Sometimes, the news doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. Sometimes, it doesn’t surprise you, but it does entertain and add a little color to your life. At least, that’s how my life has changed after reading Ivanka Trump’s former best friend’s essay in Vanity Fair—which is to say it hasn’t changed at all, but I feel moderately entertained, at least. Lysandra Ohrstrom (I swear, rich people’s names just sound fictional) decided to finally break her silence (now that Trump is no longer President) and blow up the perfectly Botoxed facade Ivanka Trump presents to the world (by recounting a number of petty middle school anecdotes from their past). We learn that Ivanka was, basically, a spoiled and bratty rich kid. *Gasp* that Ivanka? Never!
Still, for someone who seems to make an effort to never let slip to the public what she’s really like, what Ohrstrom had to reveal was pretty funny. Let’s get the best one out of the way: the errant fart. Lysandra writes, “One of the earliest memories I have of Ivanka from before we were friends is when she blamed a fart on a classmate.” Quelle horreur! Let he who has never played the “whoever smelt it, dealt it” game cast the first stone. I don’t think Lysandra meant to do this literally, but it’s funny to know that Ivanka has always been a sh*thead.
Ivanka upon discovering the jig is up and the world now knows she does, indeed, fart:
Why did we stop at the fart, though? I need to know more. Did Ivanka ever get out of gym class by faking her period? Did she ever pick her nose but tell people she was simply scratching an itch on the inside of her nostril? They say where there’s smoke there’s fire, and I have a feeling that cloud of smoke is only the tip of the iceberg.
Lysandra throws out a lot of accusations against Ivanka, but perhaps none is more damaging than the insinuation that she indulged in fast food and swear words: “She always stopped at McDonald’s for cheeseburgers. She cursed.” I will say, all that McDonald’s probably didn’t help with the farting.
But one of my favorite bombshells has got to be this: “She never wore a Halloween costume that wasn’t flattering, which means she usually showed up at costume parties looking beautiful and boring.” Ah yes, the woman who scored invites to the Met Gala, was photographed in magazines even as an adolescent, and launched a shoe line is… vain? No, no that can’t be. It simply does not track with the rest of her character! Also, I feel like “beautiful and boring” isn’t that sick of a burn. Most of us aren’t even beautiful.
Another time, Lysandra recommended Ivanka read Empire Falls, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a diner manager in Maine. Ivanka said, “Ly, why would you tell me to read a book about f*cking poor people? What part of you thinks I would be interested in this?” Tbh, Ivanka has a fair point here. She’s never exactly been known for caring about the less fortunate, and earlier this year, The Financial Times wrote about her “let them eat cake economics,” dragging her for her suggestion that the millions of Americans left jobless during the pandemic “find something new.” At least her brand is consistent.
She would also point out wealth inconsistencies in movies: “‘Since when can a teacher afford a BMW?’ she would ask, munching on her usual small popcorn, coated in what would be an unpalatable amount of salt to a normal person. Or, ‘Why is a police officer living in a house like that?'” I know this is not the detail I’m supposed to focus on, but I’m not over the salt thing. I know everyone’s joked about the Trumps having covid because they don’t have taste, but…
Then, after the farting incident, Lysandra recalls, “Some time later, she goaded me and a few other girls into flashing our breasts out the window of our classroom in what has since been labelled the ‘flashing the hot dog man’ incident in Chapin lore.” I have a lot of questions, like who was the hot dog man? Why can’t this elite group of children come up with more imaginative names for their urban legends? Anyway, Ivanka was basically the mastermind behind the Flashing The Hot Dog Man Incident™ but lied to the headmistress and got off scot-free while everyone else was suspended. Weird, because we know Ivanka’s family to be firmly committed to the truth.
Overall, if you want to be shocked, this Vanity Fair read probably won’t do that for you. If you want more confirmation that a sh*tty rich person has always, in fact, been a sh*tty rich person, then yeah, this will give you that. Now all we need is a first-person narrative of the person who got blamed for her fart and how that moment impacted their life, and then I hope we can be done with this family for good.
