Women can be their own worst critics. While we look to our mums and best friends for words of comfort and care, it can be hard to accept a compliment. Or to trust when someone tells us our ‘flaws’ are our perfections. One photographer decided to share one of her favourite, moving client stories, where a woman decided to have a sexy photoshoot photographed and framed for her husband. San Antonia photographer Victoria Caroline Haltom recently revealed that she felt she had ‘messed up really badly’ when she bent down to pressure from a customer to photoshop the results of her shoot. As Haltom explained: "She was a curvy, beautiful size 18. I thought she looked like a goddess." Unfortunately, the woman wasn’t as excited about her photoshoot, with Haltom adding she requested for a lot of Photoshop work on her images: "[She] said 'I want you to Photoshop all of my cellulite, all of my angry red stretch marks, ALL of my fat, and all of my wrinkles." Haltom took the comments on board, and "​made every last stretch mark disappear, smoothed out every dimple of cellulite, took away every wrinkle.​" "I turned her into the epitome of what every woman dreams of being.” So when the woman surprised her husband with her boudoir book, Haltom was surprised to get a rather emotional email from the husband: “Hi Victoria, I am (blank)'s husband, ********. I am writing to you because I recently received an album containing images you took of my wife. I don't want you to think that I am in any way upset with you....but I have some food for thought that I would like to pass on to you. I have been with my wife since we were 18 years old, and we have two beautiful children together. We have had many ups and downs over the years, and I think...well, actually I KNOW that my wife did these pictures for me to "spice things up". She sometimes complains that I must not find her attractive, that she wouldn't blame me if I ever found someone younger. When I opened the album that she gave to me, my heart sank. These pictures...while they are beautiful and you are clearly a very talented photographer....they are not my wife. You made every one of her "flaws" disappear...and while I'm sure this is exactly what she asked you to do, it took away everything that makes up our life. When you took away her stretch marks, you took away the documentation of my children. When you took away her wrinkles, you took away over two decades of our laughter, and our worries. When you took away her cellulite, you took away her love of baking and all the goodies we have eaten over the years. I am not telling you all of this to make you feel horrible, you're just doing your job and I get that. I am actually writing you to thank you. Seeing these images made me realize that I honestly do not tell my wife enough how much I LOVE her and adore her just as she is. She hears it so seldom, that she actually thought these photoshopped images are what I wanted and needed her to look like. I have to do better, and for the rest of my days I am going to celebrate her in all her imperfectness. Thanks for the reminder." Proof that although those filters and edits might lend a helping hand, it can’t beat your natural beauty. H/T Cosmopolitan