Hoax Museum Blog: Body Manipulation

The Photoshop Effect — This video exposing the "Photoshop Effect" (how photoshop is used to make models look more perfect than they really are) seems to be a thinly veiled excuse to put an attractive model in front of the camera and then photoshop her. That's good enough for me.


Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2009.   Comments (10)

Does Robert Pattinson paint on his abs? — Here's a question the world needs answered: Did Robert Pattinson (star of Twilight) have makeup artists use liquid body paint to make it appear as if he had six-pack abs for a scene in the forthcoming New Moon? Well, that's the rumor.

Given that it was for a scene in a movie, I think it would be more surprising if makeup wasn't used. But for chiselled abs it's actually more important to be really skinny than to workout a lot. And the guy looks like he's genuinely skinny.
Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2009.   Comments (5)

Yup, she was lying —
A Belgian girl who claimed 56 stars were tattooed on her face while she slept has admitted she lied and that she willingly asked for the striking design. Kimberley Vlaeminck said she "initially adored" the tattoos, but when her father reacted furiously she had decided to lie about it and blame the tattooist, London's Telegraph said. Source
Related entry: Tattoo Horror Story
Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2009.   Comments (0)

Virginity restored six times? — I've posted before about hymen repair, aka Virginity Restoration Surgery. Inevitably, someone has taken what was a stupid concept to begin with and made it even more ridiculous by taking it to an extreme. Mosnews.com reports that a Russian woman, "Natalia K", restored her virginity a total of six times. Only a life-threatening infection stopped her:

When the husband confessed he was upset about her losing her virginity before the wedding and with another man, Natalia decided to make things up for him.
To celebrate their first year together as a married couple, she went to a plastic surgery clinic and had a hymenoplasty operation.
The husband was so delighted with the present, that a year later Natalia wanted to give that joy to him again. And the next year, and the year after that.

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009.   Comments (7)


Tattoo Horror Story — Something seems wrong with this girls' story. Eighteen-year-old Kimberley Vlaminck says she asked the tattoo artist for three small star tattoos on her face, but he evidently misunderstood her, and then she fell asleep while he was tattooing her. When she woke up, there were 56 stars on her face.

The tattoo artist says she definitely asked for 56 stars, and that it's simply a case of tattoo regret. The Daily Mail, among others, has the story.

I imagine it would be hard to sleep while someone is tattooing 56 stars on your face, so I'm more inclined to believe the tattoo artist. Though he really should have made her wait a day, and write down specific instructions, before proceeding with a tattoo that extreme.
Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009.   Comments (29)

The Panama Women’s Cricket Team — The latest viral hoax photos circulating online claim to show shots of the Panama Women's Cricket Team. It doesn't take a degree in Photoshop to realize these women's buttocks have been digitally altered.

Fool Blogger has tracked down what appears to be one of the unaltered originals.

The Fakes:


The Real One:


What I don't know is whether this actually is the Panama Women's Cricket Team. A google search for "Panama Women's Cricket Team" simply brings up these photos.
Posted: Fri May 15, 2009.   Comments (28)

The strongest man in the world — Here's an entertaining example of complete bs. An Arabic TV station interviews a man who claims to be the "Incredible Hulk" of Egypt. He says that he has the strength of 30,000 men! He never sleeps! He has sex 15 times a day with his four wives! And he's so strong that the government doesn't allow him to work, for fear that he might accidentally hurt someone.

But the only evidence of his strength that he offers is his ability to tear a coin in half. This, of course, is a well-known magic trick.


Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008.   Comments (7)

The case of the inserted belly button — I've heard of photo editors airbrushing out navels on swimsuit models (see the case of the vanishing belly button from 1964), but I hadn't heard of navels being inserted into photos. But that appears to be the case with Victoria's Secret model Karolina Kurkova.

Fashion watchers have recently noticed that Kurkova doesn't appear to have a full belly button. Instead she only has a "smooth dimple". Wikipedia speculates that the lack of a belly button is due to an abdominal operation in infancy. Nevertheless, in some photos she sports a full belly button, which means that photo editors must be creating one for her.

Or maybe it's all just an effect of different lighting conditions, and the debate is an excuse to examine photos of her. (via collegeotr.com)

Below: with belly button (left), without belly button (right).



