Box Magazine thinks so.
See the discussion on reddit, Box Magazine clearly photo shopped Camille’s stomach.
To the question, who cares, one commentator on reddit replied,
“They did the same thing to Annie last year. This isn’t ‘retouching’. Retouching is removing a blemish or shadow, straightening a line on clothes, or removing stray hairs. THIS is removing body parts.
“Who the hell cares?” Well. For Camille, she’s a strong, athletic woman. That should be celebrated, and it isn’t. Even in the magazine that dedicates itself to crossfitters she’s too strong, too muscled, and too developed. She isn’t sexy or soft enough, so she gets whittled down. Why WOULDN’T we as a community care about that?”
A reader pointed out there’s also a great discussion over on Camille’s Facebook page where she shared the photo of the cover. Lots of other people in the comment thread (worth reading, for a change, thanks SK for the heads up) shared pretty muscly looking pictures of Camille and most readers of her Facebook page seem outraged that they’ve photoshopped out her abs.
Who is Camille? The National Post writes,
The world’s newest “Fittest Woman on Earth” is a 25-year-old chemical engineering student from Richelieu, Que. Camille Leblanc-Bazinet placed first at the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games in Carson, Calif., in the women’s individual competition Sunday. Ms. Leblanc-Bazinet, who is 5-foot-2 and weighs 130 pounds, is a student at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec and started CrossFit training five years ago. The sport involves a combination of weightlifting, gymnastics and high intensity interval training.
I enjoyed reading an interview with her in Shape magazine on body image issues,
If you watched 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games winner Camille Leblanc-Bazinet snag the title of “fittest woman on Earth” last month, you may be surprised that the sculpted athlete once struggled with body image. “I used to run because I wanted to be skinny, and then I’d eat like crap,” the former gymnast explained about her pre-CrossFit days. “I would always feel miserable about myself, like ‘You’re not pretty enough.’ It was self-destructive.”
……. Now that Leblanc-Bazinet is a pro in the weight room, she holds her head just as high. “If I gain two pounds but I can lift 100 more pounds on my bar, I’m like, ‘Hell yeah,'” she says. “I only want to be fitter, stronger, faster, and healthier, and that’s given me tons of confidence.”
So I don’t think she’ll be too bent out of shape about the cover but the rest of us? I’m with the reddit commentator quoted above. We should celebrate strong, athletic women for their strength. No more Photoshop.
