Cherishing a family photo, with all its flaws

The Boston Globe

Until a few weeks ago, I was a point and shoot purist, standing tall on my moral high ground refusing to even consider doctoring my photos to make anyone look better.

I edited my shots, of course, cropped and lightened and maybe softened a few facial lines. But no whitening of teeth, no smoothing of foreheads. No out, out damn spotting of freckles or blemishes. What was the point of making people look not like themselves, but what they might look like if they were nipped, tucked, and catapulted back in time? My goal, I said haughtily, was to take pictures that didn’t lie.

And then this happened: A photographer took a picture of me and Photoshopped it. And in this picture I have no wrinkles. None. Not on my forehead. Not around my eyes. Not even on my neck. My neck is smooth and lovely, a swan’s neck. Natalie Portman’s neck. And my teeth? They’re as white as they were when I was 14 and brushed them with Dr. Lyon’s Tooth Powder. There are no bags under my eyes, no puffiness, either. And, the pièce de résistance? In this picture, I am tall. I am lean. I am stretched, not in a bad way, not as in stretched too thin, or stretched to the limit, but stretched just right.

I sat at my computer and stared at this image and thought about Narcissus falling in love with his reflection. I never bought into this old Greek myth. But I understood a little better now. I look 10 to 15 years younger in this doctored photo. I don’t look tired. I don’t look old. This is who I would be if I could Photoshop my real self every day. I think I may have swooned.

I had a Brownie camera when I was a kid. Film was expensive to buy and to develop. You got 24 shots per roll and of the 24 shots, every one I took would come back overexposed or underexposed and always a little out of focus. I have them still, black and white squares, stored in an old cigar box, imperfect pictures of my mother, my father, my dog Buttons, and of my friends, Ann Marie Tantillo and Janet Butler. I looked at the big, perfect photo on my computer screen and thought about these small, imperfect ones.

Maybe whitening teeth (this photographer whitened mine) wasn’t the sin I thought it was. Maybe stretching a body was like stretching the truth. Doesn’t everyone do it? Maybe it was time to learn a little of this magic. We could all use a little magic, right?

I found a user friendly app, Everlook, which was free for three days, downloaded it and was off to the races. I nipped and tucked. I slimmed. I brightened. I erased. I blurred. I changed eye color and hair color. I felt the way Adam must have felt in the Garden of Eden. I was awed by every little thing this app could do.

But after a while, the wonder wore away. Maybe because I was too heavy-handed. Maybe because smooth foreheads and glistening teeth all began to look alike. Maybe because every time I juxtaposed the original photo next to the doctored one, I liked the original better.

Maybe, I thought, perfection isn’t such a great idea.

I look at my mother in the old black-and-white photos and I’m glad nobody Photoshopped her. She had a space between her front teeth. I love seeing that space. She had a small eye tooth, too, which she hated. Her forehead was high. Her hair was light brown. Her face was thin. Today, a photographer might fix her teeth, fatten her cheeks, shrink her forehead, and lighten her hair. And I would remember her the way she wasn’t instead of the way she was.

And yet, that Photoshopped picture of me with smooth skin and pearly white teeth? It isn’t how I look, not even when I try, but it’s how I’d like to look. How I wish I looked.

Vanity. It used to be a sin. Now it’s an app that measures how attractive a face is.

I look through my cigar box full of old pictures. My father had a space between his top front teeth, too. I could fix his teeth. I could make both my parents perfect. Instead, I hold the slightly out-of-focus picture in my hand, squint a little, and smile.

Beverly Beckham’s column appears every two weeks. She can be reached at bev@beverlybeckham.com.