The recent story about McKinney High School yearbook has shocked the world, or at least some of the people mostly Americans. If only those pictures are real, it would be a real gory massacre like those hideous new-age horror movies. Heads are torn and switched with others bodies, necks are stretched and other things that makes photo manipulation an evil deed.

Do you want to look like this on your yearbook?

Obviously, this whole thing might be a product of a disgruntled employee of the photo company. Or yet, it’s a vengeful gesture of the school’s alum that always got beaten during high school. However, the real question or issue – would it be such fuzz if the pictures are edited positively? For instance, all the zits and blemishes are carefully removed just like those photos on the cover of the magazine. It’s everybody’s common denominator to look good on the yearbook. Why:

1. Because it is worth for an autograph. Who doesn’t want every signature of the class, especially the jocks and the cheerleaders? It’s kind of off if there would be some mocking laughs when someone is signing the yearbook. It’s hard to avoid being asked, “So where’s your photo?”
2. Because friends compare. It’s a tradition of some sort that friends ought to compare who looks better or worse. No one can literally escape such situations. The yearbook is as big deal as the dresses and dates for the prom.
3. Because ten years later, everyone wants to look back and still compare. Everybody wants to know who still remains as they are. For example, are the cheerleaders still pretty and popular? Are the geeks making more money that everyone else?
4. Because it’s the last picture that proves youth. Indeed, a yearbook picture looks into a thousand teenage experiences that signify the firsts and the worsts, like first cigarette puff, first beer and everything else that gets to be stupid actions that represent being young and restless.
5. Because it is a photo that measures one’s success. It actually becomes a motivation for some students, transcending how that picture speaks of them. Success is relative but everyone wants to reach that point in life when the loser at the back of the class has turned out to be humanity’s all-time hero.
   

Again, had the pictures turned out to make everybody’s pictures perfect, that news would definitely be nonexistent. It’s just that those photos resulted in a bad way. There could be a lot of arguments, protests and even lawsuits, but eventually, fighting over the matter is really so high school-ish. But if that’s the point, then authorities can challenge the responsible person for the yearbook massive visual error.

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