Will image be everything in 1998?

By Alex Brenner

When I returned to Yale this semester, I found a magic brown envelope waiting for me. Along with my senior yearbook pictures, it contained a pamphlet from J.D. Brown Photography entitled "The power to do worlds with your image," which informed me that "anything you can imagine, we can do." By using photo retouching technology, the Seniors 2000 studio "lets you transform your image." Thus, if you pay, a computer will fix your teeth, clear up your complexion, and re-style your hair. In the age of Jurassic Park and Titanic, I suppose it was only a matter of time before computer-altered yearbook pictures arrived. But I fear that the increasing ease with which we can "make a few adjustments" to our yearbook photos takes us even closer to a world where, as Andre Agassi says, "Image is everything."

Granted, magazine photos of models have been airbrushed for years. Everyone knows, however, that these pictures are fakes, with models transformed through photography and retouching into any given season's ideal of beauty. Feminist leader Camille Paglia maintains that fashion magazines are modern-day Botticelli canvases, outlets for artistic creativity that once found expression elsewhere.Vogue is not a showcase for clothes 99 percent of women cannot afford, but rather a dreamscape of pretty garments hanging off retouched models whose physiques ensure their image remains largely unattainable (although women driven to anorexia pay a terrible price for failing to realize this). Yearbook photos, however, are not concerned with aesthetic ideals or artistic expression; they simply purport to represent us as we really are. While most of our classmates will probably not alter their photos, I find even the prospect of being able to do so distressing.

Some might argue that there is still a big difference between changing one's face in a yearbook and really changing one's face, à la Michael Jackson. However, a face and a picture of a face both exist as objective representations of ourselves; if we see nothing unnatural about altering our picture, then changing our real face begins to seem more and more like a quantitative, not a qualitative, step further. The studio tells us: "We figure that your senior portrait is something you'll have to look at for the rest of your life. So why not get one you really like?" Applying this logic to our actual faces, which we will be looking at more than our senior portraits, why indeed not get one we really like?

Well, more and more people are getting faces they really like (even Bob Dole got a facelift). The popularity of plastic surgery shows how much people want to--or feel the need to--"improve" themselves. The photo studio merely capitalizes on this sentiment when it proposes to fix our teeth. So while I am not intimating that yearbook photo alteration leads inexorably to plastic surgery, both instances of image-alteration do belong to a larger trend.

Of course everyone wants to be attractive. Attempts to beautify ourselves and stave off the ravages of age can be construed as obeisance to primal, evolutionary urges: we strive to attract mates and fight the signs of aging, which we equate with death. And since image transformation is nothing new (pharaohs and queens commissioned idealized portraits of themselves), perhaps technology is an equalizer, spreading the power to shape our image and carry out evolutionary compulsion. Unfortunately, because any "improvement" costs money, America's expanding income gap will move us further into a two-tiered society where money and beauty are ever more linked. (And this is just the beginning--genetic engineering will increasingly enable the wealthy to improve the health, beauty, and who knows what other characteristics, of their progeny.)

While concern with image may satisfy some carnal cravings, as rational creatures we must give primacy to the attitudes which most benefit our survival--and our children's. As people become more image-conscious, society increasingly shuns substance to wallow in the superficial. Because image obsession ultimately manifests itself as obsession with our own image, we become more self-absorbed at a time when other-directedness is needed to address domestic and international problems. The Bible--in part a handbook of how humans can best survive communal life--calls vanity a sin for logical reasons: too much concern for image is detrimental to the health of the society and perhaps of the species. The ability to give our vanity free reign in our yearbook photos--though a small change in itself--is yet another ominous sign of how image-obsessed we are becoming.

Alex Brenner is a senior in Silliman.

Back to Opinion...