What's Wrong with this Picture?

Anyone who knows me has likely been on the receiving end of a rant about unrealistic body images in fashion magazines. Not that it stops me from spending half my income on these magazines, or hoping that one day I will wake up with a body like Giselle Bundchen...but I diverge.

Elle Britain's July issue is the latest offender. Titled "The Body Issue," they are supposed to be making (real) women feel BETTER about their bodies regardless of shape. Yet they can't even hire an airbrusher/photo editor who is competent enought to realise that they air brushed this model's belly button right off the page. And we're supposed to beleive these people are real? Perhaps the "tummy toning" discussed in this article is SO effective that it toned her naval to the point of invisibility. Or better yet, maybe Elle has its own lab and is now manufacturing genetically perfect supermodels in test tubes and incubators (GMO Supermodels? The next big thing?), thereby eliminating the need for a belly button all together. If that's the case, they could be really efficient and leave out the brain too so they don't have to pay them. (This will also make them more desireable to most of the male population....I saw "The Stepford Wives"...I know what men want.)

Regardless, this type of visual dishonesty is crap. Or maybe it's just what the therapist ordered -- a nice little reminder that the images we hold up as "perfect" beauty are quite simply ... fabricated.