Outraged High School Student: Can't Retouch This
Let it be known: This high school girl will not tolerate any alteration of her image.
Sometimes you get wind of a story that bolsters your faith in the next generation. In this case, I got wind of it six months after the fact, but it impressed me so much I just had to mention it here.An unnamed gutsy broad vented on Reddit after she and her peers noticed their student ID photos had been Photoshopped. According to her, changes included face slimming, eyebrow smoothing and shaping, and skin and lip recoloring. Big mistake, guys:
I was outraged! I have a round face that I have grown to love and now I get my photo back with a different face. The new photo no longer even looks like me but rather a prettier twin sister. When we go and have our photos taken we are flat out told that our skin will be retouched to hide blemishes. We are not told, however, that more drastic changes are made.
What she wrote next warms my very heart:
Going to an all girls school we are constantly reminded about positive body image and accepting ourselves for who we are. Having these changes made to make me appear thinner makes me wonder how must our school practices what they preach.
And I was all:
As it turns out, the school wasn't responsible for the changes; the company it contracted with had made them of its own volition. Indeed, according to our heroine, the yearbook adviser was as upset by the whole thing as she was, and the unretouched photos ran in the yearbook.
My school has proved that they are fully behind positive body image by printing the untouched photos. I am proud of my school and what they stand for. To sum it up, I want this issue of photoshopping to get the attention it needs but know that my school has realized that their students do not need to be "corrected".
I'm glad these students have a teacher who won't allow photo manipulation. I'm gladder still that this girl had the guts to speak up on behalf of herself and her peers. (Maybe we'll see her in Congress one day.)The takeaway for me and other women who feel strongly about encouraging healthy body images in our youth: It may be working, after all, and [inlinetweet prefix="" tweeter="" suffix="null"]we must keep preaching until all young women are as confident as this one[/inlinetweet].