"Turning Women into Drawings and Passing Them Off As Real"

Blogger Laura Willard, on her Upworthy site, posted a video that purports to show "the power of Adobe Photoshop" by converting a lovely woman into a Barbie-ish version of herself -- all with Photoshop software and a mouse.

"I want to show my daughter, over and over, why the images of so many women she sees aren't realistic," Willard writes. "And what I really want is for us to stop turning beautiful women into drawings and passing them off as real."

In 37 seconds, the woman in the video is made up, bewigged, and then with the wonders (or horrors) of Photoshop, has her contours reduced, her eyes enlarged, her mouth turned into a pout, her legs lengthened and her skin lightened.  The result is an all-too-familiar image type that dominates fashion and feature photography images of women and girls.  The nicest thing one can say about it is that the image is unhealthy.  The  more honest comment is that it's sick and feeds devastating thoughts about self-image.  See it for yourself.