There has been a fair amount of debate and uproar from women in particular about the way images of models and celebrities are improved using photo editing software to create unachievable standards of beauty. I have even previously written a blog myself about the use of airbrushing and recently Joanne Dewberry began a 'Real Women' campaign following the news that H&M have admitted to using computer-generated bodies to model their clothes. 

Of course to a certain extent I am a little biased on this subject, I am a photo editor after all and I have to admit that I am constantly amazed and impressed with what you can achieve using editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. I guess the problem is that reality is being merged with art, if we look at a painting of a beautiful woman we know that it has been created by a person who has perhaps enhanced their eyes and slimmed their waist. In comparison when we look at a photograph we believe it to be a true image, so when we see photos of celebrities with perfect skin, and tiny waists just hours after giving birth we believe them to be true and then a lot of us aspire to have the same level of perfection. I've often thought that there isn't really a solution to this problem, technology advances and it is likely to get worse before it gets better. However, after thinking about it and reading lots of debates about it I now think that one way of reducing the impact of these photographs is to make it a regulation that any photographs that have been edited in this way (body manipulation etc) should have a mark on it to show that it has been edited. That way at least when young women, and men, are looking through these magazines they can see very easily that yes it is a nice picture but it has been highly edited so should be seen more a piece of art than a true life photograph.

I came across this video clip this morning after seeing a tweet about it from @JayLoftus and I thought that it sums this up wonderfully and I hope it bring a smile to your face!  Remember - this commercial isn't real, and neither are society's standards of beauty! 

I'd love to hear your thoughts to this ongoing debate - all comments are very welcome!