January 2012 – ABC News reported that Colorado teenager, Sydney Spies, is planning to fight a ban of the photo she submitted to be published in the Durango High School yearbook, in Durango, Colorado.  The photo is not your typical senior photo in cap and gown or off the shoulder drape as featured in many yearbooks around the country.  Instead, she posed in a short yellow skirt riding below her navel and a black shawl that exposes her shoulders and sits low across her chest.

The five editors of the yearbook made the decision not to publish the photo because they felt it would “diminish the quality with something that can be seen as unprofessional.”  However, they are still willing to publish it on the student’s ad page in the yearbook.

The racy photo will still be published in the yearbook, just not as the student’s senior photo.

As a middle school yearbook advisor for the past 15 years, I have had inappropriate photos submitted for students’ personal pages in the yearbook.  However, those occasions have been rare until the last few years.

Due to the increase in the number of photos of teens in bikinis or tiny shorts and low-cut tank tops, we’ve had to establish photo guidelines. We also state that we have the right to refuse any photo we deem as inappropriate and every year, lately, I’ve had to refuse photos.

I am also the parent of 12-year-old daughter.  I’m very protective of her and look out for her best interests. It’s unclear to me as to why parents would be so willing to publish revealing photos of their children.  What is not published in yearbooks, however, can still be uploaded to Facebook and other social networking sites.  Anyone who has an account can log into Facebook at any given time and see photos of teenage girls posing with their shirts pulled up and their shorts pulled down.  Even the boys are adding their poses and asking for “likes”.  The boys’ poses usually consist of a raised shirt, with the stomach and a least one nipple exposed.

With more and more of these types of photos being submitted for yearbook publication and considered by students and parents to be acceptable to publish, schools are going to reach a point where they will have to establish policy as to what can and will be published in a school yearbook.  Those parents who want to publish racy photos of their teens should not be able to use a school publication to do it.  There are, after all, many other parents who would not want their own children viewing suggestive photos of their classmates, or anyone else, for that matter.

http://s493.photobucket.com/user/bayside4528/media/sydney_spies_2.jpg.html