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. 

Interesting article in the New York Times on retouching (it's a video, so turn the sound up).

Apparently here in France, the powers that be are considering making it obligatory for magazines to reveal how much retouching has been done to theirphotographs. 

A good idea, except that I can't actually see that this is workable, as so much of it is done almost at after the Raw stage - eye whitening, teeth whitening, etc. but it would be good to have it at least acknowledged that retouching HAS in fact been done, as there is virtually no image that we look at in the modern world that has not been retouched, and it does give us all a completely unrealistic idea about what people actually look like.

The most sinister retouching is not the removal of red veins in eyes, etc - it's the neck lengthening and leg lengthening that goes on, to make people of normal (and sometimes even spectacular) build look like ectomorphs. This is the kind of retouching that Kate Winslet - and God knows, she's a beautiful woman - objected to in her own photoshoot. It also leads to a hopelessly unattainable body ideal that can't be achieved without a near-starvation regime.

Anyway, check it out and see what you think.