The myth of the ugly children photo

You may well have seen this advertisement, which says in Chinese, "The only thing you'll ever have to worry about is how to tell the kids."

Its pretty un-subtle and cruel message is that if you have plastic surgery, the only problem you'll ever face is your ... well, let's say average-looking offspring, because even plastic surgery can't fix your genes and DNA.

The woman in the advertisement is supposedly a well-known Taiwanese model and actress Heidi Yeh.

And a story appearing over the last three days in many internet blogs and other media has a sad tale of how the photo ruined her career and her family life, because her (rich, handsome, real) husband in the photo didn't realize she had undergone extensive plastic surgery before he met her.

The story - you may have seen it - has extensive detail, including about her $155,000 lawsuit against the advertising firm J. Walter Thompson for breaking their agreement on how the photo was to be used.

It's a sad story but it's untrue.

Start with this small problem that News Everyday had in trying to get details on the story from colleagues in Taiwan. There's no "famous actress and model" named Jenny Yeh. Nor is there any plastic surgery shop in Taiwan called Simple Beauty, at least of a size to do international or even national advertising.

Like too many Internet stories these days, this one has been manufactured from a rather silly meme, fleshed out with names and details that most readers aren't going to check, and within a day, literally, gets around the world far in advance of explanations of its falsity.

ADDENDUM: "The story of Jenny Yeh" appears to be the melding of the "family photograph" with another, earlier myth passed off by some websites as truth three years ago, and eight years before that.

In that story, a mainland Chinese man, Jian Feng, sued his wife and won $120,000 because she didn't tell him she had undergone plastic surgery until after the couple had a homely baby.

The nut quote from the 2013 story on far too many websites: "Our daughter was incredibly ugly, to the point where it horrified me." That was the father, supposedly talking to a reporter. It, too, was untrue.