She’s one of the most beautiful women in screen history. So why did Cannes airbrush Claudia Cardinale’s thighs?

The official poster for this year’s Cannes film festival sparked an outcry Wednesday over complaints that renowned Italian actress Claudia Cardinale’s thighs had been airbrushed to make them thinner.

French media poured scorn on the festival for seemingly tampering with a photograph of a young Cardinale swirling her skirt on a Rome roof in 1959.

“Claudia Cardinale dropped a dress size in one swirl,” said the left-leaning Liberation, while the culture magazine Telerama questioned why it was necessary to retouch the famously sexy star when she was in her heyday. Cardinale was listed as one of the 50 most beautiful women in cinema by the Los Angeles Times in 2011.

“While the poster is magnificent, the photograph has clearly and deplorably been airbrushed to thin the actress’s thighs. What a pity,” it said.

There was a similarly hostile reaction on social media, with one Twitter user saying, “If even Claudia Cardinale cannot represent beauty without being retouched, we really are in trouble.”