I think it would be awesome if all magazines stopped using photoshop and airbrushing. Imagine! Vogue with clothes and models and everything as it really is in real life, same with the rest. That would be so refreshing!
A teenage reader of Seventeen magazine is hoping to change the title's practice of airbrushing images to make young girls appear flawless and thin.
Eighth-grader Julia Bluhm, 14, from Maine, delivered a 15,000-name petition to the Hearst magazine's editor-in-chief, Ann Shoket, on Wednesday calling for the magazine to publish at least one unaltered photo spread a month.
"A lot of my friends are happy in their skin, but I know people who aren't comfortable and wished they looked differently," said Bluhm, who dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer and activist. "There are pictures all over the media that show photoshopped girls that have no flaws and they are perfect."
In her petition, titled Give Girls Images of Real Girls, Bluhm, a blogger with Sparksummit, a "girl-fuelled" movement against the sexualisation of young women, wrote: "Those 'pretty women' that we see in magazines are fake. They're 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 hopes to fight back through her work with Sparksummit, which began after the American Psychological Association task force reported the harm to girls' self-esteem caused by sexualised images of young women.
By late Wednesday, the petition, hosted on the social action platform Change.org, had amassed even more names, with the total passing 30,000 signatures.
It chronicles the daily battles faced by her peers over their body image. It reads: "I'm in a ballet class with a bunch of high-school girls. On a daily basis I hear comments like: 'It's a fat day', and 'I ate well today, but I still feel fat'. Ballet dancers do get a lot of flack about their bodies, but it's not just ballet dancers who feel the pressure to be 'pretty'. It's everyone. To girls today, the word 'pretty' means skinny and blemish-free. Why is that, when so few girls actually fit into such a narrow category? It's because the media tells us that 'pretty' girls are impossibly thin with perfect skin."
Bluhm said the "fake" photographs she and her friends see in magazines and adverts has been shown to lead to low self-esteem.
Her petition states: "Girls want to be accepted, appreciated and liked. And when they don't fit the criteria, some girls try to 'fix' themselves. This can lead to eating disorders, dieting, depression, and low self-esteem."
Seventeen magazine said it had invited Bluhm to its offices after seeing her petition. It said in a statement: "We're proud of Julia for being so passionate about an issue ? it's exactly the kind of attitude we encourage in our readers ? so we invited her to our office to meet with editor in chief Ann Shoket this morning.
"They had a great discussion, and we believe that Julia left understanding that Seventeen celebrates girls for being their authentic selves, and that's how we present them. We feature real girls in our pages and there is no other magazine that highlights such a diversity of size, shape, skin tone and ethnicity."
After the meeting, Julia said in a statement released through Change.org: "The fact that Seventeen's editor-in-chief met with me in person proves that the voices of teen girls everywhere are getting through. While I would still change some of the ways Seventeen portrays girls, I'm encouraged that they're willing to listen to me and the 30,000 people who've signed my petition. Seventeen's invited me to work with them on this issue, which means we girls ? Seventeen's readers ? are finally being heard loud and clear. It's really exciting."
Bluhm started the petition when she learned that another magazine, Glamour, had decided to limit its use of the airbrush to make people look thinner. After a survey of women found 43% believed magazines should not retouch pictures, Glamour magazine introduced limits for retouching photographs, even if a celebrity or model requested the modifications.
Bluhm said: "A lot of girls read Seventeen magazine. They do a lot to make girls feel good about themselves, stuff like Body Peace. So I thought if they are already doing it, they might like to do more. There have been stories about how much photoshopped images can hurt girls with low self-esteem and eating disorders."
Body Peace asks women and girls to make peace with the body they have and carries interviews with celebrities talking about the issue.
Bluhm's mother, Mary Biter, a social worker and mother of two girls, said she is proud of her youngest daughter.
She said: "She has taken on something that is important to her and it is something that both Robert (Julia's dad) and I have felt important raising two girls. That they are judged by their abilities and abilities and qualities other than their appearance."
Re: Thousands join teen in campaign against photoshopped Seventeen pics
my read shelf:
So cool! So so so cool!
Opening a magazine and seeing everything as it actually is. The magazines should try it as an experiment.
Why not?
lol!
You know the best way to send a message to these magazines - quit buying them.
