Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid are used to having their bodies doctored by photographers who strive to portray the female embodiment of so-called perfection.
But the supermodel BFFs, appearing in a joint (ahem) W Magazine cover shoot, had their knees Photoshopped out of the very legs they stand on, in a violent fashion knee-capping.
The photograph – otherwise doctored to perfection – seems to have brushed over a pretty vital part of the models’ anatomy.
Kendall and Gigi’s legs are made to look like a cross between Barbie’s beautifully elongated limbs and a pair of pale, perfectly smooth Pepperamis.
Twitter responded accordingly to the alleged ‘tragedy’:
It’s unclear whether the photoshop fail is an embarrassing oversight or a trick played by the photographer on their audience.
Undoubtedly the photo shoot – and entire premise of W’s 10th anniversary art issue – challenges the way we see the world and the preconceived notions with which we approach art, the female body and fashion itself.
W captioned the teaser image with the following convoluted statement:
Artists Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin explore how cameras, social media, and reality TV have changed the way we engage with the world and with one another…
Fitch and Trecartin see in our relationship to pets a parallel with our relationship to technology, in the way that we’ve been trained to adapt our behavior, our language, and the images we choose to present our changing selves.
The playful shoot shows Kendall unlike we’ve ever seen her before; a so-called ‘humanoid’ creature born out of the concept of survival of the fittest.
She sits astride a horse, the animal which she believes herself to have been in a past life, according to an interview she gave with W. In the same video, she admitted, ‘I love getting my boobs out‘.
In a dystopian future, the artists believe that the ‘friendliest’ creatures – such as animals – would thrive. Not sure Kendall would survive the apocalypse in the artists’ books.
In the futuristic photo shoot, Gigi – looking like something straight out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – was even given a pair of ears, just in time for Halloween.
The magazine’s special addition pays homage to performance art of the contemporary sphere, from Yoko Ono to Yves Klein.
While the images are aesthetically bizarre in a rather beautiful way, I can’t help but think the fashion industry has reached peak pretence.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.