<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Years ago, I was at lunch with a group of magazine editors-in-chief when the subject came up of French legislation proposing limits on retouching pictures in popular publications. &amp;amp;#8220;Well,&amp;amp;#8221; said one of my colleagues, laughing, &amp;amp;#8220;there goes my editor&amp;amp;#8217;s note photo.&amp;amp;#8221;It was a joke, of course, but her point was this: Retouching does happen at magazines&amp;amp;#8212;and, in this era of digital photography, almost everywhere else in our world, from movie posters and CD covers to Facebook images and Match.com profiles. It&amp;amp;#8217;s nothing new (even Abraham Lincoln was once essentially photoshopped!), but with 70 iPhone apps out now allowing women to do it themselves, it&amp;amp;#8217;s newly ubiquitous&amp;amp;#8212;and controversial. So does retouching inspire unrealistic expectations? Or is it no big deal, like the digital version of a good concealer? In our March 2012 issue, we asked the experts. And by experts, I mean 1,000 women just like you.Real-life couple Nicholas and Elizabeth, pictured here in Miami, in an unretouched (and cute!) vacation shotIn common retouching procedures, one expert says, &amp;amp;#8220;women move toward Barbie, and guys toward G.I. Joe.&amp;amp;#8221; Elizabeth&amp;amp;#8217;s not into it: &amp;amp;#8220;I look scary here!&amp;amp;#8221; She&amp;amp;#8217;s right&amp;amp;#8212;this is taking it way too far.You can read the complete results of the survey here&amp;amp;#8212;and they are fascinating. Bottom line: You&amp;amp;#8217;re OK with a little retouching. But not a lot. Sixty percent of you say it&amp;amp;#8217;s OK for a woman to retouch her own personal photos (now very common on dating sites and Facebook). But you&amp;amp;#8217;re skeptical when the media does it, unless it&amp;amp;#8217;s for minor stuff like getting rid of a pimple or &amp;amp;#8220;steaming&amp;amp;#8221; a wrinkled skirt. Three-quarters of women are fine with those kinds of changes (&amp;amp;#8220;you have to want to look like the people on the pages,&amp;amp;#8221; notes Jessie Wohlgemuth, 27, of Belmont, Massachusetts), but only one in four approve of altering what Mother Nature gave you: curves, birthmarks and other distinguishing characteristics. &amp;amp;#8220;I want to look like me on my best day,&amp;amp;#8221; said one typical respondent, &amp;amp;#8220;not change my body.&amp;amp;#8221;What you do with your own personal Facebook and Match.com pictures is up to you, of course. But how should a magazine like Glamour handle retouching? In the March issue, we published the pledge below. And we plan on sticking to it:Yes, we DO do it&amp;amp;#8212;and so do most fashion publications in the age of digital photography, since retouching includes everything from darkening a sky so a headline reads better to keeping models&amp;amp;#8217; nipples from showing through a shirt (done in our March issue&amp;amp;#8212;twice!). But as your responses make clear, retouching has its limits&amp;amp;#8212;or should&amp;amp;#8212;and Glamour plans to take a stronger role in setting ours. You told us you don&amp;amp;#8217;t want little things like freckles and scars removed, and we agree; those are the kinds of details that make each woman on the planet unique and beautiful. And while our policy has always been not to alter a woman&amp;amp;#8217;s body shape, we&amp;amp;#8217;ll also be asking photographers we hire not to manipulate body size in the photos we commission, even if a celebrity or model requests a digital diet (alas, it happens). &amp;amp;#8220;I believe Glamour should take an active role in encouraging unretouched photos,&amp;amp;#8221; says Jessica Gordon, 29, of Los Angeles. &amp;amp;#8220;It has to start somewhere.&amp;amp;#8221;So, what do you think? Where do you stand when it comes to retouching? Does this policy go far enough? Too far? Tweet me @cindi_leive or let me know in the comments below.Plus, watch our video in which real women answer the question, &amp;amp;#8220;What do you love about your body?&amp;amp;#8221; Then upload a video to the comments section of Glamour&amp;#x27;s YouTube page of you answering the same question.Photo: Mollie Maguire"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/blogs/vitamin-g/2012/02/you-tell-us-how-should-glamour>