Ciara has been in the headlines as of late, due to a racy spread for Vibe's October issue, in which the singer appears in the nude.

While she's received some flack for the spread, the majority of fans across the net seem to enjoy the photos. Ciara, however, has claimed that she wasn't actually nude for the shoot, and in a recent interview with MTV she calls the pictorial "misleading."

"I think, at this point, I'd rather just be quiet about things such as that, but I definitely want to make it clear that I was going in to do something artistic, and I was upset that when I saw the photos, everything was gone," Ciara told MTV. "It's very, very upsetting and somewhat misleading."

According to Ciara, she went into the shoot expecting to make an "artistic expression," and not show off her sculpted body.

"I walked into the Vibe photo shoot very excited about making an artistic expression, and when I saw the photos, I was a little bothered because the photos appear as if I was nude, and I wasn't nude," Ciara explained. "I reached out to [Editor-in-Chief Danyel Smith] -- I sent her a letter -- and I was a little upset, too, in the fact that she didn't respond to me, and that happened prior to me reading her quote on the Internet. That definitely bothered me, just because of the fact that I wasn't nude."

In response to all the hype, Smith spoke to New York's KISS-FM radio station, saying that not only was the spread shot by Ciara in the buff, but that it was actually her idea. Although she admitted that any photo for a cover of a magazine is airbrushed, she was tempted to leak the untouched photos online to show the truth. To date, Smith has held those photos.

"I'm actually really sad," Smith commented. "Almost any photo you see on the cover of Vibe or any magazine is airbrushed [to some degree]. What I was thinking of doing, actually, was releasing the untouched photos [on Vibe's] Web site, so people can see what the hullabaloo is all about. I have so much respect for Ciara, and Ciara was so happy when she pitched this idea to us, and the photos are actually striking and beautiful. It was pitched to me in a way that it was time [for her] to grow up and be beautiful and be free and be all the things she wanted to be."

Ciara, however, insists she was clothed during the shoot and was surprised to see the final version.

"I know what was there, I know what was taken, and I know what was done. And then to look at the book and go, 'It's gone' -- it was just very upsetting to me."