Claire Prentice: Face facts on altered images

To my amazement, I prefer the unimproved me. In agreeing to be airbrushed for this experiment, I had hoped to emerge looking a little more like Kate Moss. Instead I've become a cross between 80s pop star Hazell Dean and BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce's uglier, tartier sister.

Yes, the airbrushed me has lovely glossy hair. Her skin is bright. Her eyes sparkle. She is strangely ageless. But she looks nothing like me. She's like a weird big-eared waxwork of someone who might be related to me. And where did she get those earrings?

At 5ft 2in (and a half), I was never going to make the Paris catwalk. But though there are days when I'd prefer a smaller nose, elegantly arched eyebrows and poutier lips, most of the time I'm happy with my looks. I'll even leave the house without so much as a lick of mascara. But, like millions of women, I'll also open the pages of a glossy magazine and be left feeling miserable after gazing at pictures of impossibly gorgeous celebrities, who have been Photoshopped to within an inch of their lives and now look like android versions of themselves.

Last week Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire, declared war on the androids. In her sights was an extraordinary ad campaign unveiled by L'Oreal.

After going to the bother of hiring two of the world's most beautiful women, Julia Roberts and supermodel Christy Turlington, and Mario Testino, one of the world's most expensive photographers, the cosmetics giant then distorted the resulting images until the pixels squeaked. Roberts looks as though she's had a bucket of talcum powder tipped over her head. Her brow has been flattened, the lines around her eyes ironed out. Turlington, promoting the appropriately named foundation, The Eraser, looks as though all the character has been rubbed out of her face. It would have been cheaper to book someone less beautiful.

"Pictures of flawless skin and super-slim bodies are all around, but they don't reflect reality," said Swinson. Her complaint, which was upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), has succeeded in getting the ad banned in Britain. Reflecting on her victory, Swinson said: "This ban sends a powerful message to advertisers - let's get back to reality."

L'Oreal defended the adverts as "aspirational". But L'Oreal isn't just guilty of selling an impossible dream, it's lying to its consumers by using doctored pictures to sell products. The global beauty business is worth a whopping $300 billion (183bn).While it's easy to mock the superficiality of the industry, it preys on women's insecurities and sends a damaging message to women and girls.

In America, where these adverts will still run, the American Medical Association found that nearly half of all girls between the ages of three and six think they are fat, while 78 per cent of 17-year-old girls say they are unhappy with their bodies. And its not just teenagers. Psychoanalyst Susie Orbach says that airbrushed images encourage us all to think, "I must fix myself." At a time when a record 1.6 million people in the UK suffer from an eating disorder, there is clearly a crisis in women's self-image, perpetuated by fantasy versions of women's buff bodies and flawless faces.

But should it be up to politicians to decide where to draw the line? Shouldn't the advertising industry be made to police itself? Or could consumers be educated to spot when an advert has been digitally enhanced and to mentally discount it?

It was back in the late 1980s that John Knoll, along with his brother Thomas, developed a computer programme which was destined to change the world, or at least how it looked. Photoshop opened the door to the easy manipulation of digital images. Since then, its use has become widespread.

Expert "retouch artists" can command up to 5,000 a day. They make teeth whiter, eyes brighter, features symmetrical, bodies more toned. My image was retouched in less than two hours. Fashion industry professionals can spend days reworking a single image of a celebrity. Many celebrities refuse to do a shoot without them. It's hard to do well; the internet is full of sites devoted to badly done Photoshopped adverts in which models end up with wonky hands, and digital legs come adrift from bodies.

But the digital freak show doesn't end there: in 2009, Demi Moore's hips not only appeared smaller than a single thigh on the cover of W magazine, her head seemed to have been transplanted onto someone else's body. More bizarre was the revelation that then pregnant model Gisele Bundchen had her baby bump digitally removed from publicity shots for a fashion range she was promoting in 2009.

These virtual remodellings of women's bodies are the 21st century digital version of the corsets and stays that Victorian women were once forced into. But still American Vogue editor Anna Wintour defends the use of the airbrush in magazines like hers for helping people to "look their best".

Personally, I feel sorry for Julia Roberts. Her management team were reportedly so afraid of the world seeing what their client actually looked like that they had it written into her L'Oreal contract that the original, undoctored images were off-limits to anyone but her and the cosmetics giant. The final image is an insult; clearly L'Oreal believe even Pretty Woman isn't naturally pretty enough to flog their slap.

Not every star has bowed to the tyranny of the touch-up.Actress Kate Winslet spoke out after her womanly frame was trimmed down for a GQ cover in 2005. "I do not look like that. And more importantly, I don't desire to look like that," said the actress. When Keira Knightley appeared on the publicity posters for her film King Arthur sporting a double D-cup, the slender actress quipped, "These things weren't mine." Women's magazines have been quick to jump on the bandwagon, claiming they are taking a stand by publishing unaltered pictures of celebrities, bruises, blemishes and all, while simultaneously running the very ads which bear so little resemblance to reality.

In an age which prizes beauty and youth above all else, can celebrities be forgiven for using every available tool to help them look good? After all, their livelihood depends on it. And let's not forget that they are subjected to the cruelty of the tabloid press on a daily basis, having their cellulite circled and their zits zoomed in on for the world to see. It's hard to focus on reality in the hall of mirrors we call the beauty industry. I was horrified when a beautiful, wrinkle-free friend of mine announced recently that she was considering having Botox ahead of her 34th birthday. She's not alone. Over the past decade, the number of cosmetic procedures carried out in the UK has risen by a whopping 77 per cent. Meanwhile, 70 per cent of teenage girls say their idea of the perfect body shape is influenced by magazine images.

So what can be done? In parts of Australia, a voluntary code of conduct discourages the use of Photoshop, while the Swedish government has set up a website to show young men and women how images can be altered. British and French politicians have been lobbying for a law which would make it obligatory to include an advisory on all advertisements and promotional material which have been digitally tweaked. It might not be a solution but shattering the illusion is a good place to start.

As the pictures above show, the camera does lie. While I might cringe at the raw image of me on the left, I'm in favour of more honesty in the pictures we're fed by the beauty and entertainment industries. Seeing my unadorned likeness next to her "perfect" twin, I am forced to publicly own up to my every wrinkle, pimple and crow's foot. But at least seeing myself transmogrified has had one beneficial effect: I've resolved to start going to bed earlier.