Heartless Retouching

That is fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh’s phrase for the excessive manipulation of the photographs of celebrities on magazine covers and elsewhere. Are the professionally beautiful - actresses, models, pop stars - not really as beautiful as they’ve seen.

The public says it - at least thinks that it - wants more authenticity in the reproduction of image of the famous. But some of these people - women - don’t want you to know the truth about their appearance.

And yet a raw-celebrity movement has been slow in coming. That may be because, as several editors said privately, celebrities’ publicists almost always demand retouching of wrinkles and visible cellulite. As a result, a celebrity can look different from one magazine to the next.

The New York Times, Fashion and Style: Smile and Say ‘No Photoshop’