today i want to discuss the ethics of photo editing on social media. i'm not talking about upping the brightness or turning down the contrast on the photo a little bit. i'm talking about going in and changing the image completely. smoothing out your skin, making your waist a little smaller or your jaw line a little sharper. you used to have to know how to use professional photo editing software like photoshop to edit photos, and it wasn’t easy. but photo editing apps are incredibly accessible now and easy to use. it's so tempting to want to go in and tweak little things about an image so that you love it. and i think the most dangerous part about photo editing these days is that it can be impossible to spot. social media in general has had catastrophic effects on people's mental health, and that's ignoring the retouching side of things. so i'm facing a sort of moral dilemma. what I'm trying to figure out is, is it ever okay to alter your appearance in imagery?