Fitness blogger Madalin Giorgetta has revealed just how easy it is to fake those ‘flattering’ bikini selfies we’re constantly bombarded with online.
Giorgetta, who has 213,000 followers on Instagram alone, shared two photos of herself in a gingham bikini. In the first, she’s relaxed, while in the second she’s tensing her muscles with her hips pushed backwards and her legs slightly further apart.
By changing the way she is stood, her body shape has altered dramatically.
Giorgetta explained: “Ahh the difference a flattering pose can make. I love seeing these photos on my feed as it reminds me that we all have our best angles that we choose to share.
“The girls you see on Instagram don’t walk around with one leg bent and one hip popped and flexed abs the whole time!”
She said she doesn’t look like the version on the right normally (”because who the hell stands like that in real life?”) but added that there’s nothing wrong with posting “your most flattering angle”.
After sharing the photo, which was liked more than 43,000 times, Giorgetta faced claims that she’d digitally altered the images to make them look different.
She responded with a mesmerising video, showing exactly how she manages to change her body shape by altering her pose and flexing her muscles.
”It’s called the human body and it moves in and out because I’m not a statue,” she explained.
“I use filters, yes, I sometimes use Facetune to patch up a particularly heinous pimple, and like any chick I’m partial to good lighting and flattering angles but I would never ever use Photoshop to change the shape of my body.
“There’s enough misleading images about the female body as it is and I never want to add to that.”
She concluded: “Constantly seeing the same carefully posed pic on my feed can get tiring, so it’s always nice to see a crappy photo and think, ‘ohh hey, she’s a bit like me’.”