Blame Photoshop

This is a real life Ralph Lauren ad. I'ma give you a minute.

I know; it's a little hard to process. I saw this today and sat at the computer for a couple seconds thinking, "Wait, so, what---? I mean, uhm.... Well, maybe they're... But look at the--!"

This photo was so weird that there's really only one explanation for it. Well, two explanations:
1. This was generated by a person who lives in a monastery and has never seen a woman before (much like the 15th century Russian monks who drew Little Baby Jesus looking like a weird, skinny little man because there weren't a lot of little babies in 15th c. Russian monasteries).
2. This was generated by a person who had been sitting in front of a computer at 2:30 in the morning, futzing around with a picture for much longer than was necessary, vacillating between Mello Yello and Starbucks Mocha Frappuccinos for sustanence. And he clearly didn't look at the original photo before he sent this off...but to whom? Who saw this and said "Gorgeous! Print it!" How did this end up in a magazine? I've eaten with a fork that had more realistic human proportions.

A screw up like this makes me aware of all those people who spend their days at desks, tinkering with images of other people. Their problem makes sense to me: when I've Photoshopped my own pictures, by the end of an hour I can't really tell if they even look normal anymore ("Is my daughter green? I can't remember...."). The poor Photoshoppers have to do it for 8 hours every day. But then again, I can't have too much sympathy for them because PHOTOSHOP IS THEIR JOB, and in order for something to be your job, you kind of have to be good at it. I imagine the guy who "touched up" this photo was completely competent, only he probably took a cigarette break about 15 minutes in, but ended up watching a David Lynch film which took a couple hours, and then was pushing deadline, so he just finished it up in a hurry. By the end he was like, "waist that could be spanned by a cat collar: check. Octopus arms: check. Easter Island head: check! I think we're done here! Good work!

Addendum:
Okay, a week later, and I just saw this:

Ralph Lauren is officially EFFing with me.