School
Photo Touch-Ups: A Good Idea?
The
largest photography company, Lifetouch,
Inc. will start offering all students from elementary school
to high school an opportunity to pay for their school pictures
to be digitally touched-up, removing skin blemishes and acne.
Since school pictures for most people are the most dreaded pictures
until they get driver’s licenses, Lifetouch expects this
new promotion would be a hit.
Lifetouch,
Inc. is the biggest school photography outfit in both Canada and
the US and is taking in approximately $ 1.6 billion dollars in
business. With the average cost of each student’s photo
set being $20 to $25 the new offer to touch-up the photos would
add another $6 to for each student if they choose to take the
option. That would potentially add on over $300 million in extra
profit!
Let’s
be honest, how many of us would jump for the chance to fix up
our bad school pictures? We could let the photographer get
rid of the acne! There’s always at least one year where
pictures were due and the morning before we wake up with a pizza
face. For most of us, looking back in our school yearbooks is
almost as horrifying as our driver’s license pictures. Maybe
the DMV will take Lifetouch’s example and offer a touch-up
as well.
…But
I digress.
Although
it sounds like a great opportunity for our kids to be saved from
the humiliation of having our awkward adolescence documented,
Lifetouch’s decision to offer the extra package has received
some criticism. The main issue is the message that offering this
chance for our kids to touch up their imperfections sends to them.
Groups that are concerned about the promotion worry about the
pressure it places on manly girls to conform to overwhelming standards
of beauty. With a culture that already puts pressure on our kids
who struggle with the media's definition of beauty, many people
fear this could be seen as another occasion when just being you
isn't good enough.
A
spokesman for Lifetouch said in a recent interview with the U.S.
Business Reporter that the retouch service was introduced in response
to a changing market requiring new technologies and customers’
demands. The photography industry is quickly evolving from regular
film to digital imagery; it’s easy to retouch photos as
people request it. With so many private photographers and Internet
yearbook services offering this same service, Lifetouch says it’s
just trying to keep up with the demand.
As reported by the Photo Marketing Association, the demand for
school photos remain steady, however, fewer and fewer parents
are requesting reprints (where Lifetouch makes the real money)
and have gone to other photography companies who offer touch-up
services. Parents tend to reprint their own from a single photo
or take it to a local photo shop for touch up services.
For
those who oppose the new offer from Lifetouch, those horrifying
school photos are a way to provide a record of what we used to
look like and are meant to provide that same sense of nostalgia
for our kids. They’re not intended to be glamour shots;
instead they give us a memory of what we looked like each year
at the same time and same place. Those old school photos are a
preservation of memory of who we really were and what we had to
go through, no matter how good or bad those memories are. If nothing
else, looking back at those buck-toothed, acne riddled, floppy
haired pictures gives us a chance to laugh at ourselves.
So
what do you think? Does Lifetouch’s decision to allow students
the choice to alternate their school photos promotes an unhealthy
self-image or just gives them a chance to be saved from later
embarrassment?
