Dolce & Gabanna Photoshops Madonna to Make Her Appear 20 Years Younger

Only flawed women in our culture get old. Only those who haven't learned the tricks of the stars; who've refused the battle to prove that they're still our culture's version of "perfect" (22, thin as a wisp of grass, blond, and doe-eyed); who don't accept the aggressively promoted notion that age is unsexy, undesirable, and to be avoided at all costs and for as long as possible; who've turned their backs on all of society's insistence that they deny, repress, frantically hold off their age.

It is better to hide these women, forget about them, or gloss them over. Such is the message we're sent each time another Photoshopped photo is revealed shaving off decades, eliminating veins and wrinkles, and smoothing over any evidence of age. Each of these photos is a reminder that if you age, and worse, if you accept it, you're the pitiable exception to the rule; you'd better rush to pick up another bottle of wrinkle cream.

The latest such photos are of Madonna in a spread for Dolce & Gabanna. In the Photoshopped photos, she looks somewhere between 22 and 30, splayed across a chair holding a broom seductively; with a pursed "O" of surprise on her lips as she washes dishes in a black lace dress; a temptress with glowing cleavage peeling fruit in a country kitchen. She looks great, sure (especially if you deny the somewhat creepy realization that she's actually at least twenty years older than she appears). But she doesn't look anything like she does in the un-Photoshopped photos, where she is also stunningly beautiful, with muscular veins in her hands, a faded texture to the skin on her arms, age in her face and the shape of her eyes.

Dolce & Gabanna couldn't possibly show these photos, however, because what kind of message would that send? That age can also be beautiful? Would they have to cast Madonna as a "cougar", since that's the only way we can grasp older women's sexuality? Better to just airbrush up those veins and tighten up the skin.

This message is harmful to women of all ages, setting an unhealthy, impractical, and degrading standard of beauty. Help challenge this standard by asking that magazines print disclaimers on Photoshopped images.

Photo credit: Choupigloupi