But a too perfect image loses not just its humanity; it loses what sites like Flickr have based their whole appeal on: interestingness.

It’s one thing to be cool with zapping out a zit on a regular person’s avatar, but it’s another ball of wax entirely when a company is trying to sell a product based on an image that couldn’t possibly exist in the real world.

The affinities of “Marilyn and Maggie”, it turns out, are as profound as their differences. They were both defined by emerging neo-Victorian ideas about women; and they both tactically deployed traditional ideas of femininity, so often used against them, to reach the pinnacle of male-dominated professions.

It is a mass psychosis, where what is real is despised and what is non-existent is desirable. The camera lies, like never before.