How far to take retouching isn’t just an issue for glossy magazines anymore. As Glamour points out, there are over “70 iPhone apps to help you alter your photos before you press upload” – and even more possibilities once the images hit your computer. Perhaps that’s why Glamour readers are so comfortable with a little cleaning up here and there. The magazine reports that “Nearly 60 percent [of readers] feel it’s OK for a woman to tweak her personal pictures.” Moreover, a whopping “23 percent of women ages 25 to 29 do it; that number climbs to 41 percent among those ages 18 to 24.” The younger you are, it seems, the less inhibited you’ll be about retouching your image.

But readers are considerably less lenient when someone else is wielding the tools. “Only 43 percent of women said it was OK for magazines to retouch, and just 39 percent were comfortable with ads doing so.” Why so schizo? Perhaps the results reflect a level of previously unacknowledged vanity and hypocrisy – some rampant trend of falsifying our personal images. Glamour certainly takes a dim view of it, getting Susie Orbach, author of “Bodies” and “Fat Is a Feminist Issue,” to note, “It makes us think there must really be something wrong with us if we can’t even look as good as the average woman on Facebook.”

But there’s more to it. For one thing, unless you’re blatantly faking your looks for a dating profile (PS don’t), chances are whatever altering you do of your photos isn’t in the service of selling somebody an unattainable bill of goods. 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. Just this week, the British Advertising Standards Authority yet again yanked a major cosmetics campaign, noting that a recent L’Oreal ad featuring Rachel Weisz “misrepresented the results that the product could achieve.” And when magazines are peddling the fantasy that actresses are slinking into bikinis six weeks after delivering their twins, or, for that matter, that Faith Hill doesn’t have a collarbone and Kelly Clarkson doesn’t have a butt, well, perhaps readers are justified in feeling a little gun-shy. And, for another thing, the way that individuals use retouching isn’t always merely in service of looking as hot as possible. It’s often just about making the picture itself interesting – griming it up for a vintage effect, going crazy with the exposure. It’s a different kind of retouching, one that doesn’t begin and end with creating a fake set of abs on the cover of Ab Monthly.

Regardless, Glamour is clearly ready to heed the words of its readers. It’s not just altruism at play here: too many public embarrassments when the unaltered versions of overly enthusiastic photo spreads appear and your credibility is shot to hell. Yet it’s also an acknowledgment that, as Glamour puts it, “retouching has its limits — or should — and Glamour plans to take a stronger role in setting ours.” What’s at stake isn’t the softening of expression lines or removal of sleep-deprivation dark circles – those things will go on. But a too perfect image loses not just its humanity; it loses what sites like Flickr have based their whole appeal on: interestingness. “You told us you don’t want little things like freckles and scars removed,” Cindi Leive wrote, adding, “And while our policy has always been not to alter a woman’s body shape, we’ll also be asking photographers we hire not to manipulate body size in the photos we commission, even if a celebrity or model requests a digital diet.” Beautiful girls in beautiful photos still sell magazines – and by extension, lipstick and jeans and all the aspirational dreams associated with them. But a pledge to go a little easier on the alterations suggests the possible beginning of fashion’s unlikeliest trend ever. A dash of authenticity.

Lagerfeld’s remarks came within a piece in which he also declared, “If I was a woman in Russia I would be a lesbian, as the men are very ugly,” and that “Nobody wants Greece to disappear, but they have really disgusting habits – Italy as well.” He also claimed that Michelle Obama once said, “Why you don’t like my big black ass?” (the First Lady never said any such thing), and asserted that “People in magazines are 50 percent bimbo and 50 percent pregnant women.” So Adele gets off pretty lightly in the whole thing. Okay, his math might not be that far off on the magazine content thing, but it’s safe to say that while the man can rock a double-breasted silhouette like nobody’s business, he might just be a total moron.

Yet despite his unique version of high praise for Adele, plenty offense at Lagerfeld’s remarks. Fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone shot back on Twitter “Love Adele Boycott Chanel.” Anderson Cooper added Lagerfeld to his weekly “Ridiculist,” calling him, spectacularly, a “fashion designer and Edward Gorey cartoon character and chronic foot-in-mouth disease sufferer.”

For his part, Lagerfeld, perhaps sensing accurately that it’s one thing to put down Russia, Greece and Italy, but you do not want to screw with Adele fans, beat a hasty retreat from his remarks. “I’d like to say to Adele that I am your biggest admirer,” he added in Metro later in the week. “Sometimes when you take a sentence out of the article it changes the meaning of the thought. What I said was in relation to Lana Del Rey and the sentence has since been taken out of context from how it was originally published. I actually prefer Adele, she is my favorite singer and I am a great admirer of her. I lost over 30 kilos over 10 years ago and have kept it off. I know how it feels when the press is mean to you in regards to your appearance. Adele is a beautiful girl. She is the best. And I can’t wait for her next CD.” Thanks for tossing Adele the bone of a “beautiful face,” Karl.

