By: Leslie Goldman

Nov 02, 2009

Former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham recently revealed that seven days a week, 365 days a year, you can find her huffing and puffing and sweating away the fat at the gym. Her motivation:  "I didn't want to rely on retouching," the 35-year-old mother of three told British Harper's Bazaar.

We’re left to assume, then, that she actually looks like this, without too much help from digital retouching.

While her dedication to aerobic fitness is admirable (if not more than a tad cuckoo) , I feel it responsible to point out a teeny error in Posh’s way of thinking: I believe she’s confusing airbrushing for hi-definition television and photography.

The entire point of airbrushing is that you DON’T need to look perfectly toned and fit. People go to college and grad school and complete apprenticeships with the sole goal of becoming professional retouchers, able to change size As to size Cs, acne-flecked skin to porcelain, muffin tops to six packs. Airbrushing is the very reason she should feel comfortable letting herself skip the gym here and there. She’ll still look impossibly, inhumanly, perfectly alien-like in her Emporio Armani ads, but she could do so while enjoying a French Fry or even going balls-out with a small handful of almonds.
Two other issues of concern here:

1) Working out every day is not something to be lauded, but a symptom of obsession and harmful to your body and soul. Even I, a devoted exercise freak, take two days off a week. I was recently chatting with a woman in my locker room who asked me how often I use a certain machine. She then told me she hasn’t missed a day at the gym in two years – and she knew the exact date of her last skipped workout in 2007. That, my friends, is worth the price of a one-way ticket to Crazytown.

2) She clearly is still being airbrushed. Nothing against her – if I were offered the luxury of knowing every pic ever taken of me could be altered to make me look thinner or smoother or more gorgeous, I’d probably leap at it, then post a shot of myself dancing in a thong and push-up bra as my Facebook photo. But let’s call a spade a spade.

PS If anyone from my Chicago gym is reading, when are we getting the strength-training machine that will make me look like this?