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Beyonce's unretouched L'Oreal photos only latest in her long history of Photoshop controversies


Beyonce’s #Flawless image is embroiled in controversy once again. A reportedly unretouched set of photos of the 33-year-old singer from an old L'Oreal campaign have gone viral this week. On Wednesday, a web site called The Beyonce World leaked 224 allegedly raw photos of the musician.

The images showed Bey in full makeup for the 2013 L'Oreal ad campaign – but with the kinds of “imperfections” we all have – beauty marks, bumps, creases. In the wake of Cindy Crawford’s unretouched photos, the images have been praised by critics of a beauty industry that sets impossibly high standards, standards that Queen Bey has been known to uphold in the past.

Back in 2013, BuzzFeed went viral with an article entitled, “The ‘Unflattering’ Photos Beyoncé’s Publicist Doesn’t Want You To See,” including an e-mail from the singer’s PR person requesting the removal of “unflattering” images of her client. The majority of the photos simply showed Bey making fierce faces that matched her fierce persona.

Then, last year, Bey was accused multiple times of releasing overly-Photoshopped images of herself. In April, she posted a photo on Instagram of herself playing golf, but our eyes were more drawn to her extremely pronounced thigh gap than to her putt.

A few months later, she was once again the topic of Photoshop conversation after posting a bikini photo in which her legs appeared slimmed down. Eonline noted that one of the stairs was “tilted,” giving the impression that the image was edited.

And just this past November, Beyonce was back in the spotlight with a photo of herself wearing a one-piece with the words “99 Problems but my ass ain’t one” on it. BuzzFeed argued that the curtains behind her were skewed, suggesting the image was tweaked.

Shortly after, Beyonce released a behind-the-scenes video to accompany her song “Pretty Hurts” in which she slammed unrealistic beauty expectations and revealed that she is as affected by them as the rest of us. “I’m pretending to get a face-lift and Botox,” she says in one scene. “It represents all the things that women go through to keep up with the pressure that society puts on us.”