Sunday, February 1, 2015

Missouri High School Students Upset Over Edited ID Photos


           As if young women are not already stressing about their appearance, St. Teresa's Academy has been under fire for altering the appearance of their students' ID photos.

       The all girl academy noticed something different about their pictures when receiving copies back. Realizing that there had been major retouching to the images, many were unhappy with the situation.

        Zoe Royer took to Reddit to express her offense taken in the retouching of her school picture. Explaining that she was finally coming to appreciate the beauty of her face when she received photos of her face which was slimmer, smoother and freckle-less. Zoe's experience is not rare at all. All of the students reported a drastic alteration in their appearance. Slimmer face, neck and cheeks were distributed to each girl, while freckles among other blemishes were stripped away from the photos.

  After Royer's disappointment gained attention around the internet, St. Teresa's Academy immediately apologized and redistributed unaltered photos to each student. The explanation offered was that the pictures had all been automatically run through a retouching software which edited all of the students' pictures. Right.

     It seems ever so apparent that there is an ideology in America that supports the alteration of women in photos. When I say it is an ideology, I mean that immediately editing your own appearance is a social reaction that has become extremely normalized over the years. From social media, apparently all the way into education, young women are more and more conscious about altering their appearance in pictures. I think it says a great deal about our society's self-esteem when photoshop is readily accessible, and even "accidentally" imposed upon an entire student body.

          With that considered, I question our representation-of-self in America. Why are filters, blemish erasers, and face slimming software suddenly so essential to representing our "true" self? This is an example of an instance where representation is "reconstruction rather than reflection," as Dr. Catherine Steele put it.
   
          What do you think? Is it a forgettable mishap that student photos were accidentally retouched or is this an example that we should learn from?

1 comment:

  1. I found this to be very interesting! With social media like Instagram and Facebook there is a disillusion of who we really are as individuals. The filters and editing have become a real problem. I like with your take on the problem stemming from the ideology in America. Overall, I think this was a great story to use.

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