Say ‘Cheese!’ And Now Say ‘Airbrush!’

We've all looked back on grade-school photos and wondered, "What in God's name was I thinking?" For me it started with buckteeth and hair-sprayed bangs-a true child of the '80s. Then came the braces, stringy hair and oversize Kurt Cobain T-shirt, the tween years of Seattle grunge. High school wasn't actually that long ago, but I'm sure whatever it was I wore will be grossly unfashionable by the time my 10-year reunion hits.

The grade-school class portrait is a time capsule of sorts-a bittersweet reminder of forgotten cowlicks, blemishes and crooked teeth. Awkward, at least in retrospect, is awfully cute. So it's sad to think those mortifying school snapshots might soon be a thing of the past. A growing number of photo agencies and a horde of Web sites now offer retouching for kids to wipe their every imperfection clean: powdering complexions, whitening teeth, erasing braces or freckles. And parents are signing up their kids at younger and younger ages.

"It surprises me so much when a mom comes in and asks for retouching on a second-grader," says Danielle Stephens, a production manager for Prestige Portraits, which has studios in nearly every state and starts its service at $6. "I have a 12-year-old, and I'd be afraid that if I asked for retouching she'd think she wasn't good enough."

Not all parents are as worried about the message they'll send. The rise in retouching is just one byproduct of a culture consumed with the idea "that the body is perfectible," says psychoanalyst Dr. Susie Orbach. Stephens says that nearly every middle- and high-school order comes in with retouching requests. At Legacy Photo, an agency outside Philadelphia, the tally is about half. "I had a mother on the phone for 45 minutes the other day [who was unhappy with her daughter's hair]," says Kelly Price, a photographer at Legacy, whose youngest students are sixth-graders. "People want their kids to look perfect rather than teach them to appreciate their flaws."

There is no market data on photo alteration for kids, but all the agencies contacted by NEWSWEEK agreed that the clients are getting younger. And that might cost our children more than just a fond nostalgia piece. Kids form body images almost as soon as they can form words, and already studies show that girls think negatively about their shapes from as young as grammar school. Today 42 percent of first-to-third-grade girls want to be thinner, while 81 percent of 10-year-olds are afraid of getting fat, according to a 2004 global study by the Dove "Real Beauty" campaign. Out of 3,000 women and girls surveyed by Dove in 10 countries, that study found that just 2 percent said they'd describe themselves as beautiful, while two-thirds said they avoided basic activities on days they felt unattractive, ranging from going to the beach or a party to showing up for work or school-or even voicing an opinion.

"I think there used to be a kind of separation between fairy-tale figures, like those in the magazines, and properties of the self," says Orbach, a professor at the London School of Economics and the author of the 1978 best-seller "Fat Is a Feminist Issue." "But kids these days are acutely aware of body image from the get-go."