By: Leslie Goldman

Nov 17, 2009

My friend Debbie recently (and lovingly) coined the term “thankles,” a hybrid reminiscent of cankles but found almost exclusively on babies like her five-month-old daughter, whose sweet, natural baby fat renders her ankles equally as wide in circumference as her thighs.

Luckily, thanks to the wonders of technology, little S’s thankles can be digitally eradicated in her one-year birthday photos, thanks to baby airbrushing. She can look back at her baby pics and rest easy knowing she was born with slender, gazelle-like, 8-inch gams.

Babies are cute and all. Well, except for their pudgy necks. And the spittle that pools in the corners of their mouths. And the inverted nipples. That umbilical cord scab can be kind of nasty. Dimply butts. Uneven fingernails. Baby acne. Ooh, and those veins that you can see through the skin on their forehead? And their faces get all splotchy when they cry. Gross.

That’s not me talking, of course. It’s the world of baby models. In yesterday’s UK Telegraph, readers learned that monthly magazine Practical Parenting and Pregnancy retouches pictures of babies to "put them across in the best light,” according to the BBC documentary My Supermodel Baby.

During the show, PPP’s casting director explained how a photograph of five-month-old (thakle alert!) baby model Hadley Corbett was airbrushed: "We lightened his eyes and his general skin tone, smoothed out any blotches and the creases on his arms. But we want it to look natural."

In other words, it’s not like they’re taking a baby that looks like this and making him look like this.
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Another British baby magazine editor told The Sunday Telegraph that photographs were in fact minimally airbrushed: “We'll remove things and even-up skin tone, that sort of thing. But very little is done, in fact, because obviously babies are beautiful the way they are and that is what we went to get across…Babies are not like adults - you can't stop them from dribbling, so you might remove that bit of dribble from the chin. Or if the baby has just been crying, and their eyes are red, we might lighten the eyes. Or if they have just woken up because they have had a nap on the way in and we photograph them, we might remove a little bit of sleep. It is just those kind of things, very little really."

OK. I understand magazines are businesses and have products to sell and it actually doesn’t bother me to think that a baby model had some saliva digitally wiped away from her chin, or even a crying-related splotch erased from his cheeks. I don’t think it will hurt the child in the long run, and I don’t think other babies are chilling in their cribs, reading Parents and thinking, “Why isn’t MY skin that smooth and pink? Maybe I should start Retinol treatments tomorrow – right after I puke all over Mommy, say “Baa” and pull a fistfull of fur out of the cat.”

But when we get into baby fat erasing territory, that’s kind of my tipping point. That Sunday Telegraph editor admitted that the creases of pudge may be airbrushed – but only to provide an even background over which text may be legibly printed and read. Again, I don’t really worry that such photo manipulation will have a lasting impact on a newborn or toddler. But it’s the larger issue of tricking the public into seeking an alternate, unattainable standard of beauty – not just for the moms themselves, who already have to contend with endless coverage of new celeb mothers who shed their baby weight before their due dates, but for their little ones. It’s creepy and reminds me of the Nip/Tuck episode where porn star-mom Kimber, in a desperate attempt to land her toddler, Jenna, a modeling contract, injects her little cupid lips with cosmetic filler and smooths her forehead wrinkles with Botox.

Besides, this whole baby airbrushing thing really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Besides the usual nips, tucks, enhancements and tweaks, women and men are airbrushed on a regular basis to look lighter (Beyonce), darker (OJ Simpson), fuller (Cameron Diaz), more belly button-y (Karolina Kurkova), or given Double D cleavage when they actually posed in a dumpy crewneck sweatshirt. 

Honestly, it wouldn’t shock me if Photoshop had a “More Omnipotent” airbrushing feature for making God seem more God-like, or a “Sharper Sickle” tool for those times where the Grim Reaper needs to seem just a little bit scarier.

What do you think? Would you airbrush your baby’s pics?

PS Am I the only one who used to hang Anne Geddes posters on her bedroom walls? (Next to Ralph Macchio, I mean.)

Thanks to Sahar from FatFighterTV.com for the tip!