Standing at five and a half feet tall, Marilyn Monroe claimed her measurements were a curvy 35-22-35. Barbie’s famous plastic figure, scaled to size, would be an impossible 36-18-33. And as if Barbie’s rubberized Coke-bottle silhouette didn’t seem unattainable enough, Ralph Lauren’s recent ad campaign shaved inches off an already svelte model to something that looks a little closer to 34-12-30.

Simply take a look at any magazine cover, underwear advertisement or even a big city billboard. The product they are pushing might be different, but underneath the polished glossy finish, these ads share a common bond — the magical media tool known as Photoshop.

From the frighteningly unlined forehead of middle-aged movie stars gracing a pro poster to the impossibly long limbs of a lingerie ad model, there isn’t a form of print media that Photoshop has left untouched. Once Photoshop’s magic wand invaded our magazines and catalogs, it became all but impossible to remember how a body actually looks.

Until, that is, a blogger called out Ralph Lauren, pointing out the company’s blatant digital liposuction of model Filippa Hamilton, who, at 5’10” and 120 lbs., seemed like an improbable candidate for airbrushing. Yet Ralph Lauren apparently thought Hamilton could use a little tummy trimming, as evidenced by the cartoonish ad that the company put out earlier this month. Hamilton’s waist appears impossibly pinched, her teeny hips making her face seem bobblehead-esque in comparison.

Lauren’s ad is certainly not the first of its kind. Chances are high that every advertisement you see, whether it’s for a skin cream or a tennis shoe, has had a little (or, more likely, a lot of) digital enhancing. Of course, a little tweaking of lighting is usually necessary in the media industry, but photographers don’t stop there.

Anyone who has seen a Shape cover has witnessed the miracle of airbrush abs and love handle-free hips. Surprisingly, it’s not just women who are being morphed into perfected, digitized versions of themselves: Even tennis champ Andy Roddick was shot for the cover a well known sports magazine, with suspiciously “enhanced” biceps.

Airbrushing has become a standard, but when should the fashion and design industry draw the line on hacking off pounds and erasing years off a person’s face? After the upheaval in the advertising industry following the release of Lauren’s ad, the National Assembly in France introduced a bill that would require advertisers to label fashion ads based on how much alteration they contain.

A new law proposed last month in Britain takes things one step further, threatening advertisers with up to a $55,000 fine in they fail to reveal to readers which images have been retouched. Some policymakers hope that one day, digital retouching will be eliminated completely, claiming that it contributes to body image issues and eating disorders.

Unfortunately, a Photoshopping ban would only be a quick fix for a problem that’s already gone too far. At first, photographers were only adding light and shadows to poorly lit backgrounds. But it wasn’t long before a little shading here turned in to a bit of slimming down there. Now, it’s not at all surprising to see models in fashion ads with scarily skinny limbs wearing clothing so teeny it seems impossible that such a size exists (which is probably because it doesn’t).

Fashion designers should question not only the integrity of their photographers, but also the integrity of their clothing — how can they have pride in their products if models need to be all but erased to look half decent in them? I find it hard to believe that Ralph Lauren, along with hundreds of other Photoshop-happy brands, sells more clothes when they feature them on models whose computer generated physiques are physically impossible to attain.

Perhaps Photoshop regulations are the next logical step; or maybe a full-blown ban is the only solution. Either way, digital retouching has to stop somewhere. Otherwise, fashion models will continue to get skinnier and skinnier — until they disappear before our eyes entirely