A supposed nude photograph of a US congresswoman has been exposed as a hoax thanks to testimonies from an unlikely source - a group of online foot fetishists.
Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest person ever elected to the US Congress in November last year, when she defied the odds to win New York’s 14th Congressional District in the midterm elections.
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The most recent taunts centred on a photo posted to Reddit showing a woman’s legs and feet in the bath, with her nude upper body visible in the reflection of the metal tap. Text overlaid on the image suggested the woman in the photo was Ocasio-Cortez and that it had first appeared on her Instagram account.
The story was picked up by right-wing website The Daily Caller, and was subsequently widely circulated on social media.
However, the image was a hoax - it did not show the congresswoman and had not been posted on her Instagram.
Seemingly definitive proof of that was kindly supplied by the denizens of WikiFeet, where foot fetishists share images of the feet of celebrities and other public figures.
One member told Vice’s tech section, Motherboard, that the feet seen in the photo could not belong to Ocasio-Cortez.
Those in the controversial image exhibit signs of brachydactyly - short bones in the toes - whereas Ocasio-Cortez’s WikiFeet gallery “has clear evidence to the contrary”, the contributor said, adding: “I’ve sucked enough toes in my life to recognise when something doesn’t look right.”
Webcam model Sydney Leathers has since tweeted confirmation that she is the woman in the original photo.
Ocasio-Cortez has hit out at media outlets who continued to spread the hoax after it had been debunked, saying the incident proves that “women in leadership face more scrutiny”.
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