WTF: Photoshopped Babies

So apparently photo shop doesn’t stop at models in fashion magazines or aging celebrities who are obsessed with showing off their ‘best’ face.

One of my favorite bloggers, Mia Freedman from MamaMia, recently wrote a post on the disturbing new trend of photo shopping babies.

Yes, you read right. People actually photo shop the “fat rolls” off their bodies and digitally add makeup to babies. Here’s an excerpt on the story at MSNBC that prompted Mia’s post. Feel free to feel disgusted, as I am!

As members of the viewing and reading public, we tend to understand that magazine cover photos are mussed with, fussed with and retouched so that everything looks as perfect as it possibly can. Skin tones are smoothed out; large pores are hidden; stray hairs are concealed.

But when a casting director for a UK magazine announced on a British reality show that he had airbrushed a baby’s photo so as to hide the creases on his chubby little arms, the world came unglued. On both sides of the Atlantic, the practice was decried as shocking — even by politicians.

A casting director for Practical Parenting magazine explained — on camera — what happened to get Hadley’s photo ready for prime time.

“We lightened his eyes and his general skin tone, smoothed out any blotches and the creases on his arms,” he said. “But we want it to look natural.”

Esther Corbett told the Telegraph that she wasn’t at all bothered — or remotely surprised — about what was done to her son’s photo. “You kind of know that they do it because if you look at the front cover of magazines, most of the images don’t look really real,” she said. “But it didn’t put me off.”

When asked whether the kinds of changes described by the casting director — lightening a baby’s eyes, altering skin tone and smoothing out fat rolls — are done routinely, Delaney replied: “It is a photograph, isn’t it, so you have to make sure that you are putting the baby across in the best light.”

Read more here.

Oh wait. I get it. Babies are meant to look like little alien people these days!

But seriously – what is the world coming to? Last time I checked, chubby cheeks and “fat rolls” are adorable on babies. Do you have any thoughts on this?

P.S.: I saved the most disturbing for last: