Fashion

Photoshopped Instagram Pix Aren't Fooling Anyone

by Emily Kirkpatrick

Lindsay Lohan has clearly not gotten the memo this week that the world cannot handle any more optical trickery. Now, don't get me wrong, a little piece of my heart will always belong to Lohan. I secretly relish every time her name pops up in the news cycle, and I might be the only person rooting for her to make some kind of major comeback. (To put this in perspective, I have similarly embarrassing feelings about Amanda Bynes.) So when I heard there was breaking news this morning about LilLo, my heart understandably skipped a tiny beat. Too bad that "breaking news" is that Lindsay Lohan posted a very poorly retouched Instagram photo.

Unfortunately, this isn't the type of landmark underdog story I was hoping for, but rather another embarrassing social media slip-up that Lohan's become all too familiar with. On Wednesday, the struggling actress posted a leotard-clad selfie to Instagram with a caption that read, "My feet look red lol- had to take that out. Only real red is my hair. 😘" Sounds innocent enough — except this image of Lohan includes a pretty glaringly obvious editing fail, and now that we're all amateur Photoshop cops, there was no way anyone was going to let that go by unnoticed.

Lohan seems to have doctored the image to make her thighs appear smaller and enhance her posterior ever so slightly. Seriously, when will these women learn? Never Photoshop yourself while standing in front of walls, doors, or patterned backgrounds that are supposed to be straight lines. I assumed we all learned this helpful tidbit the day the Instagram account @wephotoshoppedwhat launched and put every celebrity image-alterer on blast, including the queen of all that is holy and #flawless, Beyoncé.

So, clearly, Lohan is in good company when it comes to celebrities who touch up selfies. But in a world of already absurd beauty standards, it seems sad that even women who appear to live up to them fall victim to insecurities. If we take nothing else away from all of these celebrity photoshop fails, perhaps they will allow women everywhere the opportunity to realize that no matter how much you may idolize an actress or singer for their physical qualities, we are all human and we are all flawed. And in that light, maybe we can all allow each other a little more understanding and kindness.

Images: Lindsay Lohan/Instagram; WePhotoshoppedWhat/Instagram