Supermodel Cindy Crawford admits she felt "conflicted" when a photoshopped photograph of her in a bikini went viral.

The 49-year-old admitted that the picture, taken on a magazine shoot and later manipulated to emphasise her flaws, left her horrified at first. But after seeing how positively women reacted, she didn't speak out against it because she felt "really conflicted".

"The photographer 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,` femalefirst.co.uk quoted her as saying.

"Sometimes, the images that women see in magazine 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 armour. Whether it was real or not isn't relevant,` she added.