There's no way photoshop is going away. It's a matter of how far it goes. If "real" sold as many copies as fake then I'm pretty sure the magazines would be all over it. You want slightly less airbrushed and lower level of perfection overall? Pick up a Kmart flyer or something along those lines.
Another issue is that half the content in any magazine is a bunch of advertising and they are all competing for attention. The advertisers pay most of the magazines' bills and not the readers so maybe it'd be wiser to say f-u to them as well.
As women, I think our actions are not in line with this "real women" message and we all know actions speak louder than words. We wear make-up and lust after all sorts of nonessential "beauty" crap. That's not real.
I think it would be smarter to teach our girls (and boys) how magazines operate, how advertising and retouching has evolved over the years and how we can more honestly and directly reject the ideals portrayed in media.
ok, didn't think that needed a TIC note but that's what it was. A weekly flyer is going to be spending less money on models and retouching.
yes, a million times.
this is why the only magazine i actually subscribe to and pay money for is B!tch. i agree with most of what they stand for--and they make me think--so they get money from me.
the mere idea that Seventeen "celebrates girls for being their authentic selves" is so laughable to me it's sad. same with most women's magazines--they're ridiculous. good for this girl for recognizing this at such a young age and trying to make her peers aware of what they're actually looking at.
Speak for yourself. I wear makeup if I feel the occasion calls for it, not everyday. I have not ever, in my life, 'lusted' for beauty crap. How I can present myself in real life is real, whatever method I use. If you can't attain it in reality, it's not real. That's the difference here. They're asking for one non-Photoshop pic, not one mugshot.
Makeup and photoshop are not the same thing. I don't get what you are saying.
Put pictures of the same people in the magazine with makeup on. Nothing else has to change. Just don't photoshop it. Don't erase the wrinkles, the bulges, don't add boobage where it doesn't belong or trace over waistlines.
No one is saying we can't like beauty stuff, cosmetics, etc. I like clothes, I like makeup, I like hairstyles, etc. I'm just saying stop making it look like something it isn't with photoshop.
Picture InStyle or Vogue or Marie Claire without altering the photos. Same magazine, just don't alter it. What on earth is so wrong with that? It isn't that hard? It's less work. Take the photo of Jennifer, Claudia, Beyonce, whoever, put in the mag, done.
Makeup and photoshop are on a continuum of altering how one looks.
On the minimal end, we have what is expected of most people, including men and children: to look/smell clean, hair combed and somewhat trimmed. Guys can even get away with neat facial hair.
On the other end we have the manipulation of photos to the point that they are more like illustrations rather than photographs.
What is concealer and foundation for if not to hide blemishes, under-eye circles, even out skin tone, hide some lines & wrinkles, etc? Mascara to make eyelashes longer. Eyeliner for definition (or whatever the f it's for). Lipstick and eyeshadow because our eyes and lips are obviously not colorful enough and don't stand out on their own. Then we have bras, not only to hold the ladies in place, which I'll agree is nice function, but do we also "need" to push them up and add cup sizes? Shapewear to smooth out those unsightly lumps and bulges.
I just think we need to be honest and fess up that we do aspire to what magazines are showing and this supposed backlash is just saying, hey magazine, you've set the bar so high we are feeling disgruntled that we can't even begin to match that with the tools we have available. The same thing happens in food porn (no the dinner we whip up will never look like the food stylists' version) and housekeeping genres with perfectly arranged living spaces. If we wanted real, we could just look around us. We buy these types of magazines precisely because they portray a fantasy.
I don't personally wear makeup either, nor do I participate in fashion, trends, etc. I mean "we" in a general sense.
I've also been using photoshop for the past 15 years, practically day in and day out. I've seen enough of the guts of media companies, the interactions between their art directors and seasoned retouchers, advertising art direction and fashion advertising so there's not much magic about flipping through a magazine for me.
This reminds me of those conversations of whether women who shave their armpits and legs are feminists.
Let's assume we all don't want to give up our fashion/cosmetic/shoehorse cards......I still think we should be able to have unaltered images. I like fashion. Whether that means I'm conforming to male ideals and the like, I don't know. But I do like clothes. And I like looking at interesting advertisements and reading articles about celebrities. Outside of the overall "who is a better feminist" argument, I don't see anything wrong with people who like those things seeing images that aren't altered. It is not an impossible thing to do.