This image thing has gone a little too far.

It’s one thing for celebrities or other looks-minded adults to get plastic surgery, or for models to be airbrushed to touch up professional photos. But kids should just be kids.

In last week’s issue of Newsweek there is an article about parents paying for touch-ups in their kids’ school photos. School. Photo. Touch-ups.

That defeats the entire purpose of picture day. You want to capture what the kid looked like in second grade and look back later with a comical comment. If you change Timmy’s freckles or that piece of hair sticking up, you might as well just print out a random kid’s photo from the Internet.

The article says the service started as a way to take out scrapes and bumps. That’s fine. Those are things that changed the kid’s appearance for a few days, and just happened to come at the wrong time.

But another company cited offers customers “new hair, skin, makeup, eyebrows and even facial expressions.” That’s completely ridiculous.

I hated picture day. I’m not the biggest fan of being in pictures today. Yet even with an ability to use Photoshop, I would never think of seriously changing a photo like that. Sure, it’s fun to put your head on Elmo’s body once in a while, but you wouldn’t change the picture you send to Grandma.

The only good side is that people shallow enough to want to pay for such a service are allowed to hand over money to people willing to take advantage of their vanity. God bless America.