Smoke and Mirrors

A recent article by Jezebel revealed some disturbing information about fashion catalog photography.  Ann Taylor's website revealed a before and after retouched photograph. The waist is extremely smaller in the retouched photograph. The retouched photograph almost looks like an avatar. 

I work as a graphic designer and the photographs I've corrected usually involves color adjustment, dust removal, and adding a new background or additional objects in the photograph.  The Ralph Lauren advertisement looks like a joke.  It actually reminds me of Heidi Montag's new body.  It looks like ribs were removed; nobody's body looks like this naturally.

Some shoppers were concerned how this would effect online shopping- for example if a size was listed next to the photo it could cause the shopper to choose a completely different size through false advertising.  These examples look very extreme, but it makes you wonder how many photos we see and don't even realize how they're highly retouched.  Even though we're aware things are retouched our brains still want to register photographs as real.  It's kind of scary, isn't it?