Cameras and summer bodies are never on the best of terms.Too much flesh, so many over-exposures. No body is safe. I know a good-looking guy who was basking pool-side when he looked into his friend’s sunglasses and saw a reflection of his bare chest. Scrambling for his T-shirt, he declared it was time to go on a fast.

There are so many ways to get caught. Just hope no one in your family is carrying one of those tiny sneaky video cameras. It’s bad enough that anyone can point their cellphone at you and send off an unflattering image to friends and family before you can say “cheese.” And you know what happens when your photo ends up in computer-ville. It hangs around forever, like cellulite.

Smarter to be the one with the camera. That way even if you become part of the photo you can delete the picture before anyone else sees it. This is the good thing about digital cameras. In the old days you had to wait until you got your prints back before ripping up what no other human eyes should be allowed to witness.

By the way, I consider it a matter of etiquette and loyalty to automatically kill all noxious photos of friends, sisters and mothers.

This concern came to mind following claims that photographs of the Real Bodies of Real Women in the Dove ad campaigns were digitally altered. Dove says no. The photographer, the famed Annie Leibovitz who cleverly makes sure she’s always on the safe side of the camera, says no.

The Dove people have been champs about celebrating women of all ages and shapes in their ads and billboards. Their products have the revolutionary label of Pro-Age, rather than anti-aging. And the women who appear in their undies and even less are truly proud of how they look. You wouldn’t see them hiding in the back row in the family barbecue pictures.

I consider it a matter of etiquette and loyalty to automatically kill all noxious photos of friends, sisters and mothers.

It’s a relief to see real bodies selling shampoo and moisturizer as an alternative to the hungry waifs that most in the beauty industry use to hawk their stuff. If the photos of the Dove models were altered at all – the photographer said only minor color corrections were made – it wasn’t enough to skew the message, which is that imperfection is the norm. One woman’s hefty backside is another woman’s generous belly.

This is something that we need to keep in mind as the sun burns down and we begin to strip. Suck in what you can, lather on the attitude, keep to the shadows and when someone calls for a group photo, be ready to say, “Let’s use MY camera.”

Listen to the audio version of “The Naked Truthiness” on the podcast page under Another Voice.