NEW YORK—The entire fashion industry entered a severe crisis of conscience on Thursday after an online image revealed the manipulation of a photograph to enhance a model’s apparent youth and beauty. “My God…all these years. What savagery have we been perpetrating upon women’s self-esteem?” shouted graphics editor Mitch Collins of Elle magazine moments after viewing the side-by-side comparison of the original session photo with an altered version in which wrinkles were erased, the waist narrowed, and legs elongated. “We’ve concocted an unattainable standard of outer beauty and tacitly pressured women everywhere to conform to it at all costs. We’re monsters.” In response to the exposé, all major fashion companies have withdrawn their entire spring lines, donated all 2013 profits to charity, and shut down operations in order to personally apologize to every woman who has suffered because of their “barbaric photo editing.”

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