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Behold: Cate Blanchett's Totally Unphotoshopped Magazine Cover

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Economist offshoot Intelligent Life boldly goes where no fashion glossy dares with this totally unphotoshopped cover featuring Cate Blanchett. We think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't think the 42 year-old Australian actress looks gorgeous as ever, even with her laugh lines on full display.


Here's what Intelligent Life EIC Tim de Lisle had to say about the decision to go without touch ups:

Publishers want a recognisable person on the cover, with a real career; but they also want an empty vessel—for clothes and jewellery and make-up, which often seem to be supplied by the advertisers with the most muscle...Cate Blanchett, by contrast, appears on our cover in her working clothes, with the odd line on her face and faint bags under her eyes. She looks like what she is—a woman of 42, spending her days in an office, her evenings on stage and the rest of her time looking after three young children.

The conversation around retouched images in the fashion industry tends to ebb and flow, depending on whatever recent Photoshop disasters have caught the public eye. Glamour magazine recently upped the ante on the debate, however, when editor-in-chief Cindi Leive put the question to readers, asking them how the magazine should handle retouching. Based on readers' responses, she in turn pledged that Glamour will from now on ask photographers not to manipulate body size in the photos they commission. And if all celebrities look as amazing sans wrinkle-retouching as Cate Blanchett, who knows, maybe skin will be next.

· Cate on the Cover [Intelligent Life]
· You Tell Us: How Should Glamour Handle Retouching? [Glamour]
· Fake Beauty Commercial Pretends Photoshop Is a Kind of Makeup [Racked]