It’s significant that in his original story, Lagerfeld very clearly decreed Adele “a little too fat,” but the paper’s writer Kenya Hunt quoted it Wednesday as “a little bit fat.” Frankly, neither line is cool, but Lagerfeld’s true observation, his deeming Adele “too fat,” shouldn’t be altered or toned down. It’s significant because it implies not merely that she is particular body type, but that said type is unacceptable, that it is “too” much to deal with. Too fat for whom? Not Adele, clearly. Not her throngs of fans.

Somehow, in this day and age, the fact that a young woman of ample proportions is making it is considered revolutionary – unnerving even. That’s not just Lagerfeld-specific idiocy either. This very week, New York Times magazine writer Jacob Brown crowned Lana Del Rey as “the perfect antidote to Rihanna-Gaga overload — dare we say, a skinnier Adele, a more stable Amy Winehouse.” Really? Who knew that the world needed a “skinnier” antidote to Adele, that her size was somehow on par with the late Winehouse’s addictions?

Thank God that Adele herself, who underwent throat surgery in November currently and has the top-selling album in the country, has a different set of priorities — one that doesn’t include giving a toss about what some fan-brandishing fashion designer or Lana Del Rey slobbering Times writer or anybody else thinks about her body. She tells Anderson Cooper on Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” “I don’t want to be some skinny mini with my tits out. I really don’t want to do it and I don’t want people confusing what it is that I am about…. I’ve never seen magazine covers and music videos and been like, I need to look like that to be a success.” She’s right, she doesn’t. She’s up for six Grammys this Sunday and has even managed to adorn the cover of Vogue, despite her crippling handicap of weighing over 100 pounds. She tells Cooper, “I represent the majority of women and I’m very proud of that.” But whatever your size, she represents a whole lot more — dare we say, a breathtaking voice of sanity in a size-obsessed world?

My search for the perfect shade of red took me to a SoHo store on Spring Street. The boutique was far from welcoming: a cavernous black-walled room with a black floor, black leather chairs, and spotlights that shined from high above. It was far more theatrical than I’ve ever thought of myself.

“Hi, welcome to MAC,” an assistant greeted me, as I began to glide carefully around the shiny, foreign objects.

Wandering around this highly specialized world of make-believe, I began to question my desire to cover up my lips in something significantly darker. My thin lips, I should add. Because really, no matter how hard I try, they’re still slashes of chopsticks instead of a big Angelina Jolie pout. Recently, at a birthday party, a few of us clambered into a bedroom to put on some lipstick before heading to a bar. There, on the dresser, sat a tube of MAC Red. In one aha moment, we all put it on. Three girls of all colors, shapes and sizes. Kissing out our lips, we looked in the mirror, looked at each other and walked out the door.

It was dizzying to think what such a simple product contained. The main components of lipstick are wax (from bees, cacti, palm and roses), fat (from sheep and mink), man-made fatlike products (compounds that provide a more consistent feel), mineral waxes (from coal and petroleum), as well as a number of other unlisted solvents, solids and synthetic products. Looking into the ingredients I use every single day made me less inclined to investigate further. Was I willing to give up my search? Or even to stop wearing lipstick?

As I moved around the store, I kept my gaze low to avoid eye contact with the black-outfitted strangers. But I couldn’t find what I needed. “I’m looking for a lipstick,” I said. “MAC Red?” Even forming the words felt odd. I wasn’t sure what had come over me. Why the sudden need to wear such an extreme color. Was it a way to reinvent myself? I wasn’t about to cut my long hair short or lose 20 pounds. Did I need some dramatic physical change to feel like there had been one inside? Was I trying to convince myself that I was moving forward?

When I read about why women wear lipstick I see words like: sexuality, rebellion, deception, arousal. I see a dangerous woman in a black and white movie. She’s running from the law, doing bad things, sleeping with criminal men. Of course, she’s dressed impeccably. Tailored shirt hugging her curves. Tucked, belted and cinched. Her hourglass bod is the perfect backdrop for a deep, dark, perfectly red red. Was I like those women? Did I have what it took to wear red — or would the red wear me?

Lipstick traveled a roundabout journey before inserting itself into my makeup routine. It was documented as far back as 3,000 B.C., when Mesopotamian women tinted their lips with a mixture made of red clay, rust, henna, seaweed and iodine, among other things. As time went by, women would continue to get creative with lip color. Cleopatra mixed crushed ants and carmine with beeswax. Lip color was once so important that well-heeled ancient Egyptians were tucked away in their tombs with jars of crimson lip color to ensure an elegant look in the afterlife.

