While most yearbook photography services offer clients the option to take a digital brush to blemishes and other horrible teenage skin curses, it looks like one school got carried away when they apparently Photoshopped a student's face to make her appear thinner. Using soft lighting and cheesy filters to make high school memories look dreamy years down the road is a far cry from taking unapproved liberties with the basic features of a young woman's face—and it is far from OK. The affected young woman herself was the first to take notice and ask what we're all thinking: Why?
The teen girl took to Reddit to air her understandable annoyance and seek some answers. Apparently, the yearbook photo also served as a new school ID for the year. Among the jaw-dropping, totally outrageous, and unnecessary changes, the girl noted the previously mentioned face-thinning, a change of color to her skin and lips, and a complete eyebrow remodeling. The woman, using the Reddit handle love_a_good_ood, looked gorgeous in the original photo. There was no reason to make changes—especially without even asking her.
The student mentioned her all-girls school tends to trumpet self-love and positive body image, making the whole incident more troubling. "Having these changes made to make me appear thinner makes me wonder how must our school practices what they preach," she says. A valid question, indeed.
The image on the left is the untouched original. The one on the right is the edited photo. As you can see, the photography company is probably going to run into a lot of trouble explaining their motives. She looks great in the first take. Making those drastic edits is sure to throw her mind for a needless loop. "I have a round face that I have grown to love and now I get my photo back with a different face," she says, before adding the concerning contradiction. "The new photo no longer even looks like me but rather a prettier twin sister." Ugh. This is a bummer, made only slightly less upsetting by the fact that it happened to someone who seems to have a healthy enough level of self-acceptance to weather the issue with her self-esteem intact. But as we all know, not nearly every teenager has reached that point. Something like this happening to most people during their adolescence could genuinely leave lasting emotional damage.
It'll be interesting to hear the school's defense. And by "interesting" I mean "I have no idea how they are going to dodge the righteous hellfire precipitating from this situation." Apparently there won't be word for a while; The school's president is out of the office until later this month. "We hope when she gets back she will do something about it," the student says.
Image: Yandle/Flickr
