Ronda Rousey may be in control of her career, just not where photographs are concerned.
After appearing on “The Tonight Show” this week, Rousey was asked to share a photo on social media crediting her hair-and-makeup crew. The image in question, however, showed Rousey with her arms airbrushed to look smaller. She later apologized for the deception by posting a side-by-side shot of the Photoshopped image and the original snap.
“I have to make an apology to everyone — I was sent a picture to share on social for Fallon that was altered without me knowing to make my arms look smaller,” she explained. “I won’t say by who — I know it was done with severely misplaced positive intentions — but this goes against everything I believe and I am extremely proud of every inch of my body.
“And I can assure you all it will never happen again. I could not be more appalled and hope you all forgive me,” Rousey added.
While Rousey has spoken out about female body image and vocally embraced her “femininely bad-ass” bod, the Sports Illustrated cover girl sang a different tune once unflattering paparazzi shots from a tropical swimsuit shoot made their way online.
“I don’t care if you’re the most gorgeous person out there, if it’s a hot day and you’re naked and you’re slouching, no girl wants a picture of that and that’s what got out there first,” she told Ellen DeGeneres. “I was like, ‘Awesome.’ If there was like X-ray vision of me through my gray sweats on my couch on a hot day, that’s what it would look like.”
Stripped down and covered in body paint, Rousey was asked to pose for a number of hours in the sweltering sun. The magazine opted to do another shoot following the leak, and once again, the shutterbugs were hot on her tail.
“We were out in a sandbar in the middle of the ocean, like nobody’s there and some dude followed all the way out there and was on an adjacent island in a bush shooting on a long lens,” she continued.
After the second set of images hit the Internet, Rousey nearly lost her cool on agent Brad Slater.
“My agent called me up and is like, ‘Listen, I just need you to breathe, it got leaked a second time and I just need you to breathe,'” Rousey said. “I was like, ‘Brad, when a picture gets out of you and it’s all over the Internet, I’m going to tell you to breathe. Remind me to tell you to breathe with your [expletive] pic everywhere. When your children are like, ‘Daddy, what’s this?'”
Rousey ultimately got the last laugh, as the additional photographs earned her a spot on one of the three covers.
“I have to thank them actually because we did a second shoot just because of them and it ended up being the cover,” she noted.