Images: Joe Raedle/Getty Images; Giphy
There are so many different kinds of Photoshop abuse. We show you a lot of celebrities’ toxic relationship with Facetune, photoshoots gone wrong, and occasionally missing/messed up body parts. But the one I’m gonna show you today you’ll probably remember because it was so hilariously bad. I mean, it wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill nose amputation that we usually see. This photo retoucher failed spectacularly. Which also makes me angry because this is a huge magazine, and how did you possibly get this job if you’re so lazy you can’t even do this correctly? How much did they pay you for this, sir? However, this image is an example of what magazines do all the time, they just usually remember to fix it first so you can’t tell. I’m speaking, of course, about the time Vanity Fair decided Reese Witherspoon and Oprah didn’t pose well enough for the probably 1000 photos they shot. So they fixed it. And made it a lot worse.
Here is the cover:
Come on children! What’s wrong with this picture? Whoever edited these photos seems to use the same ~*dangerous*~ editing method over and over: do whatever first and clean up later. And if you don’t pay attention to detail, it’s risky. Because:
So, I consider myself an expert on Reese’s work, mostly because I’ve seen Legally Blonde probably 50 times. And guys, I have to tell you, I always thought she had two legs? Vanity Fair then attempted to defend themselves, saying that what we’re seeing is actually just the lining of Reese’s dress.
While we would have loved the exclusive on @RWitherspoon's three legs, unfortunately it's just the lining of her dress. https://t.co/HJjvbc037S
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) January 25, 2018
However, you can clearly see the top of Reese’s thigh, and the straight leg match perfectly. The dress lining even has what looks like a knee and a calf? It doesn’t look anything like dress lining!
Like no sorry, you done f*cked up. But here’s where it gets really good. Although VF tried to play off that the cover was not a mistake, they obviously used the same retoucher for all the other photos. Why you ask? Because this candid gem was later in the issue:
Again I ask you, what’s wrong with this picture?
So you’re telling me that while this retoucher did not give Reese three legs (although the inseam has its own knee, so sure Jan), he definitely gave Oprah three f*cking hands. It seems like his editing technique just sucks. Vanity Fair at least copped to this one:
As for @Oprah, how can we expect her to juggle it all with just two hands?
¯_(ツ)_/¯_/¯ (We are correcting this error online.) https://t.co/QNd74YtSTz— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) January 25, 2018
The retoucher obviously just really enjoys giving everyone extra body parts. But in actuality, this happens very frequently in photo editing, it’s just normally cleaned up so you can’t tell. I mean, that’s like, what a professional does. And YES OFFENSE, Retoucher, because you probably made an insane amount of money for this catastrophic cover. So basically, here’s what happens. A photographer takes a ton of photos all in different poses. Especially with a big group, it’s hard to get everyone to look their best. So then they splice up each person for their most flattering pose between all of the images. I don’t even mind that they do this to some extent—like, if Reese is blinking in Oprah’s best shot, for example, swap Reese’s best face shot with the blinking one, and now it’s the best picture of both of them. That doesn’t even bother me, because it’s still her real face.
But what happened here is the retoucher seems to have this strange work flow where he piles on every option of arm, leg, etc, on different layers, and then chooses what one looks best. However, he forgot more than once to recheck his work, which is how he ended up making Reese a tri-ped and Oprah into an octopus. Check *clap* your *clap* work *clap*.
Also? What is Nicole Kidman leaning on? Does this not look super weird to you?
This practice, while super common, is also one of the many ways retouchers and magazines try to f*ck with us about what reality looks like. They rearrange everyone’s anatomy to make it look like perfect proportions, perfect angles, and perfect pose. The second photo, with Oprah’s three hands, looks like it’s supposed to be candid, and yet was edited so much so that they couldn’t even casually sit together without being dissected. It’s a room full of some of the most beautiful, strong, influential people in the world—why can’t they just take a photo with perfect lighting, perfect makeup, perfect staging, perfect outfits, and leave it as is? It still needs to be ripped apart limb by limb to be acceptable to us?
Are triple limbs now the unattainable beauty standard? What do you think of this practice? Why do magazines in particular edit already-beautiful people so hard? Who was this retoucher and how did they get this job? Did you know magazines edited their subjects so severely? LMK!
And guys, pleaseeeee send me your Photoshop Fails. See you next week!
Images: Vanity Fair; vanityfair (2) / Twitter
