Secret at Seventeen

A teenager has called out Seventeen Magazine for its patently false imaging of young girls in the magazine's photo spreads. Julia Bloom says the magazine's portrayal of young girls does not help the young readership, and in fact, does them harm.

“Here’s what lots of girls don’t know. Those ‘pretty women’ that we see in magazines are fake. They are often Photoshopped, air-brushed, edited to look thinner, and to appear like they have perfect skin. A girl you see in a magazine probably looks a lot different in real life,” Bluhm said.

Kudos to Ms. Bloom for her courage to take a stand. How many women, your and old, have have dealt with terrible self loathing dimply because they do not measure up to a plastic standard that they can never come close to achieving without hardship and surgery?


But Seventeen Magazine is merely a reflection of the greater society in which we live. A society that values image to such an extent that it sacrifices substance. Weight loss advertisements and exercise videos, while occasionally positing products as producing a healthier you, focus on the visual impact using their food supplements, their diet plans, their gym equipment will have on the user's image. Hair treatments tout the product's ability to attract sexual partners, as do clothing lines and beverages.


Sadly, women's rights organizations pay very little attention to the issue, parlaying political acumen into secondary issues such as equal pay and sexual discrimination. The truth is, both of these are the result of the Barbie image, the Victoria's Secret image, the Seventeen Magazine image that is foisted upon men and women and accepted, making women little more than playthings. We can create laws that demand equal pay for equal work, but that doesn't solve the underlying issue.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/05/08/teen-takes-on-seventeen-says-magazine-contributes-to-body-image-issues/#ixzz1uInu1pTF