We are a society that is obsessed with looks, I get it. But what I don’t get is why people are so willing to accept it.
It’s one thing to want to look nice and to keep yourself well groomed, but it’s an entirely different subject when suddenly how you look overtakes your entire life.
It disgusts me, but I’m willing to brush it off to some degree when it comes to adults, but children are a different story, and as you can see from my posts from the last few weeks, I get highly miffed when adults let their shallowness influence children’s innocence.
This is why I just had to shake my head at this Newsweek article about retouching children’s school photos. At first I laughed, I laughed quite hard in fact, but then I realized that it wasn’t a joke and that these people were serious.
How do you explain that to your kid? Maybe you choose not to, you just have it done and tell them how pretty or handsome they are. Then what happens when they realize that’s not how they look?
“Sorry Johnny but your pictures are too ugly to be displayed in my office”
I want to give it the benefit of the doubt and say that most parents probably would only use it to retouch a stray hair or something minor; but I can’t, because I know that people take things too far. First it’s a stray hair, then it’s just removing a blemish, next it becomes slimming a facial feature, then why not airbrush the complexion and the next thing you know a simple school photo turns into a Vogue photo shoot.
This image obsession has already gone too far, it’s to the point where it’s ok to attack women’s self esteem and make them chase for unattainable beauty standard. Now we are moving on to children?
I hate to think what’s next, but sadly I bet the worst is yet to come.
7 responses so far ↓
1 srah // Feb 27, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I seem to remember airbrushing being an option even when I was in elementary school (1985-1991).
2 DJ Nelson // Feb 27, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Wow. That’s interesting. I didn’t even know what airbrushing was until high school. Even then I never knew it was an option for “regular folks”.
3 Tracee Sioux // Feb 28, 2008 at 2:54 pm
hehehehe - I worked for a high-end photographer as the photoshop artist and many, many parents change their children’s appearance.
They felt their children are not people so much as their personal creation or artistic masterpiece.
Especially the poor brides and girls getting senior pictures.
If you think girls just develop low self-esteem you should hear the body criticism coming out of their mother’s mouths “suck your stomach in, your legs look fat like that, can you touch up her nose and make her lips fuller, don’t hold your head like that it makes you look like you have a double chin, I don’t like your hair like that.”
4 DJ Nelson // Feb 28, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Thank you guys for educating me. I guess I am out of touch because this is so new to me.
5 Dannie // Feb 29, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Although offered every years when my children get school pictures, I never do it. Kids are kids and let them see what they looked like. That is how they learn about their past. Now, once I did have my daughter’s ballet pictures touched up a bit because she decided to roll around in poison ivy and it was all over her face. I only asked that some of the redness be taken out of her face. We still have ballet pics with a swollen face and they are definitely for remembering.
6 Dannie // Feb 29, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I forgot to add one thing. One time I had a picture taken for work-related thing for a newsletter and the photographer took it upon himself to retouch my photo. See, I have a mole on my lower left chin and he felt I wanted it taken off instead of asking me. You know, when I was 10 years old I would have said, “Yes, take it off”, but at 34 I am so use to it, it irritated me more than anything.
7 DJ Nelson // Feb 29, 2008 at 2:10 pm
That’s just rude.
I can just imagine someone saying “well I thought you’d like it if I took those extra 10 lbs off of your hips. That will be $30.”
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