Cindy Crawford is speaking out about something very embarrassing that happened to her last year. The odd thing is, many people saw the event as a positive thing.

Last year, a photo hit social media that was reported to be Cindy Crawford “unretouched.” The model was wearing lingerie, and her stomach was showing. Her skin showed stretch marks and signs of aging. Many people praised Crawford for being so brave as to allow the photo to be released to the public. They talked about how she was helping women without perfect bodies feel better about themselves.

The problem was, the photo was fake. Cindy Crawford has now spoken to Elle Canada about the incident.

“I felt that [the journalist] was inauthentic,” Crawford now says, “because she acted like this was great but she didn’t check if I wanted this out or if it was a real picture. Why would seeing a bad picture of me make other people feel good? I felt blindsided. I was very conflicted, to be honest.”

Crawford understands that body image is a tricky thing, She admits that even she may have a different body image than is reality.

“I know my body,” Crawford said, “and I know it’s not perfect, but maybe I have a false body image; maybe I think I look better than I do. I think that most women are hard on themselves. We think we look worse than we do. So I assumed I fell into that category, even though that picture didn’t reflect what I saw when I looked in the mirror—even in the worst dressing-room lighting.”

But it turns out the problem was not that Cindy Crawford had a false body image. The original photos did not look like that.

News flash, haters. That infamous un-retouched photo of @CindyCrawford is a fake. I knew it! Pathetic that ppl felt empowered by it.

— Fluffy Starr (@FluffyStarr) September 2, 2015

“We spoke to the photographer, and he was very upset because he didn’t put it out there. He said: ‘Cindy, I’m going to send you the real one and it’s nothing like that. It’s clear that someone manipulated that image to make whatever was there worse.’ It was stolen and it was malicious, but there was so much positive reaction [to the image]. Sometimes, the images that women see in magazines make them feel inferior—even though the intention is never to make anyone feel less. So somehow seeing a picture of me was like seeing a chink in the armor.”

The whole experience caused some conflict for Crawford. Women were responding positively, but to what she knew was a lie.

“Whether it was real or not isn’t relevant, although it’s relevant to me,” Crawford said. “I don’t try to present myself as perfect. It put me in a tough spot: I couldn’t come out against it because I’m rejecting all these people who felt good about it, but I also didn’t embrace it because it wasn’t real—and even if it were real, I wouldn’t have wanted it out there. I felt really manipulated and conflicted, so I kept my mouth shut.”

.@CindyCrawford sets the record straight about that whole "unretouched" photo http://t.co/Y2S8F8y0jY pic.twitter.com/MyBvlzMRVC

— MODELINIA (@Modelinia) September 2, 2015