3:23 pm - 04/30/2012
Celebs, editors and health professionals have called on magazines to halt the excessive use of airbrushing for its negative impact on impressionable teen girls. Now teens themselves are joining the conversation, saying that enough is enough.
13-year-old Julia Bluhm submitted a petition through Change.org entitled "Seventeen Magazine: Give Girls Images of Real Girls!" Bluhm, a middle school student from Maine, writes that the constant ambush of overly Photoshopped images has caused her and her peers to develop low self-esteem about their own bodies:
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.
That’s why I’m asking Seventeen Magazine to commit to printing one unaltered -- real -- photo spread per month. I want to see regular girls that look like me in a magazine that’s supposed to be for me.
It's a point well-taken, considering more and more adults have begun to demand the same. Last June, the American Medical Association adopted a policy against the altering of photographs "in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image." In February, Cindi Leive of Glamour told readers that her magazine would take a stronger stand and ask photographers "not to manipulate body size in the photos we commission, even if a celebrity or model requests a digital diet." In March, Intelligent Life mag published an un-airbrushed cover of Cate Blanchett, using a photo that "is at least trying to reflect real life."
Of course, there is still plenty of Photoshop afoot. But to hear teen girls acknowledge the damaging effects of airbrushing themselves makes the issue more urgent -- "all the struggling girls all over America," writes Bluhm, are affected.
Read Bluhm's petition to Seventeen at Change.org
Source
Julia Bluhm, Seventeen Reader, Petitions Magazine To Feature Non-Airbrushed Photos
Celebs, editors and health professionals have called on magazines to halt the excessive use of airbrushing for its negative impact on impressionable teen girls. Now teens themselves are joining the conversation, saying that enough is enough.
13-year-old Julia Bluhm submitted a petition through Change.org entitled "Seventeen Magazine: Give Girls Images of Real Girls!" Bluhm, a middle school student from Maine, writes that the constant ambush of overly Photoshopped images has caused her and her peers to develop low self-esteem about their own bodies:
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.
That’s why I’m asking Seventeen Magazine to commit to printing one unaltered -- real -- photo spread per month. I want to see regular girls that look like me in a magazine that’s supposed to be for me.
It's a point well-taken, considering more and more adults have begun to demand the same. Last June, the American Medical Association adopted a policy against the altering of photographs "in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image." In February, Cindi Leive of Glamour told readers that her magazine would take a stronger stand and ask photographers "not to manipulate body size in the photos we commission, even if a celebrity or model requests a digital diet." In March, Intelligent Life mag published an un-airbrushed cover of Cate Blanchett, using a photo that "is at least trying to reflect real life."
Of course, there is still plenty of Photoshop afoot. But to hear teen girls acknowledge the damaging effects of airbrushing themselves makes the issue more urgent -- "all the struggling girls all over America," writes Bluhm, are affected.
Read Bluhm's petition to Seventeen at Change.org
Source
Edited at 2012-04-30 09:00 pm (UTC)
I see basic bitches all day every day, magazines seem to be the only beautiful people I see anymore and if that is due to photoshop, then so be it; we all need to strive to be better
Edited at 2012-04-30 08:27 pm (UTC)
Edited at 2012-04-30 10:04 pm (UTC)
miley looks so much better than that picture.
I do fashion photography and the only photoshop I do on the girls is removing blemishes and exposure/contrast and all that.
But I refuse to alter the bodies or faces.
I mean, if they didn't sell, marketing people wouldn't do it.
i love that show.
Just look at the cover. There's barely anything on there that doesn't have to do with fashion, beauty or fitness. Not that there's anything wrong with those things, but when the major magazine for teenagers only discusses those things, it sends the message that if you're not interested in those things or good at those things, you're ~doing it wrong.~ Even if you are interested in those things, the whole point of the magazine it to show you how you to improve your skills, and that you should be worried about falling behind. The problem isn't just the actual pictures of women, but what these magazines are actually telling women.
I mean easier said than done....