There’s an old Jewish joke that goes something like this:

A Jewish grandmother walks down the street proudly pushing her new grandchild in a baby carriage [that’s how old this joke is; a carriage rather than the $1000 stroller that I hear is now de rigueur in Manhattan]. She stops near another elderly woman, who looks into the carriage and admires the baby.

“You think that’s beautiful? That’s nothing,” says the grandma. “You should see the pictures!”

And since life imitates art—as art (and artifice) gets further and further from life—I refer you to this Newsweek piece about airbrushing in fashion layouts. The practice has now reached unearthly proportions, so that models present ever more streamlined and perfected versions of their already almost inhumanly streamlined and perfected selves.

Why do we do it? Because we can. Photoshopping has made it child’s play to change almost anything in a photo. And that’s after the hairdos and the makeup achieve their own transformations.

It’s an old art, actually. I have in my possession a photo of none other than my own beloved grandmother, taken on the occasion of her graduation from Normal School (that’s teacher’s college, for all you younguns) circa 1902. She is eighteen years old, and dressed to the nines.

I’ve always loved this photo, right from the time my grandmother first showed it to me when I was a very little girl. The dress! So fancy! The hat! With the flowers! She was so young! And so pretty! And her figure!

Ah, her figure. My grandmother confessed to—and showed me, by pointing with her finger to a series of faint white squiggles (visible only on the original; what I have here is a copy)—the retouching process whereby the photographer had laboriously whittled down her already-slim waist to get the desired extreme hourglass effect.

Now, of course, we can do a great deal more—to get less or more, as the body part dictates. Less cellulite. More breasts. Longer legs. Whiter teeth. And on and on and on, while women compare themselves to these otherworldly images and turn to the next step, plastic surgery, in a vain attempt to approximate what only the photoshop can accomplish.

Newsweek says there’s a backlash brewing. Editors are “considering” (yeah, right) voluntary curbs on this sort of thing. And France, that non-bastion of free speech, is contemplating a law to restrict publicly inciting “excessive thinness” or extreme dieting,” punishable by up to two years in prison and/or a hefty fine.

I’ll believe that this has changed when I see it—that is, when I don’t see it anymore. But, come to think of it, how would I know whether I’m seeing it or not seeing it? Models have always looked close to perfect to me, and I hadn’t really noticed them getting more perfect over the years, although apparently they have.

But I knew a long time ago that the pursuit of that particular form of perfection was going to be beyond me. At 5’4″, what choice did I have? And a childhood, adolescence, and young womanhood spent scrutinizing my reflection in the mirrors of various dance studios while standing next to dancers who invariably seemed leggier, slimmer, and more ethereal no matter how thin I got (and I was plenty thin in those days) was enough to cure me of any desire to be perfect.

Another lesson from dance was delivered in rather odd form. When I lived in Los Angeles back in the early 70s, I attended a famous ballet school that drew any number of well-known dancers to its huge classes. But among the lesser-knowns was a curious sight—a very short woman whose bodily proportions were such that she was very close to being a bona fide dwarf.

She must have been about 4’5″ tall, if that. Her torso was long, her arms and legs exceedingly short. Exactly and precisely the opposite of the elongated extremities desired in the ballet dancer. And she was not thin, either; chunky and stocky would be a kind way to put it.

And yet, and yet—the woman could dance. I was transfixed by her ability to move, her phrasing and musicality, and even her line.

“Line” is a hard thing to describe in dance, but it’s the shape a body makes in space. Ballet is three-dimensional and kinetic, but every step of the way the body draws lines and creates designs. This element of dance is best served by the long limbs and the slim arms emanating seamlessly from a torso without a hint of fat, plus a long neck and small head. But those proportions are not enough to make a good ballet dancer, and not all good dancers possess them to the maximum degree.

This woman possessed them not at all. As I said, she was the opposite, almost a reverse caricature of what was considered desirable. And yet she created shapes with her body that were beautiful, and gave the illusion of a long and graceful line.

How she did it I do not know. I wish I had a photo (unretouched) to show you, but I do not.

Somehow I think a photo wouldn’t capture it, anyway. What I do know is that she was one of the most marvelous and awe-inspiring people I’ve ever witnessed in my life.