Is it okay to touch-up our kid’s school photos? (11/23/10)

Did you know that so many parents are touching up their children’s school pictures that the photographers are now offering it as a purchasable option in one’s order form/package? What-the?!?!?

I was simply shocked, flabbergasted even when I read this! I mean what would life be like without the embarrassing photos of our youth? You know the ones I mean, the ones with the missing teeth, the large or strange hair of the era, your first pimple, your braces and the colored bands you thought were cool, the awkward years… the list just goes on and on. I mean we all survived it! It was our badge of accomplishment… whew, I made it through that stage too! Now as parents you look at each of these photos your child takes as another venture in growth by your little baby. Each step they take, each year that passes, each moment captured in a simple school snapshot is all leading them into adulthood…. AHHHHH! and don’t we want to hold onto each of those moments just as they are? Flawed and all?

When does perfection in this world become too much? We have crazy beautiful men and women on covers of every issue of magazine available at the checkout lines. We have strip malls filled with Gyms and isles and isles of diet pills and books, miracle lotions and supplements all designed to make us the skinner, healthier and younger version or ourselves. There is commercial upon commercial attesting to capturing perfection and youth, or gaining back something you may have lost in this loosing battle of aging. But with all of that we know there is airbrushing done, we know they are more than likely paying that high priced plastic surgeon gobs of money to keep them looking like that, not to mention the Botox parties. But that is something we as rational adults see and even then we often times have a hard time battling back our own insecurities and body issues. So by touching-up our child’s photos, what messages are we sending our children? That they are not good enough? That they are not pretty or cute enough?  That they would be perfect if only we could do this or get rid of that?

This has gone way beyond getting rid of “red eye” and into needing the picture perfect family to match the picture perfect house and the picture perfect life one is trying to attain!