Brian, the assistant, walked me over to the lipsticks and we looked for the right shade of red. We started looking at the names on the bottom of the tubes: Russian Red, Cockney, Lady Bug and Ruby Roo. But no MAC Red. He gave me Russian Red and nudged me over to the mirror. The first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t see myself. The mirror was too far away for my eyes.

I often notice old ladies on the street. I see their shoes, comfortable and thick-soled. They’re waiting for the bus or walking down the street, clutching at pocketbooks that hide ancient tubes of lipstick along with the last bits of their prime. They never leave the house without a stroke of bright pink across their lips. Lips that can tell stories but that no longer contain the hue of youth. A few weeks ago I saw the play “Relatively Speaking” on Broadway. Marlo Thomas plays a woman who finds out her husband has just died in a skiing accident. Don’t worry, it’s funny. She was phenomenal in the show, but what I noticed more than her acting? Her shiny, medically assisted, pillow-shaped lips. Lips so large they looked like rafts floating in a pool. Marlo Thomas is 74 years old. Maybe it’s similar, this vanity we have to look better, to be someone different. It’s not like I can see my lipstick, or Marlo Thomas can see her rafts. Is altering my appearance for me, or is it for the eye of the other?

As I pushed and pulled on the heavy base of the leather chair, struggling to get closer, Brian found the MAC Red I was looking for. “Here it is,” he said. After I gently dotted the pigment onto my lips, I looked in the mirror. This cavern has bad lighting. I looked for another mirror. The wise assistant finally gave me a hand-held mirror. Looking at myself, as if for the first time, I saw my thin lips, my pale face, dark brown hair and I wondered, is this red really for me?

“It’s too pink on you,” Brian said.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Why was I so quickly agreeing with this stranger? “Anything else I should try?”

Wiping off my MAC Red with a handful of tissues I could still see traces of the color. Easy to remove it was not. I tried wiping at it with my hand, like a kid who’d just finished a glass of punch. Brian watched me with amused pity as I started to apply the Russian Red with the same hesitancy. “Can I help?” he asked, and quickly took over. No more gentle dotting. He went in with full pressure, gliding the color deep and dark over my lips. Handing me back the mirror I looked at myself. Then I looked up at him. Did I look better? Whose opinion did I trust? The mirror or Brian?

Red-lipsticked women are women who make history: Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Lucile Ball, Paloma Picasso and Isabella Rosselini to name just a few. Stage actresses began the trend, wearing red lipstick so they could be seen from the back of the theater. In black-and-white movies they wore red lipstick because, in the absence of color, it was the quickest way to convey a deep, dark lip. Lips that meant business.

“No, that’s not it either,” Brian said. “Try the MAC Red on again, but this time Really Put It On.” He put his hand on hip, eyebrow raised. A hint of a gauntlet thrown.

“OK,” I said, following up with another tissue attack, leaving my mouth pink and raw. Pressing the lipstick firmly on, I tried to apply it with the confidence of Red. Unafraid, like the bull running in San Fermin. I could do this. Starting with my bottom lip, the easier target, I moved from one corner to the next with relative ease. Moving to my top lip, I faltered. Afraid to get red outside my lip line I moved like a blind person seeing their lips for the first time. In the mirror I saw the skin around my lips, lightly freckled, a sprinkling of light hair. I noticed how my upper lip was made mostly of angles. Isosceles triangles maybe, but nary a curve. I hoped the red would impart some contour to the sharp angles.

I put the lipstick down and looked up at Brian.

“Better. Much better,” he said.

In the late ’80s, the artist Marilyn Minter created a series of glossy paintings featuring sexualized women. The one I have in my head is of a bold red-lipped woman. She’s holding a pearl necklace in her slightly opened mouth. We don’t see her eyes, just the voluminous pearls tumbling from that red mouth. Minter has said about her work, “Women should make images for their own pleasure.” I think Marilyn would be happy to see me wearing this red. I certainly derive a bit of pleasure from it. Mine alone.

It was 5 p.m. when I left the store. My lips were the color of a Geisha’s. I had a tube of MAC Red tucked into my purse, and as I walked through SoHo I felt different – like I had presence. My lips were no longer invisible dashes. The red outlined a new shape: The two peaks at the top, the curve at the bottom. I was standing up just a little straighter as I walked back home, eyes gazing directly in front of me, saying, “Yeah, go ahead, look at me.”

But along the taunt-strewn way, audiences and critics began to take serious notice of a very funny actress. When “Bridesmaids” became a massive hit last spring, its success was fueled in no small part by McCarthy’s fearlessly brash performance. (Once you know that McCarthy based her character on Guy Fieri, the entire thing gets that much more fantastic.) It wasn’t just the ferocious comic energy that McCarthy put into using a sandwich as a sex prop or defecating into a sink that made her so instantly indelible. It was the way she gave Megan such a convincing heart. In a sea of poop jokes, she emerged as the most real character in the whole movie, the one you’d want in your own entourage.

