Impossibly Beautiful

Drew Barrymore, on the cover of the April 2009 issue of W magazine, and in real life last fall, in case you have, much like the editors of W, forgotten what the lovely Ms. Barrymore actually looks like:


The delicate retouching on Barrymore's features squicks me out in the same way as the "improved" Kelly Clarkson image here: It is the subtlety of the "perfecting" that underlines how insidious this stuff is while also so brazenly reaffirming that even when you're already beautiful, you're never beautiful enough.

[Impossibly Beautiful: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight.]