A student attending an all girls school was shocked when she received a reprinted student card to find that her photograph had been retouched without her knowledge.  She posted the following comments to a popular web site:

I go to an all girls high school and today every senior got a new student ID. We had gotten one in the beginning of the school year and we were all unsure as to why we were given a second. After closer inspection we realized that our photos had be retouched far past smoothing out blemishes. Here is a list of changes made in my photo:

• face smoothing
• skin recoloring
• lip recoloring
• eyebrow smoothing and reshaping
• face thinning

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.

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.

So how drastic were the changes?  See for yourself:

These types of changes are more and more common in the industry, and in this case the photography company in question communicated these changes to the school, and the school failed to pass that message on to their students.  At this point, the school has opted to print the ‘untouched’ photos instead of the doctored ones.

After meeting with my high school it has been determined that the untouched original photos will be use in the yearbook. The edits were not made by my school but rather the company our school used. These changes were made with notification to the school. When our yearbook teacher saw the photos he was outraged along with all the other staff members of the school. They understood that the new edited photos are not what the students look like. I would like to thank all of the positive comments about how wrong this is and how there need to be changes in this. 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”.