There's something about this level of retouching that so disgusts me. I know personally from a stylist that retouching, either mechanical in the old days, or Photoshop now, has always happened for covers, but this reworking of the body shape seems to be getting more extreme.
Professional models don't get covers anymore. The supermodel craze has died out, and it turns out models don't sell covers anymore, but celebrities do. Check the covers of Elle and Cosmo, where they used to feature Naomi and Linda even before they became household names, now they put Kelly Clarckson and Anne Hathaway because the magazines noticed an uptick in newsstand sales when the face was relatable and familiar. Except now that the magazines no longer hire professional genetic outliers to model, they feel the need to turn these otherwise-gifted women, already under a microscope to be prettier than the rest, into genetic outliers again with slender arms and no wrinkles. Enter electronics.
"Men's Fitness" recently got busted doing the same to their cover celebrity, Andy Roddick. Somehow being a really talented tennis player with a professionally trained fit body was not simply not good enough. Which actually does say a lot for the standards "Men's Fitness" and "RedBook" are trying to set: Already Attractive and Managed Aging Is Not Good Enough. Exquisitely Trained Professional Athlete Is Not Good Enough. Being normal must really suck then.
