As a photojournalist, I think it would be interesting to see just how many photos in fashion magazines are airbrushed or otherwise manipulated after the fact.
As a photojournalist -- and I don't mean this to be insulting -- you are obviously completely unaware of the publishing side of the equation, especially as it pertains to things like fashion magazines. It wouldn't be even remotely "interesting to see" how many photos in such magazines have been airbrushed/manipulated after the fact (presumably meaning after they've left the camera) because the answer is 100% of them. In fact, the only way that an unretouched photo is going to appear in a magazine like that is if they're making a specific point of showing their readers specifically what an unretouched photo looks like.
I ran a design shop specializing in advertising and package design for a bunch of years, and I can tell you from first hand experience that everything that came through the door was retouched. EVERYTHING. It could be as simple as adjusting the color balance, or removing undesirable elements like cold sores, blemishes, logos or objects (from uncontrolled locations), to taking the body/pose from one shot and adding it to a "better" head angle/facial expression from another one. (It's not unlike what they do in the movies if there are TV antennas in a shot of an 18th century cityscape.)
Instead of blaming Photoshop for people's image problems, maybe these people ought to work on addressing the utterly unrealistic assumption on the part of a vast segment of the public that everything they see in the media (print or broadcast) is appearing in some kind of pristine and natural state. (It's not just the French, there's apparently a growing push towards similar labeling in the US.) Do they not think that being able to inject regional ads into live broadcasts of TV events isn't destructively deceptive? C'mon...
If people don't get this concept on their own, then maybe the best solution is to forceably confront them with it. Make it mandatory that everyone work on their school newspapers or yearbook staff where they will be deliberately exposed to such practices (by dint of the curriculum). Like Robert Louis Stevenson said at the very beginning of The Art of Writing: "There is nothing more disenchanting to man than to be shown the springs and mechanism of any art. All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys."
Frank Miller adapting Will Eisner makes about as much sense as Sam Peckinpah adapting Jeeves and Wooster.
When Quentin Tarantino made Jackie Brown from Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch, people were all "dazzled" by how brilliant it was, this fusing of two great dialogue masters. Personally, I found that Tarantino's choices, starting with moving the story out of Miami and working right on through the list, did nothing more than systematically eliminate everything that made the book charming and great. In the end, what you had was something that was Tarantino's flesh and fetishes hung over the barest mention of Leonard's skeleton.
I fully expect that's what we're going to have with this Spirit movie. Frank Miller is possibly the least qualified person to adapt Eisner (personally, I think Kevin Smith would do a better job), and I'm glad Will's not around to see this.
The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.