An insight into (unobtainable) beauty

This story and blog project called Before & After by Ester Honig, a journalist has done the rounds on various social media (I found the original links through Google+). Much has been made about the cultural significance of how beauty is conceived, I feel this might have been overplayed and stereotypically discussed so I will jump over all of that and bring the focus back on using photo post processing to create unobtainable extremes in the name of beauty (or trickery)

 

Ester’s Objective was -

“In the U.S. Photoshop has become a symbol of our society's unobtainable standards for beauty. My project, Before & After, examines how these standards vary across cultures on a global level.”

Have a look at the results and see if you agree with me. Some of wonderful, gorgeous tweaking and enhancement of  natural potential. Others are clearly over the top and not appealing. The underlying issue is how can we tell what is authentic? When most people believe every photo captures reality how long will it take for them to become very cynical. How will this effect the perception of those that want to use post processing to be creative rather than for trickery?