RETOUCHING - ETHICS!?

Recently, the New York Times aired a video on some ethical questions about Beauty retouching.  You should check it out.  It begs the question of how far is far enough when it comes down to how we influence our children about role models and "un-achievable" goals for the sake of advertising.  As a father of an 18 year old daughter and a professional retoucher I am confronted with this question every time I pick up my mouse and begin to work on an image.  After a while you come to the realization that first of all it is certainly not only the retouching of an image that creates this issue, but let's just focus on those aspect of it.  At the end of the day it is YOU the retoucher that decides how far to go and wether or not you choose to use the bat to hit a softball or crush some ones skull.  It is not the bat that is the problem.

I promised to keep this rant as short as possible, but we typically give the client what the client wants and don't really worry too much about the ethics and leave that to the client - maybe-maybe not.  This video does mention one important thing (I think) along with the ethical questions it poses.  Why don't retouchers get credit on images where retouching has taken place???  This brings me back to the change in times that digital has fueled in that retouching can be a large part of the image making process and perhaps by giving the retoucher credit it would not just give credit where it is deserved but also help readers understand that in some cases the image does not reflect reality - really!  Check out the video and ponder this the next time a client asks you to piece together a fashion image from 4 separate photos of the same model to get the very best part of each and ask yourself - should I get any credit and does the reader dererve the right to know that something was done to retouch this image???