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There’s a cropped, desaturated version of this with nearly 5K notes.

I’m not knocking it altogether—whoever shopped it had to have some fierce chops to dodge the area around the right eye while keeping the skin tone throughout consistent.

The edit emphasizes the young woman as a signifier of conventional beauty norms. It’s a flat casual shot.

It’s not how it reads in color, with the original framing.

This way the image is not flat. The single source of illumination is a skylight visible in the top-right corner of the frame. There is a dynamic contrast range—dark underexposed shadow areas to bright overexposed light pooling on the young woman’s skin.

And this way the awkward framing the removes the top of the young woman’s head and deletes her feet is logically explained by additional context—namely, the room is very small and the image maker is likely backed against a wall.

The original resonates with a warmth and intimacy—the antithesis of casuality.