CVS announces most of its beauty photos will not be retouched

Actor Kerry Washington has praised the pharmacy chain over the move

CVS has announced plans to stop digitally altering the majority of the photos in its beauty aisles in an effort to become more transparent with its customers.

The American pharmacy chain unveiled its “Beauty Mark” initiative in 2018, a scheme that strives to ensure that marketing materials for beauty products are not retouched or altered in any way.

A year later, the "Beauty Mark" initiative has officially come into effect, with 70 per cent of the beauty imagery in CVS stores either not being airbrushed or being labelled as digitally altered.

CVS hopes for all beauty imagery in its stores to be compliant with the initiative by 2020.

"We've made a commitment to not materially alter the beauty imagery we create for our stores, marketing materials, websites, apps or social media," the company states.

"We will not digitally alter or change a person's shape, size, proportion, skin or eye colour or enhance or alter lines, wrinkles or other individuals characteristics."

CVS is the first major company in the US to adopt a policy of this nature with regards to airbrushed images, Reuters reports.

Numerous cosmetics brands are working wtih CVS on the "Beauty Mark" campaign, including Revlon, Neutrogena and CoverGirl.

Neutrogena creative consultant Kerry Washington, most famous for her starring role in political drama Scandal, has praised the pharmacy company for the move.

"I know what it's like to wake up and look at my own face on the cover of a magazine and say, 'Wow, somebody at a computer changed the shape of my face because they weren't happy with what I look like'," Washington tells NBC News.

"It's really about saying we should stand behind the power and quality of our products to do what they do.

"We don't need digital transformations to misrepresent our products. Our products are strong, our spokespeople are proud, and we can just be out there in the world celebrating our beauty, using the products to put our best face forward without the help of computers."

Photos that haven't been retouched in CVS stores will be labelled as "Beauty Unaltered", while pictures that have been edited will be labelled as "Digitally Altered".

In 2014, CVS became the first US pharmacy chain to stop selling tobacco products.