Don't like it? Photoshop it!

So it looks like the discussion surrounding body image is never going to go away, especially not when schools are allowing their students' ID photos to be photoshopped without their express permission.

That’s right; a school in the US has come under fire after a student realised her photo had been digitally altered, so that her face appeared slimmed down, her eyebrows darkened and her lips re-coloured. What an uplifting moment that must have been for the teen.

If it wasn’t such a serious matter, it would almost be laughable. And if I hadn’t seen the photo or had it happen to me, I’d honestly question the validity of the teen’s claims.

Oh yes, I too fell victim to the photographer’s studio and upon receiving a photo of my final school dance saw that the photographer, or the studio, (or both) had a bit of a problem with a girl being taller than her dinner date.

The transformation wasn’t quite as dramatic as that already mentioned, but I’m not sure if that was because technology was less advanced back then or I wasn’t seen as an urgent case. Either way, I was shortened. I dread to think what they'd have done to me had serious photoshopping been on the scene when I was in school.

Anyway, in the same way Kate Winslet was lengthened on the cover of GQ, I was shortened on the stage of a dodgy hotel function room. (Yes, I compared my life to Kate’s. Leave me alone. I got shortened, for crying out loud!)

And it hurt. My appearance didn’t fit in with the photographer’s ideals and in a bid to ensure the photo met his own standards of beauty, he altered how I looked and made me question a physical quality I had spent much of my teens trying to accept.

Echoing how I felt all those years ago, the student who recently got ‘shopped said: “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 twins sister's.”

We live in an age where children and teens are exposed to innumerable images of what it means to have a ‘perfect body’ so what happens when they don’t? How do we combat it? We tell them they’re perfect as they are…and then we photoshop them anyway. Marvellous!

The thought of my own daughter experiencing even one-tenth of the distress I felt when I discovered my own digital alteration makes my breath catch and my heart pound.

If this trend continues, I can only imagine how bad it will be by the time she reaches that stage in her education. Along with checking her name off the registration, teachers will be checking which features my daughter should have changed before the all-important photo hits the yearbook.

Dramatic, yes?  Completely beyond the realms of posiibility? No.