Update: Some more photos of her via underwearqueen. Again, with belly button (left), and without (right).


Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008.   Comments (13)

The FlairHair Visor — A quick and easy solution to hair loss: Kotula's FlairHair visor.

This cool little item will keep you covered and its built-in visor will protect your eyes from the sun, all while giving you a distinctive, 1970s, Bjorn Borg-at-Wimbledon look.

Also available in a white-hair version!
Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008.   Comments (9)

Fleeing Purse Snatcher Drops Breast — Police in Port St. Lucie are on the lookout for a cross-dressing purse snatcher who accidentally dropped a condom filled with water after grabbing a 74-year-old woman's purse. He had been using the condom as a fake breast. That's weird enough. What I can't understand is why he was using a water-filled condom. Wouldn't a regular balloon have worked better?

Though questioning the fashion decisions of a cross-dressing purse snatcher is surely an exercise in pointlessness.
Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008.   Comments (6)

Artificial hips are all the rage — Kenyan men like women with large hips. So Kenyan women eager for male attention are flocking to beauticians who are selling artificial hips. The hips consist of foam padding held on by skin-tight bike shorts and covered by cotton fabric. The Kenya Standard reports:

Ready-made shape boosters (not their original name) go for as much as Sh250. Those who bring their own bikers pay Sh100 for hips only and Sh150 for all that goes on the backside.

However, the hips do have some potential problems:

The ‘hips’ were a closely guarded secret until men spotted a woman whose behind appeared un-proportional. "I looked at the lady and realized something was very wrong. It’s like one side of her hips was tumbling down," says a town resident Mary Auma who witnessed it. The foam material had apparently loosened up leaving her with an extraordinarily weird shape. Stories are told of men who get bewitched with the hips only to be shocked to reality when the women undress. The hips christened ‘please call me’ are not always as natural as they seem.

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008.   Comments (5)

Ban Fake Tans! — The Baines School in Lancashire has decided to ban fake tans. From The Telegraph:

"The current trend for fake/spray tans does little to enhance the appearance of our young ladies," [Carol Robinson, head of the school] wrote. "We ask for your support in ensuring girls do not come to school looking varying shades of orange."
She claimed that fake tan went against the principles of the school, where staff strived to "promote natural beauty and contentment with one's own looks".
Her remarks have been met with cautious support with some of her more pale-skinned pupils at the school, which educates 1,070 children aged between 11 and 18.

Sounds sensible to me, and this seems like an appropriate place to post the pictures of the "Oompa Loompa Tan Lady" whose pictures have recently been circulating around the web. I don't know who the woman is, but as far as I can tell, the photos are real. Someone should have told her to go easy with the fake tan spray.


Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008.   Comments (8)

Girl cries crystal tears — Here's an oldie but a goodie (Thanks, Nettie!). This video from 1996 shows Hasnah Mohamed, a 12-year-old Lebanese girl who "baffled medical experts by producing crystals from her eyes."

Girl Has Crystals Coming Out Of Eyes


Fake? Of course. Hasnah's crystal tears were debunked by Joe Nickell in a 1997 Skeptical Inquirer article:

Hasnah, who claims to produce up to seven crystals a day, showed a collection of the allegedly apported rocks. From their rhomboidal shape and other properties, I recognized them as the natural quartz crystals generally known as "Herkimer diamonds." With the television crew being expected to arrive here the following day, I hastily made some phone calls and soon had acquired a handful of the gemstones.
Although such stones are indeed sharp - and I could see a dark red spot inside the girl's eyelid that probably represented a wound from one of them - I decided to duplicate the effect. All that was necessary was to pull out the lower eyelid to form a pouch and drop in a small crystal so that it rested, only a bit uncomfortably, out of sight. A tug on the lower lid causes the stone to come into view and then pop out of the eye. This I demonstrated at an appropriate time for the television camera, allowing their reporter to actually do the extraction himself. The effect was indistinguishable from the Lebanese "miracle."

Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008.   Comments (44)

No tattoos in Jewish cemeteries — The New York Times debunks the myth that "If you get a tattoo, you can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery":

The eight rabbinical scholars interviewed for this article, from institutions like the Jewish Theological Seminary and Yeshiva University, said it’s an urban legend, most likely started because a specific cemetery had a policy against tattoos. Jewish parents and grandparents picked up on it and over time, their distaste for tattoos was presented as scriptural doctrine.

