News

School Photoshop-Enforces Weird Dress Code

by Lauren Barbato

It's not unusual to have high school portraits touched up to hide blemishes, but how about shoulders and collarbones? According to FOX 13 News, a Utah high school Photoshopped the yearbook pictures of female students to make them appear more modest, because wearing a thick-strapped tank top is just showing way too much skin. The students didn't know their photos had been altered until they received the school's yearbook, giving them a big end-of-the-year surprise.

While most Photoshop disasters typically erase too much, leading to extreme thigh gaps or even missing arms, the photoshop fail of the Wasatch High School yearbook added too much. Tank tops became T-shirts, V-necks became boat necks, and undershirts were added to lower-cut necklines.

But what the students were most upset about is that the Photoshopping seemed random and inconsistent. In one case of two female students wearing nearly identical sleeveless denim vests, only one had sleeves added to her arms. Wasatch County Superintendent Terry Shoemaker said the school was acting in accord of its dress code.

“I feel like they put names in a hat and pick and choose who,” sophomore Rachel Russel told the news station. “There were plenty of girls that were wearing thicker tank tops and half of them got edited and half of them didn’t.”

According to the school district's dress code policy, clothing must be "modest, neat, clean" at all times:

Modesty includes covering shoulders, midriff, back, underwear, and cleavage at all times. Extreme clothing, including but not limited to, baggy or "sagging" clothing; excessively oversized clothing; inappropriately short, tight, or revealing shorts, skirts, dresses, tank shirts, halter or crop tops, spaghetti straps, etc.; clothing that is mutilated, tom, ripped, or frayed; and crossdressing is prohibited.

The dress code policy also states that tattoos that are "extreme," "conspicuous" or "odd" are prohibited, which explains why the officials at Wasatch High School removed one student's tattoo from her portrait.

Several students told the local news station that if they had known their pictures were going to be edited, they would have changed their outfits. "They didn't give you an option to fix it," said sophomore Shelly Baum. "So you look funny in your yearbook picture."

Wasatch County Superintendent Terry Shoemaker admitted the school should have applied the dress code policy to each student. He added that school officials want to be more consistent next time to "help kids better prepare for their future by knowing how to dress appropriately for things."

However, Shoemaker said the students should have known they were violating the dress code. Uh, okay!

Images: Fox 13 News