I just came across another ghastly example of Photoshopping. Forgive me, as it's very old news now, but just look at this pic of Demi Moore on the cover of W.

As usual, the eye can be deceived into thinking that this isn't too bad until you look closely. Moore is very tall, very thin and very sleek in this image, but look again at her left hip (ie: her right hip as we're looking at it) and track up from her thigh.

The hip appears to have been moved in about an inch, unless her hips join her legs in a very peculiar manner. 

Look again and it's quite clear that one hip is considerably narrower than the other - the idiot photoshopper hasn't even bothered to level up both hips. 

Anyone who thinks this kind of thing isn't damaging young girls and their body image should meet my young friend E, who is 11. I sat with her a couple of nights ago and went through some Photoshopping techniques to show her what is now routinely done to reshape models in a way that is anatomically impossible and universally, she pronounced the 'before' images 'ugly'. 

Understand? To this 11 year old, normal, beautiful women are 'ugly' unless every sign of humanity is actually removed. This is a cruel trick to play on an impressionable mind and it's being played on every young girl in the west as they stand on the brink of womanhood, trying to find their place.

Photoshop strikes again, this time on the person of Gillian Taylforth.

Taylforth, 54, whom most Brits know from a string of telly such as EastEnders and The Bill, has dumped her partner of many years (and about time too) and wanted to show off her sparky new body for the cameras. 

All this strikes me as a bit sad, really - the kind of thing you did at 17 when your boyfriend finished with you and you tried to get your own back on him by turning up at the disco in hot pants, but it's her prerogative I suppose, for all that it makes me long for some actress like Bette Davis or Garbo, who knew how to maintain a bit of mystery instead of trying to look like a pole dancer. 

But why all the bloody Photoshopping? I mean, look at that non-curve on the right-hand hip. NO-ONE LOOKS LIKE THIS!!! As my husband, who is a professional photographer and Photoshop expert, pointed out, her panties stick out further than her skin - a telltale indication of Photoshopping. Also, if you imagine turning her body to face you, her shoulders would be wider than her hips to an almost chimpanzee-like degree.

Her arms seems curiously thin, too, and the legs appear to have been trimmed down - note again on the right-hand side, where the back of the thigh curves inwards in a very peculiar way, as if she had no hamstrings.

When dressed, Taylforth looks pretty spectacular - but then she's probably undergone a more normal level of Photoshopping simply to remove red-eye, red face etc. It seems a shame after all the woman's efforts to lose weight and shape up - something she's clearly proud of - that the powers that be still weren't satisfied. 

Following an earlier article I wrote on the subject, I was pointed at this article by a Second Cherry reader, about a campaign to have digitally altered images labelled as such.

It is only a shame that, as usual, the moves to force the use of more realistic imagery of women in advertising are so heavily blocked by corporate interests. 

It is principally by making women feel dissatisfied with themselves, after all, that the fashion and beauty industry can continue to sell us products we don't actually need, and they have billions of dollars invested in making us feel crap. 

Mentioned in the article is the incident last October when Ralph Lauren attempted to take down bloggers who reproduced the ghastly ad shown at top left (in which the model's pelvis had been photoshopped to be smaller than her head). Ralph Luaren claimed copyright infringement, but BoingBoing claimed fair comment, and won. 

So, folks, here it is again, just to annoy Ralph Lauren.

I'm sure we are all well aware that ALL images are now retouched, but few people realise by quite how much. It t'olden days, every bit of retouching took a deal of time and could only be done once, so freckles, etc, were removed and eyes brightened, but there was no time to go around lenthening legs and bodies and arms and necks in the way it is almost universally done today.

The average model today has been Photoshopped to look like 'an anorexic with a  boob job' says one commentator, and that is about right, but so bad is the retouching on the Ralph Lauren image above that some people believe it MUST have been a publicity stunt. 

Why then did the same company use this image (near right) just a week later in another campaign? Note the hips, which are about half the width of the poor girl's shoulders - you can see her correct proportions in the right-hand image. 

And why did Filippa Hamilton, the model in the jeans ad, later say she had been fired for 'being too fat'? If you want to see just how fat her size 8 figure is, click here.

The thing is, Ralph Lauren has a track record where this is concerned. Anyone much younger than me is probably too young to remember the controversy they caused in the early 1980s when they were among the first companies to use really spectacularly thin models. Their girl of choice back then was Saffron Aldridge, who was considerably thinner and bonier than the usual models of the day such as Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. Not since the late 1940s when many of the most famous models were suffering from malnutrition had we seen such angular cheekbones. But little by little we all got used to the bony look until it somehow became the norm. 

Now, though, it's all gone way too far, when the 'desireable' image thrust at women is not only to be underweight and follow a body shape (wide shoulders, big boobs, very tall) that falls only to very few, but be thin to a degree that is actually anatomically impossible. 

Check out Jezebel's favourite awful cover shot of the year.

The cover girl means nothing to me - an American singer, apparently - and you don't realise quite how bad this Photoshopping is until you see the befores and afters, which Jezebel has outlined in horrible detail. No real human being can anatomically look like this. Just as a clue, look at the length and width of her left arm.

It is very worrying that we are all becoming so used to these airbrushed images and even more disappointing when this mag is aimed at older women. Shame on them.

There's a little bit inside all of us that wants to look glamorous.

As any of my friends could testify, I actually look nothing like the pictures of me on this blog. These photos are the result of a 'Hollywood' photo session the DH and I played around with a couple of years ago. In real life I don't lie around on fox furs and pearls and I too have spots, freckles, wrinkles and all the rest of the issues that face most women.

But I'm also lucky enough to be married to Steve - who knows his way around Photoshop. 

Having been hugely impressed by his various photos of me that were pinned up around the room at our Black and White party, some of my girlfriends expressed a wish to be 'done' in the same way. So on Saturday we had a girls night in and two of them duly posed (while the rest of them stood around and made comments, naturally). 

First up was Mikki, and here she is, thoroughly glamour-pussed. I did my bit with make-up and clothes (she's wearing a full 'Marilyn' makeup and swathed in metallic organza - not that you can tell), but the DH did the rest - the cleverest thing is that he's made her hair longer.

As Mikki - mum to a 12-year-old daughter and who stomps around in DMs - would be the first to admit, she doesn't look like this every day, but this is how she'd like to look, and now she's got a fabulous photo to show her future grandchildren. 

Second to give it a try was Alex, swathed in 1930s furs and looking phenomenally elegant - a big change from her usual wellies and jeans as she pulls baby lambs out of her pet sheep. 

The rest of the girls wimped out on the night - convinced, I think, that they are beyond repair, though I suspect they may change their minds once they see the pictures. 

In real life, of course, both girls looked more drag queen than diva. The thick, matt makeup required to stand up to the photographic lights is unpleasant to wear, and the eye makeup is black and white in order to gain maximum contrast. When I did it, I was itching to get it off my face afterwards but I hear that Alex decided to keep hers overnight and went to bed in full slap, hoping some of it would still be there the next day.