Parents Suspect Huggies Gave This Baby Diaper Model a Photoshopped Thigh Gap
Remember the thigh gap, the pointless and imaginary standard of female beauty? You’re never too young to have one of those. In fact, even a baby could/should have one! According to a handful of moms, this is true of Huggies, which possibly Photoshopped some non-touching baby thighs in a diaper ad.
“Melody,” the mother of an 11-month-old, posted the photo on Reddit and asked, “Is it just me or did this Huggies ad photoshop thigh gap on a toddler?”
Melody also told Yahoo! Parenting, the image looked “really manipulated — like what you see in fashion magazines to make models too thin and too perfect,” and described the ad as “not cool.”
“I just felt like there’s no need for airbrushing to exist on an ad about babies. All babies are wonderful and super cute. A baby is perfect no matter what.”
But was this baby’s body actually airbrushed? Both possibilities—a company artificially creating a “baby thigh gap” for toddler models (moddlers?) or moms so worried about the actual culture of body-shaming that their kids will probably grow up in that they’re seeing a conspiracy where none exists—are roughly one part hilarious and four parts dystopian.
For its part, Huggies denies it airbrushed the baby.
“All babies are different - we look to celebrate those differences and everyday tests and messes in our photography and communication,’ a Huggies spokesperson told the Daily Mail.
“We always use real-life customers and users of our products, and do not airbrush the bodies of the babies in our advertising and photography.”
But that doesn’t mean other parts of the photo weren’t edited. Some commenters on Reddit proposed that perhaps the diaper had been Photoshopped on, creating the illusion that the baby’s thighs had been digitally thinned.
Without access to the unretouched images from the ad, we have no idea whether the thigh gap is just a weird pose, a Photoshopped diaper, or a normal-ass baby with a normal-ass body that isn’t at all worth getting worked up about.
Regardless, the way forward is the same: who cares about thigh gaps.
