Cindy Crawford Slams That "Unretouched" Photo of Her That Was Leaked

A photo claiming to be an unretouched image of Cindy Crawford from a Marie Claire photoshoot done in 2013 made the rounds on the web earlier this year. The supermodel almost immediately came out denying the photo's authenticity and took legal action to have it taken down. Now, Crawford has opened up about the incident in an interview with Elle Canada.

"It was stolen and it was malicious," Crawford told Elle Canada. She recounts speaking with the photographer behind the shot who denied leaking it and told her that the actual unaltered photo looked very different. "He said: ‘Cindy, I’m going to send you the real one and it’s nothing like that. It’s clear that someone manipulated that image to make whatever was there worse,'" she said.

However, the supermodel also reveals that she was hesitant to come out so harshly against it at first given the wave of goodwill it generated. "There was so much positive reaction [to the image]," she said. "Sometimes, the images that women see in magazines make them feel inferior... So somehow seeing a picture of me was like seeing a chink in the armour... It put me in a tough spot: I couldn’t come out against it because I’m rejecting all these people who felt good about it, but I also didn’t embrace it because it wasn’t real."

Ultimately, Crawford was put in that spot because of a lack of legwork done by the journalist who leaked the photo. "I felt that [the journalist] was inauthentic because she acted like this was great but she didn’t check if I wanted this out or if it was a real picture."