1.) Jessica Alba

Ladies, do you ever wonder how celebrities pop out the babies like Pez Dispensers and still keep their trim figures? Is it the personal trainers and private chefs that do the trick? Um . . . no.  It's the airbrusher, honey. The real Jessica Alba--mere months after giving birth--is seen on the left, the airbrushed one with breasts that look so rock hard her baby might chip a tooth feeding is on the right:

Remember when black was beautiful? Apparently Beyonce was too busy firing members of Destiny's Child to catch that moment in black history on television. According to a source, Vanity Fair digitally altered Beyonce's image to appear several shades lighter on their cover. You can see her natural shade on the bottom picture. "All the photos of Beyonce had been made so white that Jay-Z literally looked like Alek Wek standing next to her, so then he had to be lightened up, too," says the source.

3.) Kate Winslet

Even a big is beautiful advocate like Ms. Winslet succumbs to the airbrusher's art. Although she vehemently denied any retouching was done for her 2008 Vanity Fair photo shoot, a professional airbrusher interviewed by the Daily Mail disagrees:  "There is no real detail in her face. Any detail or wrinkles have been removed. There are no eye bags, contours and smile lines. Her bottom has been rounded off so it looks nice and pert. I would be very surprised if her bottom was like that naturally."

4.) Britney Spears

Ever wonder how Ms. Spears goes from just plain nasty to nasty hot so quickly? These side-by-side photos were taken within days of one another. No bonus points for guessing which one was the promotional photo for her Blackout album.

5.) Julia Roberts

Is the star you want for your magazine cover too busy to sit for your photo shoot? Redbook doesn't let a little thing like that stop them. The Redbook editors plucked Roberts head from a paparazzi shot taken at the 2002 People's Choice Awards while her body was borrowed from the Notting Hill movie premiere four years ago. The clipped-together photo is accompanied by a headline that blares, without a trace of irony, "The Real Julia." 

6.) Jennifer Aniston

Wish you could have washboard abs like Jennifer Aniston after the age of 40? America's favorite Friend does as well. When asked by host Barabara Walters what happened to the modest girl next door we used to love, Jen laughed, “She’s there! Photoshopped!”

 Redbook also gave Ms. Aniston the Julia Roberts treatment and spliced together three separate images to form a Frankaniston for a June 2003 cover:

7.) Sarah Palin

Remember standing in the checkout aisle last fall and seeing the woman who might possibly one day be a72 year-old heartbeat from the presidency decked out in a stars and stripes bikini and wielding a rifle? Who could forget that image! Especially after coming home to find all your Internet buddies had forwarded it to you as well.

Although the pic made for interesting water cooler conversation, it sadly proved to be a fake--even the rifle was most likely a pellet gun. The body belongs to a 22 year-old woman known only as Elizabeth. An unemployed web site designer from New York City found the four year old pic on Flickr and pasted Gov. Palin's head on it as a spoof for her Facebook page. And the rest has become as much a part of political yore as Swift Boat and Dukakis in a tank.

8.) Kelly Clarkson

Apparently Kelly Clarkson grew tired of Howard Stern making cracks about her ass and did something about it, or shall I say had her airbrusher do something about it, as you can see on the photo on the right:

The airbrushing later became so pronounced on her new album cover that Clarkson barely recognized herself. On a blog entry she wrote: "Its very colorful and they have definitely Photoshopped the crap out of me . . . Whoever she is, she looks great, ha!"

9.) The Women of the Israeli Cabinet

In a move straight out of Pravda, the Israeli ultra-Orthodox newspaper Yated Neeman airbrushed two female cabinet members out of a picture of the Israeli Cabinet and replaced them with two men not even in the cabinet.  The newspaper claims picturing women violates their laws of modesty but here in the States it simply violates our laws of common decency.

10.) The Dove Soap Women

Remember the Dove Soap campaign featuring "real", full-figured women instead of the airbrushed, fake supermodels we've grown so accustomed to? Even when Madison Avenue ad executives try to keep it real, their itchy airbrush fingers get the best of them.

According to retoucher Pascal Dangin, these ladies were just as fake as the supermodels we so love to poke fun at. "Do you know how much retouching was on that?" he asked. "But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone's skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive."

Gentlemen, next time your lady tells you the Hollywood ideal of beauty is impossible to live up to, believe her.