Innie? Outie? Or a smoothie...
2008-11-22 19:31
Cape Town - Victoria's Secret Model Karolina Kurkova has been photographed strutting her stuff on the catwalk without a vital part of her body: her belly button.
The newly crowned E! Entertainment's World Sexiest Woman was photographed during a Miami photo shoot with a smooth indentation in her abdomen where her belly button should be, which sent many onlookers into a state of "navel gazing".
Fans and fashionistas have been revising older photographs of her to see if it's been missing all along.
"It's starting to weird me out more and more. One of Victoria's Secret's top Angels, Karolina Kurkova, has no belly button. I'm not sure why I never noticed this until people pointed it out. Maybe I just didn't want to believe Karolina is a freak or maybe it's because the belly button is photoshopped..." quipped one blogger.
Suggestions that the photographs of the 24-year-old Czech beauty were doctored to remove her belly button were quickly dismissed, as other models appearing next to her during the shoot had no parts missing from their bodies.
And now finally, after days of speculation, the secret is out.
"She had an operation when she was an infant," her representative told the Daily News. "It's a fact and just thank God she's healthy."
The Daily News says their research points to an umbilical hernia.
"It does look like [she may have had] an umbilical hernia as a child that was either fixed or not fixed, which can distort the belly button," Dr Matthew Schulman, a plastic surgeon at Manhattan's Mount Sinai Medical Centre told Daily News.
"Most people have them fixed, because you should have any hernias fixed," Schulman said.
Kurkova's photographs are reportedly altered and a belly button is added in by computer later.
- News24