School digitally edits yearbook photos - young women's clothing choices judged

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Utah Fox coverage

WASATCH COUNTY, Utah — Female students at a Utah high school want to know why their yearbook photos were altered to show less skin without them knowing about it.

The students who were surprised to find their photos altered attend Wasatch High School, and some of them said they also feel upset because it appears the decisions whether to alter the photos or not weren’t made consistently.

“I feel like they put names in a hat and pick and choose who,” Sophomore Rachel Russel said. “There were plenty of girls that were wearing thicker tank tops and half of them got edited and half of them didn’t.”

And that’s what bothered the girls the most. It seemed like the school randomly picked which pictures to edit. In one case, two different girls were wearing nearly identical tops: one photo was altered to add sleeves and the other was not. At least two dozen girls had their photos altered. The students who spoke with FOX 13 News were not aware of any male students who had their photos altered.

But educators said the students know the dress code and there was a sign warning them that their pictures may be edited. However, the Wasatch County Superintendent admits the school erred in not applying the same rules to each student.

“We only apologize in the sense that we want to be more consistent with what we`re trying to do in that sense we can help kids better prepare for their future by knowing how to dress appropriately for things,” said Terry E. Shoemaker, who is the superintendent of schools for the Wasatch County School District.

It doesn't look like anyone's posting information on the dress code for this school, so no word on whether or not the edited outfits in question do or do not fail to meet its requirements. However, that both a) similar outfits didn't net alteration equally and b) the students were not approached about their clothing selection or anything and only made aware of someone on the faculty's/yearbook staff/whatever disapproval at publication suggests that this "excuse" is irrelevant. Also while I admit that I'm not familiar with how strict non-uniform dress codes might be in high schools, I can't help but feel like none of the clothing options shown are at all out-of-bounds?


Pair that element of this with the fact that it appears zero male students were affected, and I can't help but see this as some kind of shaming directed at the young women affected. This is basically the folks in charge at this school pointing fingers at a handful of young women and calling them indecent, maybe even implying more. It makes me wonder if there have been incidents with any of them before where the faculty or administration and the students got into altercations over dress.


Also lol @ the fake apology "we're helping them dress for success" nonsense.