What sort of message are we sending our kids when schools offer to retouch school photo’s to ‘remove blemishes’ and ‘even skin tone’?
An award-winning British broadcaster living in Arizona was furious when her eight year old daughter’s school offered to airbrush her school pictures.
There were 2 levels of airbrushing offered: ‘basic retouching’, which promised to remove blemishes, and ‘premium retouching’, which also whitened the teeth and evened the skin tone.
The Mail Online reports: Sam Walker, who is originally from the UK but now lives in the US, took to Twitter and alongside an image of the form, penned: ‘The girls have their school photo today and there is the option to AIRBRUSH the picture!’
‘There are two levels offered!! What the….?! Have complained! What eight-year-old needs to be paranoid about an “uneven skin tone.”
And the BBC Radio 5 Live presenter’s followers quickly took to the comments section to express their shock at the options on offer.
That’s absolutely disgusting!! Yes WTF ,’ raged one, while another wrote: ‘Good grief. What an awful message to send to children. And from a school.’
A third added: ‘Yet another example of, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should,” while a fourth added: ‘Seems like a lot of hassle for whiter teeth and a couple of zits.’
Another who was left outraged by the suggestion went on to say how the entire point of a school photo is to ‘look back and laugh at how goofy’ they are.