The Internet may have found its next viral sensation on par with last year's "The Dress." A photo of one woman's legs uploaded to Twitter on Tuesday afternoon has the entire internet scratching their heads over the simple questions, "Are these legs really that shiny!?" Judge for yourself below.
As most people realize after staring at the picture for long enough (or reading the helpful replies), the shininess is just an optical illusion created by white paint. In actuality, the woman's legs have streaks of very carefully placed white paint on them, making them appear as though they are reflecting light like plastic or oil would. The fact that there are art supplies visible in the image helps to clarify that the white paint situation is really what's going on here.
The trippy part is that once you see the streaks of white paint, it becomes nearly impossible to go back to seeing the legs as shiny, as they initially appear to most viewers.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the image has been retweeted over 10,000 times from the account of @msbreeezyyy, and it's received similarly high shares from other accounts that have posted it, such as @kingkayden and @romankemp.
The photo illusion has drawn significant comparison to "The Dress," another photo illusion that went viral on Twitter in February of 2015. A Scottish mother named Cecilia Bleasdale had uploaded a photograph of the dress she was planning to wear to her daughter's wedding after she and her daughter had disagreed on its coloring. Immediately, that small disagreement became one of the most divisive Internet debates of last year, as web users staunchly divided into camps of what colors they saw: either white and gold or blue and black. The colors were later confirmed to be blue and black by the retailer.
Of course, the shiny legs illusion differs from The Dress in that there is an immediately accepted answer, rather than two warring sides each believing that they are in the right. Still, it's another fun and trippy little Internet fad to share with your friend!
