The Annual Problem

As seen in 1969

What I remember about my high school graduation photo is that I had to go all the way downtown to the Fabian Bachrach studio while wearing cutoffs and a t-shirt.  Once at the photographer's, I slipped into a white shirt recently doffed by a dozen or so photographic victims, clipped on the rakish bow tie and slipped my arms into a dampish white dinner jacket that would have been at home at any underworld funeral party, and sat down before a bored cameraman to give the old piano keyboard smile since reproduced in one yearbook and countless gag posters and blog entries.

No one ever confused me with some Hollywood type, but a larger version of this picture hung on the wall at the homestead for several years, and no milk curdled as a result.  There was no call to touch up the photo, but I see that some high school grads out in Utah got their yearbooks the other day and found that some joker decided that some of their pictures had to be altered so as to make them acceptable to people who read high school yearbooks. Of course, the problem is that the joker in question is one Terry E. Shoemaker, who is the superintendent of schools for the Wasatch County School District.  And another problem is that some girls' pictures got the electronic airbrush from Photoshop, and some similarly depicted girls did not.  Here are two examples, the left photos being the originals, the right being Terry Shoemaker's idea of what everyone ought to look like:

“We only apologize in the sense that we want to be more consistent with what we`re trying to do in that sense we can help kids better prepare for their future by knowing how to dress appropriately for things.”

The person who said that obfuscatory sentence is none other than Terry E. Shoemaker.  I think Shoemaker, whose picture from when he was chosen as Utah School Superintendent of the Year appears below, could a) get a new suit without those corny wide lapels  b) get a new haircut  and c) lose the lapel pin.  Or we could just photoshop all that mess away.  Sound ok, Terry?  Or don't you think it's right to alter someone else's appearance?