Growing outrage among students and parents at a high school near Jacksonville, Florida over the way dozens of yearbook photos of girls only were digitally altered.
At least 83 girls’ “revealing” photos were digitally altered in Bartram Trail High School`s annual yearbook, some photos seem to have been edited by taking snippets of the girls’ shirts and pasting them over their chests to hide their cleavage.
Ninth grader Riley O`Keefe says her picture was edited even though her shirt complied with the school`s dress code.
She calls it a double standard since no boys’ pictures were doctored, not even those showing swim team members wearing Speedos.

One parent whose daughter’s photo was altered said, “I think it sends the message that our girls should be ashamed of their growing bodies, and I think that’s a horrible message to send out to these young girls that are going through these changes.”

Yearbook photos of at least 80 female students at Bartram Trail High School in St. Johns County, Fla., were digitally altered to cover more of their chests, according to parents. https://t.co/xH02WUUW9d

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 23, 2021

According to Christina Langston, school district spokeswoman, the school’s yearbook coordinator, Anne Irwin, who is a teacher, decided that the photos were out of dress code and did some of the editing.

Parents disagree, saying the students were not out of dress code.

The high school’s website says that all student pictures in the yearbook “may be digitally adjusted” if they don’t conform to the school district’s code of conduct.

According to Langston, “Bartram Trail High School’s previous procedure was to not include student pictures in the yearbook that they deemed in violation of the student code of conduct, so the digital alterations were a solution to make sure all students were included in the yearbook.