Another thing that bounces around the Web is debate about photo retouching. In late September, the website Photoshop Disasters posted a Ralph Lauren Blue Label ad that featured model Filippa Hamilton-Palmstierna so dramatically retouched that the model's head appeared wider than her waist. The image was also featured on boing boing, a popular blog, which prompted Ralph Lauren's legal team to send a cease-and-desist letter to both sites.

Ralph Lauren eventually apologized for releasing the original image at all.

Earlier this year, French Elle received a fair amount of praise online for its Stars Sans Fards (Stars without Cosmetics) issue, which became the empowering counterpoint to the tabloid Star's recurring feature "Stars Without Makeup."

"Yay," proclaimed Jennifer Romolini on Yahoo's Shine. "We're totally psyched to see beautiful women in a more natural, albeit still extremely flattering light," wrote The Frisky's Catherine Strawn. Feministing.com's Miriam Perez wrote, "I think this is great, particularly in an era when the only time you see celebrities without makeup is from terrible paparazzi shots."

But for every time an unretouched image is praised as a bold stance against artifice and the over-idealizing of celebrity, another is criticized as a cheap shot: When Newsweek ran a stark, seemingly unretouched image of Sarah Palin on its cover that was so detailed wisps of hair were visible on her upper lip, some critics, like Portfolio.com's former Mixed Media blogger Jeff Bercovici cried foul, while others like Rachel Sklar in the Huffington Post called it "fair and flattering." Sklar also said at the time, "I am usually not a fan of 'gotcha' close-ups of women and their makeup, which I think are meant to make women look older and highlight the need of makeup in a sort of grotesque way (makeup is meant to be blended and viewed from a respectable distance)." Another Huffington Post writer, Jason Linkin, described the cover as showing, "Sarah Palin in extreme close-up, revealing that the GOP's latest celebrity actually ages, and has slight wrinkles, like us mortals."

It's understandable why the Huffington Post would want to step into this debate—the 173 comments the Lohan post inspired testify to the controversy a well-selected photo can spark—but it's questionable that that's what The Big Picture is doing. Like the Wintour post from last year, this seems designed to mock and embarrass, not illuminate and enlighten. (The Big Picture's second selection, Sting, is a little more flattering to its subject, but still prompted comments like "[What is the point of this? To show celebrities' pores? Please drop this feature.")

Anna Holmes, editor in chief of Jezebel, a women's site that has been critical of retouching in the past (it won early attention and readership for revealing the many ways a Redbook cover photo of Faith Hill was dramatically altered), said she didn't wince when she saw the extreme closeup of Lohan in The Big Picture, but saw instead the Huffington Post's traffic-grabbing tactics written large.

"I don't think it's a particularly inspired feature," she told Portfolio.com. "I looked at the photo for all of 15 seconds, and I don't see the point. A lot of blogs that deal with celebrity images have a following because the bloggers say nasty stuff. Huffington Post avoids that by not saying [anything] and letting the commenters say it."

"I do think it invites bad behavior on the part of the lowest common denominator," she continued. "They're encouraging the lowest common denominator. I don't think there's any reason for that."

"I don't think they're presenting this to question images we're fed on a daily basis. They do things for traffic. That's the way that site operates. They have to make money."

Asked if he thought the Huffington Post's The Big Picture—like French Elle's stars without cosmetics—was meant to be a response to too much altering of celebrities' photos, retoucher Tarantino wrote, "It may very well be a response, as you state, to overly-idealized celebrities. For that matter, models also. If that is the case, then they have gone too far in the other direction by accentuating instead of just presenting."

"I'm still amazed by the controversy photo retouching can excite," PDN's Hughes told Portfolio.com. "I thought by now everybody knew that fashion and celebrity magazines are retouched."

Hughes, who laughed a little as she described herself as "a woman of a certain age," said that far from exposing Lohan's flaws, The Big Picture makes the actress "look pretty good." (She did, however, say, "It's true that she hasn't had a manicure.")

Looking at The Big Picture's pictures of Lohan, Hughes asked, "Is it so bad that we're all reminded that celebrities are all human?"