her her body is not good enough.”
Dana Omari, a registered dietician nutritionist who often posts to Instagram about the dangers of social media on body image and especially what celebrities post, shared the SKIMS video and photos of Banks to her account.
She commented in the caption, “Of course, all the former VS angels appear to be edited in the static images vs the video, but the most glaring one is #TyraBanks.”
Omari went on to call out the glaringly obvious photoshopping that had been done to Tyra’s body to make her resemble Kim’s own body, saying, “It’s disheartening that her body is edited to more closely resemble Kim’s hourglass body shape when Tyra’s body is straight or even apple. And poor photoshop on that – what is going on with her lower legs??”
“Tyra is gorgeous – like breathtakingly so – and would be such a great icon for average/plus sized bodies who DON’T have an hour glass shape (aka the “right” kind of plus)”
Omari concluded that more representation is needed for a variety of body types. “As someone without the small waist/hourglass shape, I want more straight bodied representation, of all sizes, in addition to many other body types,” she said in the post. “It’s not ‘inclusive’ if the only body types they show are: thin, slim hourglass or thick hourglass. Do better, @skims”
Users in Omari’s comments agreed with her, calling the move “100% on brand with the Kardashians” and “disheartening.”
As Omari said in her message: do better, SKIMS.