How Victoria’s Secret Models Achieve Cleavage in Strapless Bathing Suits
In high school, I once purchased a strapless bathing suit solely because it made the model’s boobs look all pushed up and sexy.
Much like now, I’m basically flat-chested, but at the time I desperately wanted to look like I had big boobs, even when at the beach, because in high school, those are the kinds of things that boys notice, and I really wanted boys, or even just a boy, to notice me.
Only as soon as I put it on, I realized that I had been duped. No matter which set of snaps I used on the back, the bathing suit did not jack up my boobs. In fact, it just did jack shit for them.
At the time, I thought that was because my boobs were just too teensy to be helped, but after reading this article written by an anonymous retoucher who worked for Victoria’s Secret, outlining all the different ways the brand photoshops their models, I realize it’s because the model whose breasts I was admiring was actually wearing a push-up bra and additional padding at the time — and it was photoshopped out later on.
Here’s why VS Models always look so damn good in strapless bathing suits, according to an expert who would know.
#1: They’re all wearing padding
“If you hold up the bathing suit in your own hand, it’s so heavy because they have all this shit sewed into it,” like “chicken cutlets” and other shaping pads.
#2: They’re secretly wearing push-up bras
“They put a bush-up bra under the bathing suit. And we retouch the bra… a lot of [staffers] would complain because they even did it with strapless stuff. When you’re wearing a strapless bikini, in no way, shape, or form [can] you have cleavage. It’s physically impossible with the way gravity works.”
While I’ll never get back the $35-50 of my parent’s money that I spent on the strapless bathing suit at the time, at least the insecure teenager who still lives inside of me and forces me to think terrible things about myself sometimes has the satisfaction of knowing that in that one specific instance, there was absolutely nothing wrong with me.
Strapless bathing suits are just a very misleading product.
[H/T Refinery 29]
