7 little problems about “Before & After” project

“My project, Before & After, examines how these standards vary across cultures on a global level(…) Some [retouchers] are experts in their field, others are purely amateur. With a cost ranging from five to thirty dollars”

This is what journalist Esther Honig says about the retouchers featured in her viral project “Before & After". There are some problems with this project. Just to name few:

1. an “expert in his field” can’t make a beauty retouch for five to thirty dollars.
2.  retouchers retouching a single beauty image for five to thirty dollars don’t make the “standard”.
3. people always refer to Photoshop as a fearful and obscure Moloch. But Photoshop is just a computer program used by people. Different people.
4.  a journalist should analyze and report things maybe and not just put together random things found on the internet?
5.  all retouched shots are indecent.
6. these indecent shots went viral.
7. fact: very often totally idiot things go viral.

{note: this blog post was originally published in 2014}