Senior Pictures

When I was seventeen and sorting through the details of my final year in high school, I was sent to the gymnasium, wearing my favorite sweater--a soft, fuzzy, turquoise v-neck highlighting a small sea shell hung from a silver chain around my neck--where I posed for my senior picture. It was a simple process. Sit down. Smile a few times. Click. Click. Go home.

A few weeks later, I got half a dozen proofs to choose from, and after I chose my favorite, the studio air brushed the zits and sent me my senior pictures. Done.

Not so these days. Daughter No. 2 is a senior, and she sat for her senior pictures just this past Saturday. When I say "sat," I don't actually mean that she sat down for a few shots and walked away, leaving her with a small memento of her high school years. I mean that she participated in a photo shoot that would make Tyra Banks feel at home.

We went to the photo studio with four outfits, a trumpet, a tennis racquet, and a basket of tennis balls. First, she posed in a classic black dress and the silver trumpet--standing, spinning, sitting, posing. Then just the dress without the trumpet--more standing, spinning, sitting, posing. Then she switched to her tennis whites and posed with the racquet and balls--standing, spinning, sitting, posing, laying down so that her hair flowed like silk over the mottled canvas (the photographer's idea) with tennis balls scattered randomly in the scene. Then onto a casual outfit for general photos--more standing, sitting, posing.

This all took just about an hour. Then, we packed up and drove twenty-five minutes to the lake where the colors are just starting to change for autumn and the afternoon sun was glistening on the water. Another casual outfit suitable for a cool afternoon outdoors. Another round of standing, sitting, posing among the ivy and the grass and the trees and the ornamental rocks on the lawn.

It was all a bit of a production, although it took half as long as some senior photos. I know kids whose shots took four hours. There are girls who have someone style their hair in the middle of the whole thing so they look different from picture to picture. And when it's all over, you don't just pick a favorite--you choose several, all in different sizes, possibly some in black and white and some tinted. You give pocket-sized photos to all of your friends and teachers, and you mail them out with your graduation announcements.

You spend hundreds of dollars and all to mark a time in your life that, although may seem monumental at the time, becomes increasingly insignificant over time. I remember a great deal about my years in high school, and they were important years in the formation of who I am today. But I don't know a single person from those years aside from a couple of people who email once a year or so. They certainly weren't the best years of my life, and I wouldn't relive them for any amount of money.

I don't begrudge my child the experience of her senior photos. She had fun, and she knows that these years are just one stepping stone among many in life--not the apex. I just don't understand how the simple tradition of marking this particular stone with a photo has become a spectacle, one that is a financial strain on a lot of families, and one that assigns more significance to the stage of life than is necessary.

Well, it could be worse. Cultures around the world mark rites of passage with all sorts of painful customs. I should be relieved my kid gets her picture taken instead of having to endure scarification.