I received a promotion from a chain of drug-stores, advising that they will begin marking certain beauty products to indicate that the images used to promote them have not been digitally altered.
There's a bit of madness here. If you don't see it, then follow me and I'll show it to you.
First, let's understand that, before computer-assisted image manipulation, there was airbrushing of photographs. A guarantee that an image were not digitally altered would not be a guarantee that the image had not been airbrushed.
Well, let's say that there were a guarantee that the photograph itself were not airbrushed. That wouldn't guarantee that the model were not airbrushed. Make-up is sometimes applied to the model him- or herself with an airbrush. And the purpose of that make-up itself is to show the model differently from how he or she actually looks.
Before photographs were airbrushed, they were sometimes altered with styluses and with bristled brushes … uhm, which are also tools of the sorts used to apply make-up. The purpose of that make-up itself is to show the model differently from how he or she actually looks.
If authenticity is important, then make-up itself is a problem. Lip gloss, foundation, blush, mascara, hair bleach and hair dye — all of these are falsifications.
Authenticity is not always an overriding concern. Make-up may variously be a decorative craft or an art, and should be judged as such. But, in any case, people who are embracing illusion should not be convinced that, because the illusion was not further enhanced by digital manipulation of the image on their box of concealer, the illusion is somehow other than illusion.