There are plenty of places to go if you want to find strange stuff on the internet, but sometimes, the most baffling finds can end up where you least expect them.
After all, how weird can something really be if you’re expecting it?
So it’s not hard to see why one fashion model’s Instagram followers were itching to get to the bottom of her subtly strange selfie.
The selfie in question came from Russian-born supermodel, Natalia Vodianova.
Natalia started modeling in 1999, but according to Vanity Fair , she earned the nickname of “Super Nova” after both opening and closing Paris’ Yves St. Laurent show in 2002.
But in the 16 years since then, Natalia has done a lot more than walk down runways.
She founded a charity called the Naked Heart Foundation to help victims of a militant attack on a Russian school in 2004, but Reuters reported that she’s since adapted the organization’s mission to help children with special needs stay with their families.
She was inspired to do this by her sister, Oksana, who lives with cerebral palsy and autism. When Oksana was born, nurses at the hospital suggested shipping her off to an orphanage.
More recently, she teamed up with the United Nations Population Fund to help de-stigmatize women’s health.
According to Reuters, she did this through a “Let’s Talk” project that involved a two-day conference back in October. The conference was intended to discuss women’s health options and rights in the face of issues like period poverty, where women can’t afford sanitary products.
Now that we know a little more about Natalia, let’s focus on what we don’t know. Namely, what happened to her legs in this picture?
As we saw in the photos of her up to this point, she doesn’t usually get around by hovering mysteriously, but that seems to be what she’s doing here.
Needless to say, her fans were a little confused.
As is usual for the internet nowadays, some people immediately cried “Photoshop.”
In particular, they seemed to think that this spot on her sweater was a piece of her finger that she forgot to edit out.
As Instagram user @limeberry_stitchery wrote in the comments , “It’s for sure her finger left by Photoshop. Follow the lines of her sweater. They don’t line up.”
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Um…or it could just be a slight fold in the material or a small stain.
After all, what would Natalia have to gain by photoshopping an otherwise pretty normal selfie? The caption just said, “See ya later, alligator,” so it’s not like there are any hints that anything is amiss there, either.
Others had a much simpler explanation: The angle she took this photo at is distorting her reflection in the mirror.
As another commenter named willoughby_allen put it, “If the mirrors are not quite at right angles there will be a bit missing along the join line or a bit duplicated, depending on the angle.”
This not only explains what happened to the “missing” part of her finger that was mistaken for Photoshop, but also the missing part of her shoulder…and the missing leg.
As for the other leg? It was there all along.
As another user named menacing cows pointed out , she’s wearing black tights so one leg’s reflection is being fragmented by the mirror and the other one is just blending into the chair behind her.
Mystery solved.