14-Year-Old Girl Leads Protest Against Seventeen

by Julia Rubin | 3:31 pm, May 1st, 2012

An eighth grade student is taking on Seventeen, and she has garnered support from nearly 15,000 people.

A couple of weeks ago, 14-year-old Julia Bluhm posted a petition on Change.org called “Seventeen Magazine: Give Girls Images of Real Girls!” which has gained traction in the past few days. Bluhm is asking the magazine to print one unaltered photo spread in each issue. “I want to see regular girls that look like me in a magazine that’s supposed to be for me,” she writes in the petition letter. She goes on to explain:

Here’s what lots of girls don’t know. 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.

Tomorrow Bluhm is planning a demonstration outside of Seventeen‘s headquarters (aka Hearst Tower in New York). It will involve a mock photo shoot where teens will be snapped in front of the building holding dry erase boards covered with messages to Seventeen. Bluhm also intends to bring printouts of her petition’s signatures to the magazine.

While we agree that excessive Photoshop work is indeed a problem in the magazine world, Seventeen is hardly the biggest culprit. It’s also worth noting that unlike most other mainstream magazines, Seventeen does indeed feature and photograph “real girls” — and with minimal airbrushing.

Julia Bluhm Seventeen

Adelle Derrick

Bluhm also intends to bring printouts of her petition’s signatures to the magazine.

http://www.nortexrestoration.com/
Carrie

I think the biggest issue with Seventeen shouldn’t be the airbrushing of its featured women, but the AGES of the women on the cover and in the issues themselves. For a magazine marketed to 13-18 year olds, featuring someone who is 27 on the cover gives girls unrealistic ideas of what they “should” look like.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I look one hell of a lot better at 24 than I did at 14, and I think having other 14-year-olds featured in magazines like this sets a better example of what “look” to strive for in a country where young girls are already put under pressure to look sexy or beautiful or more mature or whatever at much too young an age. Let kids be kids and be confident in that!
Hcl Saltacid

I’m from Germany and a women’s magazine here (it’s called Brigitte) decided a couple of years ago to not use models for any photo shoots, pretty much with the same motivation as Julia Bluhm. But most women were not happy about it: Before the change you knew that those girls & women didn’t look like that in reality. And they were skinny because they were models and only a small percentage of women are models. But now those women are supposed to look like you and me – except they don’t because the magazine still chooses beautiful women with fairly good bodies (not skinny though). Doesn’t that put even more pressure on us? But on the other hand, you can’t blame the magazine – they won’t it to look and appealing.

Don’t get me wrong though – I would love it if Seventeen chose to quit the excessive use of photoshop. But we shouldn’t think thats the solution to our problems. We have to start loving our bodies and treat them well, like they deserve it. and take more care of our insides. Thats whats really beautiful.

14-Year-Old Girl Leads Protest Against Seventeen

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