But even if the cemetery thing is a myth, some scholars believe that tattooing itself is against Jewish law:

Rabbi Alan Bright, a spokesman for the Jewish Funeral Directors of America, dismissed the cemetery adage as “a load of rubbish,” but he said that tattooing was a no-no. He quotes Deuteronomy 4:15, which commands Jews to take care of their bodies, as evidence. But he noted that Jewish law prohibits many things that secular Jews do without a second thought. “The Torah prohibits anything negative that affects the body,” he said. “Smoking is more of a violation of Jewish law.” As are drinking alcohol in excess and overeating.

Not being Jewish, Jewish law has played little role in the fact that I've never gotten a tattoo. Though I have considered getting a small jackalope tattooed on my ankle.
Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008.   Comments (7)

Spiderman Tattoo — Photos of a Spiderman tattoo, showing an illusion of skin tearing away to reveal a Spiderman costume beneath, have been circulating around, prompting people to wonder if the images are real or photoshopped.

They are real. The tattoo is the work of Milwaukee-based artist Dan Hazelton. Check out his site for other examples of his work.

He very briefly discusses the Spiderman tattoo on his myspace page in response to a question from someone who asks, "can i get a tear out like the Spiderman one??" Hazelton responds:

please, no more tear outs. that tattoo is all over the internet and people are filling up my inboxes with all kinds of requests for comic or super heroes tearin out of them now. tear outs are a dated tattoo that the average public over used a long time ago. sorry but i dont encourage that.

Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008.   Comments (22)

Hand with no thumb — I found this picture on Puld.net, who writes: "The sources said this is not photoshopped or edited and this person really have no THUMB at all! I wonder how he “Thumbs Up” his friends?"



Update: Posted to the Hoax Photo Database.
Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008.   Comments (7)

World’s Largest Fake Breasts — The Telegraph reports that Guinness World Records has awarded stripper Maxi Mounds the record for the "World's Largest Augmented Breasts."

I gather this is a new category for Guinness, and it surprises me they would create it since they usually avoid awarding records for anything that might cause physical harm. For instance, they don't award a record for World's Largest Cat, because they're afraid people will overfeed their cats to gain the record. Nor do they award a record for sleep deprivation, so as to discourage people from staying awake for weeks.

Maxi Mounds gained the record thanks to her 36MM bust, which she achieved by inserting polypropylene string into her breasts. This augmentation technique was developed by Houston surgeon Gerald Johnson during the late 1990s, but has since been banned by the FDA.

Update: Via metro.co.uk: Maxi Mounds before and after. Too bizarre not to share. (Thanks, Nona)

Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008.   Comments (26)

Unreal Beauty — The models in Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign (whose tagline was "we believe real beauty comes in many shapes, sizes and ages") may have benefitted from some "digital plastic surgery." From The Telegraph:

Pascal Dangin, a celebrated retoucher of fashion pictures, claimed the Dove women were far from au naturel. In an interview with New Yorker magazine, Mr Dangin, who runs Box Studios in New York, a company which retouches photographs and does regular work for Vogue, and the fashion companies Dior and Balenciaga, said that he had manipulated the photographs heavily. When asked about the four-year-old campaign, he said: "Do you know how much retouching was on that? But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive."

Dove's ad agency is denying it, insisting that they have no record of Dangin working on that campaign.
Posted: Mon May 12, 2008.   Comments (25)

Penis Theft Panic in Congo — Penis-melting Zionist Robot Combs have struck in the Congo. Minus the Zionists and the Robot Combs. From Reuters:

Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.
Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

So how do you argue with a man who claims that his penis has been stolen. Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, isn't having much luck:

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.
"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008.   Comments (11)

Halle Berry and her Six Toes — Does Halle Berry have six toes on her right foot? There are people out there who have spent a lot of time pondering this question. The evidence for the six-toe theory is based on these pictures, which are at least two years old.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, no matter what these pictures appear to show, Halle Berry is not polydactyl. If she was, she'd admit it.




Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008.   Comments (25)

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