Most people are accustomed to seeing Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Chrissy Teigen look flawless in the pages of magazines like this:

But Teigen drew back the beauty curtain a few weeks ago when she posted a photo of herself to Instagram that showed bruises and stretch marks:

"Bruises from bumping kitchen drawer handles for a week. Stretchies say hi!"

The response from Teigen's 2.1 million Instagram followers has been overwhelmingly positive:

During a recent appearance on "The Meredith Vieira Show," Teigen explained why she chose not to alter the "imperfect" images."

I actually am working on a cookbook and I was bumping around in the kitchen and the door handle would just nick me every single time. And I was actually just taking a picture of the bruises and then I saw the stretch marks in there. I have those apps, the Facetune and Photoshopping ones, and I just didn't feel like doing it anymore—and I'm never doing it again, because I think we forgot what normal people look like now."

"I mean, people are nip-tucking [their photos]," Teigen continued. "It's gotten to the point where they're not smoothing their skin anymore, they are actually changing the shape of their body and everybody else. Nobody can compare to that when you're fixing yourself so much."

"It's so unfair," she added. "It started with Botox and everything, of course, but now it's just grown into this Photoshop phenomenon and I've seen these women in person, they are not like that. Please know that. I've shot in barely anything [i.e. half-naked] with them and it's just amazing what people do to tweak themselves."

In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Teigen drove home the point that modeling is smoke and mirrors, even when it comes to the world's most beautiful women:

Things are never, ever as they seem. Even on television I am full of fake hair and covered in body makeup head-to-toe. Those full lashes have been applied meticulously one by one, my teeth have spent more hours in a dentist chair than I ever imagined. We have a team of people whose sole job is to make people appear close-to-perfect. And oh, the retouching. My bathroom mirror on any normal day would laugh hysterically if you told it I was flawless in any way! And that is fine with me.

Teigen is often honest about her image, posting revealing before and after photos to her Instagram:

SEE ALSO: Here's what Sports Illustrated swimsuit models look like in real life

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