Model Karlie Kloss’ ribs airbrushed out of Numéro magazine photo

The original photograph of Karlie Kloss, taken by Greg Kadel, showed the model leaning back with her hands behind her head - her prominent ribs, collarbone and sternum clearly visible. In a bizarre reversal of what usually happens, the image that appears in the October issue of Japan's Numero magazine has been airbrushed to remove all bony protuberances with Kloss’s bones and waist neatly smoothed over with an inch or so of digital flesh. Even in Numero’s image, Kloss looks too thin by healthy standards. 

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Most writers used the incident as a springboard to discuss the objectionable practice of Photoshopping models in fashion magazines. Some were annoyed that Numero airbrushed Kloss’s “banging body,” and said that Kloss looked “strong and sexy” in the original shots. According to the Daily Mail, the decision was not made for aesthetic reasons but to avoid a repeat of the scandal that broke out the last time Kloss appeared naked - in a shoot for Italian Vogue in December. The obvious problem is that standards imposed on models – that they must be stick-thin, at any cost – by the fashion industry are irresponsibly embraced and exulted on designers’ runways, in the media, and by advertisers. Everyone knows that images of waif-like models cement unattainable ideals of perfection in the imaginations of girls and women around the world, and can lead to dangerous and tragic consequences. In fact, Karlie Kloss is a beautiful girl. She’s also a beautiful girl who is extraordinarily thin. Regardless of whether or not she is naturally built this way, she appears unhealthy by any reasonable standard. Yet, Kloss says her slender frame is the result to years of ballet, which she gave up after being told she was too tall to be a dancer.

For now, models will still wobble down the runways on boney knees, folding into themselves and weighted down by the garments they display. But if more journalists stopped acting like cheerleaders for the fashion industry, and more advertisers owned some sense of social responsibility, photo editors might not have to airbrush frighteningly prominent hip bones, ribs, clavicles, and sternums out of women’s bodies anymore and we could end this argument once and for all.