Don’t make school photos glamorous
NOW come on, for heaven’s sake get a grip. Boys and girls, mums and dads, company directors and head teachers, settle down, take a breath and have a long hard think about what you are doing.
We all remember the school photo. That’s right, the rolled up one featuring everyone in the establishment including matron and the caretaker and the unflattering one you wished your grandma wouldn’t insist on displaying on the mantelpiece for the next 30 years.
They inevitably came in an ugly cardboard frame and were always taken just after two sweaty hours of lacrosse in a world devoid of hairdryers. Your oily skin gleamed garishly against your pea green school shirt, your greasy hair was plastered to your head as only teenage locks can be. Of course, a tomato-sized zit burst from your chin like a horror movie special effect.
School photos were hell. The lighting was nonexistent. We were all either ghostly and anaemic or weirdly bleached. The developing was brutal. Talk about warts and all. We were captured in a state of imperfection, caught for all time looking like we always did – messy, spotty, podgy, frizzy and flawed.
The world has changed. We have all plunged into such a headlong love affair with narcissism that school photography specialists, including Cardwell & Simmons, which covers more than 700 schools, is now offering parents the option of having their children’s pictures airbrushed.
THE digital enhancing, blemish removing computer magic will be unleashed on pupils as young as 11 and although some parents have expressed concern, others will no doubt embrace the opportunity.
There is something disquieting about doctoring school pictures. They are not “glamour shots”. They couldn’t be further from the Kardashian inspired selfies children take, edit and tinker with on their phones. School photos are supposed to be an accurate record captured when your receptive young mind was occupied with higher and finer things than the curve of your cheekbones and sweep of your eyelashes. THERE are few women of whom I can say: I walked in her slippers, cooked in her oven, raided her fridge and reclined in pyjamas with her late husband but, courtesy of Wife Swap in 2007, Debbie McGee is one.
Paul Daniels and I did not see eye to eye but one fact emerged You were grappling with irregular French verbs, navigating Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter, doing your utmost to form the ultimate copper sulphate crystal while not fiddling with your fringe and rearranging your cleavage.
In loving memory of all the inspirational vividly in the programme: Debbie and Paul were very much in love and virtually spoke, talked, ate and walked as one.
She was utterly devastated at his death at the age of 77 from a brain tumour in March and must be horrified at Paul’s oldest son and namesake seeking publicity schoolgirl heroines who didn’t give a damn about smuts on their chins and rips in their jumpers – Jo March, Pippi Longstocking, Katy Carr, Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm, Anne Of Green Gables and The Naughtiest Girl In The School – because they were so busy getting because she hasn’t showered him with cash from his father’s estate.
At 56, Daniels Junior is old enough to know good manners from bad, and the difference between a devoted wife of 28 years and a gold digger. He shames himself and dishonours his father’s memory when he says: “She is into scrapes, playing pranks and having fun. Let’s take the pressure off our children and point them in the direction of what really matters. Knowledge is power. No one should waste a single moment pretending that outcrop of blackheads on their forehead never existed.
DEBBIE McGEE DOES NOT DESERVE SUCH UNKINDNESS FROM PAUL DANIELS’ SON
nothing but a false witch who will struggle to survive without my father’s name attached to her.”
Debbie has been provided for by her loving spouse, presents a thriving radio show and is both resourceful and hard-working, qualities that seem unknown to her unchivalrous stepson.