They've airbrushed her mole away...

[Carolra]

DD is 18mo, her nursery have photo companies come in every 6 months or so and take photos of the kids which the parents can then buy. They're very old school - in the crappy paper frame thing, all in the same traditional pose.

So I picked up DD's yesterday, its actually a nice photo, she's smiling which is practically impossible to catch on camera and her eyes are all twinkly - so yes, we'll buy the photo pack at £35 thank you very much.

Until I took a closer look and realised they've airbrushed out the mole on her forehead. Its not a huge unsightly thing, but its pretty obvious and every picture I have of her picks it up, so this can't have been a camera issue. They have looked at her face and decided to "fix" her and I find that distasteful and a little disturbing that even at 18mo her "flaws" are being wiped out.

I'm tempted to write to them and complain.... but I can't decide if I'm just being totally pfb about it. It's probably not worth my time, but it's bothering me... I intend on keeping the picture anyway, but I'd quite like to see the original pre-airbrushed version.

Thoughts!?

I wonder if they've just applied a portrait type programme to it, that automatically smooths skin tone, rather than doing it manually?

Oh, that would be awful as they'd erase all the lovely freckles that you get on children. I love seeing a smattering of freckles on little ones.

WRITE AND COMPLAIN!

If you don't what are you telling your daughter? Your baby is perfect and they are utter utter cunts.

I han't got around to doing anything about this today, but MyHumps you have inspired me to get it sorted out!

They never replied to my email, so when I picked dd up yesterday, I spoke to the nursery staff about it - they were horrified, but still had our payment envelope so gave it back to me.

I then called the company this morning and she pulled up the original picture... she said to me "oh, but that's a blemish"... er no, its her perfect face thank you very much! She back tracked really quickly and said "oh, I meant it's not just a fleck of dirt"... clutching at straws much?

Anyway, they're going to send me out a new pack, with the mole back in. Assuming I can work out the technology, I will post a copy of both the pictures when the new ones arrive and you can make a collective judgement on the mole vs dirt decision.

I'm totally mortified that ANY childrens photos these days get airbrushed! It's no wonder kids start to worry about being fucking fat at 6 years old!

Carolra you say ' Its not a huge unsightly thing, but its pretty obvious and every picture I have of her picks it up, so this can't have been a camera issue.'
If it had been huge would that have made it acceptable to remove? No, I think not!

I don't think it's acceptable to remove cuts/scars/freckles/the odd spot bla bla bla, this is a child! It's how they are. If any parent thinks it's acceptable to have it perfected then they are doing a disservice to their children. I mean pinking up lips?! Making eyes bluer!? Blonding up red hair??? Even removing the odd stray hair in the face. NO NO NO.. I'm fucking furious. my keyboard is getting battered as I type this.

Fuck me the cunts will be slimming down the kids next. 'Just make the kid look a bit more streamlined.' 'Remove that bit of muffin top at the side'

I guess whenever my wee one has photo's done I'm going to have to have a chat with the photographers beforehand to see what their normal practices are. I'm off for a cigarette I need to calm down.

I have a small light brown mole on my cheek. I love it so much that I actually highlight it with a brown eyeliner everyday. Even on makeup free days I still draw in my mole. It's me and I would be horrified if anyone tried to airbrush it away. Good for you OP for standing your ground.

Still fuming that this seems to be normal practice with photographers for childrens photos

for NinaJade. It's friday after all.

I agree with you completely by the way - I don't know why I said anything about it not being huge and unsightly - I guess I meant that if it was really big, it would have been instantly noticable what they'd done, but it wasn't... it was quite a subtle change.

Everyone I've spoken to about this is pretty horrified - even my dad was speechless... he made the point about the next step being removing her chubby bits....

I'd quite like to hear from some parents who would want their kids touched up - surely there must be some out there or this wouldn't be happening?!

DD had a photo taken by one of these school type photographers, beautiful picture, except that she had a obvious bogey hanging from her nose. I wished they had airbrushed that away!! But removing moles or other features, no way, totally unacceptable. I think childhood is the only time photos can ever be truly natural and this should be cherished.

Did they actually realise it was a mole? Just that I've heard of photographers offering to airbrush bumps / scrapes, etc, maybe they didn't realise it was actually permanent? Mind you, they'd have found out if they'd actually offered...