Beauty unretouched

I was scrolling through my Facebook timeline the other day when I came across this picture:

original photo posted on deviantart.com

My first thought was, “What a cool picture.”

But then I read the caption. Something about a reverse albino condition which explains why the lion was black.

Pfft!!! Um, if black lions exist in nature why am I just now hearing about them on Facebook?

The picture is photo-shopped. If you click on the image it will take you to the website where it was originally posted. The creator of the photo says that it has been manipulated. But I suppose someone figured a real black lion is a much better story than one created by photo editing software–the truth be damned– and so a Facebook legend begins. There were a few comments which suggested that the picture was digitally altered, but the vast majority simply commented about how beautiful the black lion was. Maybe I’ve become a cynic in my old age, but it bothers me that not only do we easily believe the unbelievable, but choose to pass it on as truth without thinking twice about it.

When I went to snopes.com to confirm my suspicions, I was struck by how beautiful the original, un-retouched white lion was:

photo from snopes.com

And that bothers me even more; that we overlook authentic beauty in favor of its deceptive counterpart, that it’s not enough to say, “This is what a black lion would look like”, but instead choose to say “This is what a black lion looks like.”

Fiction intentionally disguised as truth is manipulation born of a deceitful heart.

Truth disguised as fiction is an art form born of a courageous one.

I prefer the latter.