Waxworks of their former selves

WHO'S THAT on the cover of Rolling Stone? Why, it's the stars of Mad Men, although you could be forgiven for thinking the magazine's art department had found waxworks of actors Elisabeth Moss, January Jones, Jon Hamm and Christina Hendricks and shoved them into a limo. Yes, the curse of Photoshop appears to have struck again, and if some of the most attractive actors in the world are its latest victims, no one's safe.

Today’s magazine designers are incapable of seeing a star without thinking, “hmm, this celebrity is gorgeous, but surely she’d look better if she were expressionless and anatomically incorrect”.

Luckily whipsmart US website jezebel.com regularly highlights the ridiculous ways glossy magazine images are transformed in a series entitled Photoshop of Horrors. Notable victims include Faith Hill, whose arms were turned into elbow-less twigs on the cover of Redbook, and Rihanna, whose waist was whittled down to the same width as her head on the cover of US Elle.

The new Rolling Stonecover looks as if it could be a composite of several images of the cast of the Emmy award-winning series set in fictional 1960s ad agency Sterling Cooper.

Hamm seems to have been superimposed on top of his waxen-faced co-stars. Jones’s legs have been been tweaked to impossible proportions – if she stood up, her left leg would be about a foot longer than her right (but standing may be difficult as her right ankle is in the wrong place). And speaking of feet, poor Moss’s right foot has disappeared entirely.

Listen, Rolling Stone: these people are all ridiculously gorgeous. You don't need to smooth out their faces until they look like mannequins. You don't have to slim down their thighs. And you should definitely leave them with feet – that's what Sterling Cooper would do.