As this is written, there is a court case in Florida being
fought by a women who claims she should not have to remove the veil
she wears, for religious reasons, when taking her driver’s license
photo. My initial reaction was that this women needs to get
real.
As this is written, there is a court case in Florida being fought by a women who claims she should not have to remove the veil she wears, for religious reasons, when taking her driver’s license photo. My initial reaction was that this women needs to get real.
If people are allowed to wear items blocking their facial features, especially as in her case where the veil covers all but her eyes, then what’s the point of even taking the photo? Plus, if her purse is stolen and contains her license and credit cards, anyone regardless of sex could use her identification to make purchases.
As the media covered the court case, I started to rethink the whole matter. Personally, I still think this women needs to get a life and find a more important issues to fight. And as long as the Untied States remains a democracy, I’m allowed my view. But in the long run, what does it really matter? When you stop and think about it, how many of us truly look like our driver’s license picture anyway?
When I was 16 my friends and I shared the joy of getting our driver’s licenses. Proudly we’d pass around our little cards, showing them off to everyone we came in contact with. But the photos never looked like us. I remember my own brother picking up my license and reading the name before he realized whom it belonged to; the pictures were that foreign-looking.
One of my good friends and I could switch licenses and no one would know the difference. The fact that she was a 5-foot, 10-inch blonde with blue eyes and I’m a 5-foot, 3-inch brunette with hazel eyes didn’t seem to matter. As long as no one read the fine print, we were safe. Our photos were in color, with such poor quality that store clerks didn’t have a clue.
Since those days, driver’s licenses have improved in many ways. They used to be made of stock paper and would practically melt when they got wet. It was also easy to change such small items as birth dates on the old licenses. Not that I would ever think of changing my birth year to make me older, but I knew kids who did. Now I’d probably change the year to make me younger if given the chance.
But new licenses are laminated and carry all sorts of hard-to-duplicate features. Things were certainly much simpler in the old days. Yet with all the new technology, including machines that let you get a glimpse of your driver’s license picture before it’s printed, the pictures still resemble mug shots of people under extreme duress rather than pictures of law-abiding citizens going about their average day.
That, in turn, has gotten me wondering why even photogenic people rarely resemble themselves on their driver’s license. It can’t be the fault of the DMV workers who take our pictures. True, they’re not professional photographers, but most of us can take a snapshot with a disposable camera and have it resemble the person we’re photographing.
The lighting in DMV offices probably is not conducive to good photos. But once again, many pictures are taken in worse lighting and come out better. I wonder if it has something to do with the stress level most of us feel going to the DMV. Stress-wise, a trip to the DMV probably ranks right up there with jury duty.
Many people at the DMV are there to take tests to get their license. That’s tremendous stress in itself. Add a driving test to the written one and the ball really gets rolling. And there’s no such thing as a free ride when the government is involved. For every piece of paper printed, a fee is attached. The rules and regulations are so complex, there is no way the average citizen can begin to understand what is going on. This creates a dependency on the workers at the DMV, adding even more stress.
Maybe it’s time to change the picture-taking policy at the DMV. It might be better if people had their pictures taken at a local park 10 days before an appointment. We’d all be relaxed and the results could be amazing. Imagine an entire population of people who actually look like their driver’s license photo. Now, that’s a scary thought!
