The plus-size community has for years attempted to nurture positive body image in women by bringing attention to the realities of the mainstream fashion world. With young women starving themselves or worse to meet an unrealistic body ideal so cherished by 21st century fashion gurus. Bloating media with 'photo shopped' images of unrealistic and unattainable figures. They have cultivated a consumer base that has an unhealthy idea of body image and is perpetually unhappy with theirs.
These images and ideas are aimed at women everyday but the real victims of all this unhealthy imagery is our daughters.
Young girls are inundated as much as adults in this onslaught and are the most vulnerable and influenced consumers of fashion. With magazines like Girls Life, Teen Vogue and Seventeen, our young women are targeted directly.
One young lady has decided to help change the images we see. Julia Bluhm from Waterville Maine began a petition to ask Seventeen Magazine to change the way it portrays young women and girls on it's pages.
The petition on Change.org, which has grown to over 46,000 as of today May 5th at 6:30 pm eastern, urges the magazine to have one unaltered photo spread in each issue so girls like her can identify more closely with the images they see.
Airbrushing, photo shopping or digital editing of photos has been practice that magazines have adopted to create the 'best image' to help sell a product. But this practice can go to far. In images such as this Self magazine cover of Kelly Clarkson she is clearly much thinner in appearance than she truly is.
Julia Bluhm took her several thousand signatures to Seventeen's offices in Hurst Tower and met with editor Ann Shoket who accepted the petition on behalf of her magazine.
In this statement to Jezebel they applaud Julia for her passion on the subject but do not say that they will make any changes to the content on their pages.
"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."
Although Julia's petition may not change a magazine, it does go a long way to help educate the public on what images we consume and that our youth are taking notice.
Hopefully more women, young and old alike, begin to take a stand like Julia and help promote a more health view of our bodies and self worth.
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