I don’t know how I do it

Airbrush school photos? I’ll take a wonky grin any day!

WOULD you airbrush your children’s school photos? A stray hair tidied up, that temporary black eye removed, a tacky logo eliminated. It’s a deliciously tempting thought isn’t it? Especially for mums like me; having four children has produced a mountain of school photos and almost every single one has failed to deliver on expectation. Frankly, it’s been a decade of visual disappointment during which we’ve forked out hundreds of pounds for bizarre fake grins, poor fashion choices and uncomfortable eye contact.

There was Mabel’s reception class picture where she bore a striking resemblance to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on a bad day. The one where I forgot it was school photo day (I nearly always forget) and sent my son in wearing a sweater with ‘Monster’ written on it and a black-and-blue, golf-ballsized lump on his forehead after a scooter fracas.

And the one I wrestled my then 11-year-old daughter to the floor to retrieve before she binned it immediately.

When I grappled it out of her hand it looked so unlike her that if a kidnapper had sent it with a ransom note we would have replied ‘keep that child, it is clearly not genetically related to any of us’.

So, would I take up the offer that a group of mums at a West Sussex school were given last week to airbrush these wonky pictures?

Would I want a pile of perfect, Facebook-ready shots of a neater version of my family as they grow up, with fewer sticky-out ears and toothless smiles? Images I could proudly display on a mantelpiece without provoking the slightest guffaw? The answer is obviously no. And it’s not because — as the mothers at the school argued — I am worried about my children feeling they aren’t good enough. It’s not because I am worried it will affect their view of themselves, either physically or emotionally, as the mothers also mentioned.

The actual Photoshopping isn’t the issue for me, I don’t have a problem with that. My teenage daughters alter every picture they share on social media, they are well aware of what has been airbrushed, altered, filtered, and my offspring seem pretty confident in their sense of self right now.

No, it’s because I would be erasing beloved memories, changing the fabric of time to create a counterfeit past that wasn’t gloriously higgledy-piggledy, that wasn’t wonderfully unpredictable and adorable in its daily imperfections.

Airbrushing school pictures would be rewriting family history, stealing moments that make you laugh out loud.

We still smile at the one of the two older sisters sitting as far apart as possible on camera while giving each other a peculiar sibling side-eye.

This was back in the day when Sky, the eldest, now 14, used to introduce her sister as: ‘Gracie, she lives with us.’

These natural shots are the sometimes-forgotten tiny details of their growing years. Why would you want to break these ties that bind you to those unique childhood days?

Besides, it’s only ever you and your close relatives who see school photos. There would be no stories to tell your grandchildren if all your kids looked uniform in their school pictures.

And I wonder how far you’d go with retouching instructions? As a mum of four, straight-haired babies I’ve occasionally fantasised about having a child with wonderful corkscrew curls. Could you ask for that?

I do look at the photo where my then eight-year-old son is holding a recorder at a jaunty angle and wonder if it would be worth removing the world’s most hated instrument.

He doesn’t play the recorder (no one should) and it was only included in the picture because of a snazzy new school photographer who wanted to use props that year.

Henry cringes every time a visitor to the house asks how his recorder practice is going, but I love that we have this little footnote on his school days from last year.

In a world where we can change how everything looks with a touch of a button on our mobile phones, it somehow feels comforting and reassuring that class pictures are so, well, ‘old skool’.

Mabel, five, is already planning her outfits (she likes to combine two) for this year’s one — she’s mindful of the attention you get when the picture goes wrong.

As she said to me excitedly: ‘Everyone is still talking about last year’s.’