During the BBC documentary “My Supermodel Baby“, a casting director reveals that it isn’t just adult supermodels who are routinely Photoshopped for print. A five month old infant’s photo was digitally altered to remove rolls of baby fat and crease lines, in an effort to make the child look slimmer.
Daniella Delaney, editor of Practical Parenting and Pregnancy, says that it’s normal to remove blotchy coloration from skin and spittle, but neither confirmed nor denied that fat rolls were removed. ” … we don’t have a hit list of thing[s] we look out for.”
This is an alarming trend that has been in the media for years, but it never once occurred to me that it might be applied to babies. I’d think the reasoning behind retouching adult models is to project an ideal to the reader that they can emulate if they choose to, and the magazine is then filled with advertisements for products that will help them do that. But babies look the way they do naturally, and develop the way they do according to biological imperatives. Why on Earth would you want to slim down your infant, or even pretend that that is a desirable outcome?
This expectation of an arbitrarily-decided perfection is insidious in many respects, not the least of which is the fact that it’s non-functional. If you are a horrible person, your physical appearance will not change that. The beauty industry emphasizes all the wrong aspects of humanity, and it needs to stop. No one can ever look as “good” as they do in a photo, nor should they. Parents, please raise your children to understand that outward appearances are never as important as inner beauty. You will spare us all a lot of grief in the long run.