And just as the long, golden popcorn days of “Bridesmaids” began to fade and her ride at the top seemed close to an end, McCarthy bested a posse of multiple-award winners — Laura Linney, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Edie Falco and Martha Plimpton — to win the Emmy for best actress in a comedy. Strutting onstage with the jokey props of a tiara and bouquet, she gushed with the unguarded enthusiasm of a true beauty queen. “I’m from Plainfield, Ill., and I’m standing here and it’s kind of amazing,” she said tearily, before threatening to “carry around” her colleagues later in the evening. By fall, she was hosting “SNL” and gracing the cover of Entertainment Weekly, crowned yet again as the new “Queen of Comedy.”

So McCarthy’s latest coronation as a best supporting actress nominee should come as no great surprise. Yet that in no way detracts from the awesomeness of it. It’s a victory in a movie industry – and an awards system in particular – that is still dominated by a very specific physical type. The skinny kind. Though Gabourey Sidibe came close two years ago for “Precious,” you’d have to go all the way back to Kathy Bates in 1990 to find an Oscar-winning best actress who might ever have darkened the door of a Lane Bryant. In McCarthy’s category, there have been a handful of plus-size winners of late, including “Precious” costar Mo’Nique just two years ago. But though Jennifer Hudson was known for her big voice and frame when she collected her Oscar for playing the generously proportioned Effie in “Dreamgirls,” she’s since slimmed down enough to become a Weight Watchers spokeswoman.

It’s not that the award bestowers don’t love a big lady, or what passes for a big lady in Hollywood. It’s that they just don’t pay much mind to the authentic kind. Ten years ago, Renee Zellweger gained 30 pounds – and still looked like a pretty average-looking woman – on her way to an Oscar nomination for “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” A few years later, former model Charlize Theron bulked up and won the little golden man when she played serial killer Aileen Wournos in “Monster.” It’s not just the women, by the way; George Clooney added heft for “Syriana” and walked home a winner.

Looking at this year’s nominees, the disconnect between the larger-size characters they play and their considerably smaller real-life size is hard to ignore. This year’s single husky male nominee, Jonah Hill, has undergone a dramatic weight loss. Viola Davis packed on 25 pounds for her role in “The Help” – and still needed padding. Her costar and fellow nominee Jessica Chastain put on a mere 15 pounds, a feat she later complained was “a form of torture.” McCarthy, in contrast, seems remarkably untormented. Yes, she admits there are times she would “love” for someone to think she looks a tad “emaciated,” but as she declared in 2011, “I think the things that define me… are a lot more than those kinds of petty things.”

A person’s exterior is at once a “petty” thing and a primary one. It affects how the world treats her and how she chooses to respond in kind. And that McCarthy can be an Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated, magazine cover-gracing, full-blown star without shrinking down to Keira Knightley proportions represents a consciousness shift not just in the culture at large, but in a business that associates success with being built like Jennifer Aniston. The nomination of McCarthy suggests that maybe the movies are finally acknowledging that human beings come in different sizes. (The fact that Rebel Wilson gets to be the bride in the forthcoming “Bachelorette” is an encouraging sign.) And though we’ll have to wait until Feb. 26 to learn if Melissa McCarthy will take home an Academy Award, her uncompromising rise to A-list status already makes her not just a winner, but, beautifully, a big one.

Does anyone else think that sounds like an awful lot of powder and pills — not to mention cold, hard cash — for a “natural” process? Especially one that features one low-calorie meal a day “from a set of foods”? Not Emmy-winner Mariska Hargitay, who says that the system “has changed my life.” Not celebrity divorcee Demi Moore, who calls it “the best!” Mmm mmm, what could be better than a “filling” 90-calorie shake composed mostly of rice protein concentrate, rice bran and rice syrup solids?

Plenty, suggests London dietician Catherine Collins, who noted in Sunday’s Daily Mail that Paltrow is “not a nutritional expert. I would not recommend it.” Also, 21 days of that stuff sounds really gross. (Goop does note that the invitation to cleanse is “not intended as medical advice” and is “just a suggestion,” thereby covering Paltrow’s toned, slender butt.)

Though Goop’s “suggestions” are historically wildly out of touch with any 99 percenter’s lifestyle and budget, the idea that someone could be fabulously well-off enough to pay exorbitant sums for the pleasure of not eating strikes may of us as especially hilarious, even for Gwynie. And though Jezebel once called Paltrow a “tone deaf… Marie Antoinette,” at least the doomed queen knew that if you’re spending money, it might as well be on the luxuriant pleasure of cake. Not a powder to promote “intestinal transit time and bowel regularity.”