Boudoir Photographer Shares Heartfelt Email from a Client’s Husband After His Wife Asked for Retouch.
Victoria Caroline Haltom, the boudoir photographer who shared a now-viral email from a client’s husband who was upset his wife’s photos were retouched, says the story can serve as a reminder for women to embrace their bodies and lovers to embrace their significant others. Looking to “spice” up their marriage, a Texan woman hired a boudoir photographer to gift her husband of more than 20 years pictures of herself looking sexy and flawless.
The mother-of-three, who was in her 40s, had told photographer Victoria Caroline Haltom: ‘I want you to photoshop all of my cellulite, all of my angry red stretch marks, ALL of my fat, and all of my wrinkles… just make it go away. In the note, which Haltom shared on her business’ Facebook page earlier this week, the unidentified husband wrote that seeing the retouched images of his wife – which she’d requested – made him realize that he needed to be more vocal with his affection for the woman. “She is in her forties, married, with children,” Haltom says. “She wanted her husband to be able to see her within the constraints of what society portrays as ‘beautiful.’ ” Haltom says she spent weeks working to make the images fit the client’s specifications. I want to feel gorgeous just ONCE.’ Writing on her Facebook page, Victoria said: ‘I went home, made every last stretch mark disappear, smoothed out every dimple of cellulite, took away every wrinkle.
The woman, in her mid-forties who was “a curvy, beautiful size 18”, requested for all “cellulite, stretch marks, fat and wrinkles” to be photoshopped. After receiving the email, she says she immediately felt a range of emotions. “Of course, my heart sank because I was saddened that all my hard work wasn’t what he had been looking for,” she tells PEOPLE. “But then, I realized that he gave me just as big of a gift as he told me I had given him. You made every one of her ‘flaws’ disappear…and while I’m sure this is exactly what she asked you to do, it took away everything that makes up our life.” “When you took away her stretch marks, you took away the documentation of my children. She hears it so seldom, that she actually thought these photoshopped images are what I wanted and needed her to look like.” Speaking to My San Antonio, Ms Haltom said she was not expecting her post to gather so much attention overnight and overall the post reportedly has 200,000 ‘likes’ and been shared around 180,000 times. She says most women, like the client in question, arrive nervous and doubtful, but growing in confidence through the experience. “Once they see their photos, watching their face light up with emotion reminds me that I am doing exactly what I was put on this Earth to do,” she says.
He closed his note to Halton taking responsibility for not telling his wife often enough how beautiful she was. “I have to do better, and for the rest of my days I am going to celebrate her in all her imperfectness,” he wrote. Carolyn Ross, who specializes in eating disorders, wrote in 2012 on Psych Central that “80 percent of women in the U.S. are dissatisfied with their appearance.” “What most people still don’t realize is that the majority of the pictures they see in magazines are altered in some way and that looking like their role models is physically impossible,” she wrote. “It is a setup for self-hatred.” Halton’s Facebook post resonated with men and women online, and was shared widely. Winslet, during an appearance on “Running Wild with Bear Grylls” in July said that she stands her teenage daughter in front of the mirror and says: “We are so lucky we have a shape.
