Teen magazine launches Body Peace treaty after campaign
Seventeen magazine in the US has pledged not to digitally retouch images of women and girls it uses in its photo shoots following a campaign by a 14-year old blogger.
The move came after Julia Bluhm, a 14-year old ballet dancer and self-described activisit, started a petition calling on Seventeen to publish one unaltered photoshoot per month. “I want to see regular girls that look like me in a magazine that’s supposed to be for me,” she wrote in the petition letter.
In its August edition, the Editor in Chief of Seventeen, Ann Shoket, announced a Body Peace pledge that the magazine would be “up-front about what goes into our photo-shoots” and that it would publish a Tumblr blog of behind the scenes pictures. Within the Body Peace pledge, Seventeen said it vowed to “Never change girls’ body or face shapes. (Never have, never will.)”.
At time of writing however, the pledge list news did not seem to have made it into either Ann Shoket’s or Seventeen’s Twitter feeds. Nonetheless Ms Bluhm said she was “very excited” by the magazine’s decision.
Unrealistic expectations
Ms Bluhm blogs at SPARK, a site run by girls and young women who are opposed to the sexualisation of girls in the media. She has also tweeted editors from other major fashion and beauty magazines to ask them not to digitally enhance or edit models because she says it leads teenagers to have unrealistic expectations of their appearance.
Hey @annshoket @seventeenmag, will you pledge to #KeepItReal and print a pic of a model without any photoshopping?
— Julia Bluhm (@Juliab3398) June 27, 2012
But it is not only girls who are affected. A male blogger on the site has pointed out that the practice also impacts on boys because it leads them to have certain expectations of the appearance of girls and young women, expectations that are based on artificiality.
Seventeen was the US’ first teen magazine and is aimed at youngsters between 12 and 19 years old, it is owned by the Hearst corporation which also publishes Elle, Cosmopolitan and Esquire. Its pledge has prompted SPARK to turn its attention to Teen Vogue, calling on it to make a public statement that it too will not digitally alter the face or body sizes of any model who appears in the magazine.