Ah, photo manipulation. Not just reserved for Photoshopping Ralph Lauren models’ legs to look chicken-esque anymore (“Nothing tastes as good as being falsely-presented as über-skinny feels” – KL), this brand of artifice has hit the tyrannical masses like a ton of bricks.

Sometimes the Photoshopped photo smacks of cheating, especially when it’s used to airbrush out pimples or fat rolls (Thank god for ‘Stars: They’re Just Like US!’ feature in US Magazine — otherwise I would never realize that we sometimes worship uggos! (lookin’ at you, B. Spears).

Every once in a blue moon, though, Photoshop gets exploited for its obvious “humor factor.” Even I, one with a very discerned palate for art, literature and fois gras, have my moments loving these sneaky pix. For instance, I am absolutely transfixed by this website, www.manbabies.com. The premise is pretty simple — and pretty dumb: Family photos have been tampered with so that Dad and Baby’s faces are switched! Hilarious!

Some of these pictures are pretty clever and cute, but most are disturbing and creepy. Like the one of the ginger-headed dad with full-on Freud beard and the baby with the dopey, cute-but-only-if-it’s-on-a-baby grin. The result? Dad-sized human, beard intact, sporting a facial expression that’s only possible if you’ve got 210 bones in your face. As for the babe in arms? Naked (duh) — but with Dad’s full, bushy red eyebrows, who needs clothes?

“Good parenting” and “good Photoshopping” are not interchangeable adjective phrases. Another one of manbabies.com’s gems is of a family photo that’s pretty questionable, even to begin with. The original photo was of the baby wearing a Tecate case over his romper, as if it were the younger version of a very drunk “case face” episode. It’s a classy look, and one that is only made classier with the shoddy Photoshop job Dad employed: I’m pretty sure the dad in question just Photoshopped an oval to approximate the shape of his face, and pasted it on the baby-wearing-Tecate. The baby’s head, meanwhile, is about two-thirds the side of his dad’s, and this Photoshopping whiz didn’t even try to blend. Pfft, amateurs.

...And then, the photo might be a really good Photoshopping job, but something about the picture is still just a little ... mmm ... off. Another one of my favorite photos on manbabies.com epitomizes this Photoshop phenomenon. To me, the photo is like a “Honey I shrunk myself!” version of a Prego Ad, circa 1987.

What does any of that mean? The dad, mustachioed as if he wore a newly-pelted badger on his face (that is, he’s got a full ’stache), is transplanted onto his son’s body, which is costumed in a full suit: oxford shirt, khaki trousers, bow tie, suspenders. But here’s where it gets a little weird. What baby wears suspenders, really?! The baby-on-dad’s-body is just, you know, babyin’ out: yawning and blinking for the camera. God, babies are hilarious.

Yet the most effective manbabies.com Photoshop creations are those that nonchalantly flip the faces so that the viewer almost registers the picture as normal. Take the one with the black and white portrait of the child on his father’s shoulders on the Washington Mall, for example. Maybe it’s the chiaroscuro, or just that the kid’s hair is long enough to be deemed “mannish,” but this pic looks nearly plausible. In fact, the picture really looks like an “off-color” (hardy har) reference to the really-too-sad 1996 Robin Williams film, Jack.

The trick about manbabies.com is, one laughs because of the irony at work here: but also because one suspended one’s disbelief for long enough to think, at least for a millisecond, that this were an actual photo of an actual outing — and that the photo wasn’t just the work of a really bored stay-at-home dad.

Today, Photoshop is widely used for non-political, kitschy aims — for uses like mababies.com, or like what my friend sent me through Facebook message a few days back, just to say “hey”: Lil’ Wayne Photoshopped to look like a Na’avi Warrior from Avatar.

No ceilings, indeed. (I bet he’s had so many syncs at the spirit tree!)

Of course, Photoshopping can also be used for weird, political aims too — like the NY Tribune article from April 17, 1910, entitled, “What Will the Typical American of the Future Look Like? Here is an Approximate Answer.”

This “photo-journalism” piece takes profile and full-face pictures of naturalized citizens of differing ethnicities to create a “Future American Composite.” All of the participants in this exercise are White, mind you — “America of the Future” conveniently forgets other ethnicities.

The article states that the composites “are made from twenty-four photographs, twelve profile and twelve full face, of Irish, English, Scotch, Norwegian, Dutch, German, Italian, Magyar (Hungarian), Hebrew, Croation, Slovak and Polish types, imposed one upon another. These types embrace racially about 85 percent of the total immigration to America since 1820 and probably more than 75 percent of the settlers in this country prior to this year. Surrounding the composites are portraits of the 12 types from which they were made. The flood of immigration which has set in this spring, and which promises to break the record, lends timely interest to this pictorial speculation.”

I mean... this article really begs the question, what was the NY Tribune expecting for the future? That every ethnicity would get down ‘n’ dirty as if they just won the Super Bowl [lookin’ at you, Saints] because they finally walk upon “streets paved with gold?” This author clearly took some liberties when interpreting the phrase “melting pot.”

I mean, I guess that’s what an American dude looks like these days, what with his emphatically non-descript face, short tie, his Peter Pan collar and his hefty moustache. Good work, NY Tribune. Your psychic soothsaying is almost as spot-on as Miss Cleo’s (Call her now and pay-per-call!).

But then, while Photoshop has its political and non-political usages, some pictures don’t need to be manipulated at all; they are so bizarre that no amount of technological fiddling could possibly make them stranger. I found this one pic while I was cruisin’ the ’net (as I like to say): it’s a woman, looking a little disheveled, a little lion-maned in the coiffe, reposing quietly on her couch, NEXT TO HER DOMESTICATED LION. The woman’s hand rests delicately on Simba’s haunch, and she looks upon the photogenic lion with true adoration. But Gosh, it’s like the word sloth is written all over her. Even her black crushed velveteen stretch pant/t-shirt ensemble looks lazy. How did she get this thing into her home? And how is she so calm around this 600-lb. beast?! The site that hosts said picture quips, “Who in the hell is this woman? Doesn’t she just irk the hell out of you? I feel like she’s got cats and dogs and God knows what else in some back room.”

In summation, I have none, really — except that throughout history, photo manipulation has been an important facet to media consumption; Photoshopping is meant to trompe l’oeil so as to evoke weird thought or intense feeling. The art has indeed run the gamut from the soberly political to the kitschy to the downright absurd. But sometimes it’s good to remember that life is always stranger than fiction.