Should 'Seventeen' Stop Photoshopping? (One Teen Wants Them To)
SodaHead Living
2012/05/01 19:00:00
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Advocates have been struggling to eliminate airbrushing and photoshopping for as long as it's been around, but there's only one group that holds sway over what a magazine ultimately decides to do: its consumers. Julia Bluhm, a 13-year-old girl, started a petition on Change.org asking Seventeen magazine to cut back on photo manipulation. She's not even asking them to cut it out completely -- just once a month. That's all.
Bluhm wrote, "The media tells us that 'pretty' girls are impossibly thin with perfect skin. 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. That's why I'm asking Seventeen magazine to commit to printing one unaltered — real — photo spread per month." Is that too much to ask, Seventeen magazine? You decide.
Bluhm wrote, "The media tells us that 'pretty' girls are impossibly thin with perfect skin. 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. That's why I'm asking Seventeen magazine to commit to printing one unaltered — real — photo spread per month." Is that too much to ask, Seventeen magazine? You decide.
Top Opinion
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vitaminanime 2012/05/01 20:25:36Yes
+15I've been reading Seventeen for years and I've observed this years ago...here they are telling girls to be happy about their bodies, then they line their pages with unreastically airbrished models. It's kind of contradictory. Not saying they should completely eliminate airbrushing, that they should just keep it realistic.
You see, blaming a machine that has only existing in households worldwide for a few decades or so, and a bunch of codes that make up a program that runs on the aforementioned machine, which have only existed for two decades and two years (give or take a few months), for an eating disorder/body image issues that someone has is an extremely daft notion, because all the contrived ideals of what beauty is in our postmodern society has existed much longer than the household computer has, and much, much longer than Photoshop has existed. These contrived ideals of beauty of our postmodern society have existed for I'd say about 5-6 decades (since at LEAST the 1950s.).
So pointing the finger at Adobe and their Photoshop software/all the other image editing software out there for an issue that has been around much longer than the program and the machine the aforementioned program is running on and going "that's the root of the entire problem (which quite a few dolts on here are saying JUST that.), as well as thinking that "If magazines stop doing it then it'll make a difference!" (Newsflash: It won't make any difference at all.) just goes to show just how little of logical thought processing some of you people have actually used here.
:-)
But, if it was another fashion magazine, say, Vogue, I would say no. Fashion is supposed to be aspirational and artistic, not realistic at all. The people editing pictures can do whatever their mind wants to because it is their job to play with photos and make them more appealing. It is true that many girls are insecure, I myself am too sometimes, but do I blame modes like Natalia Vodianova because she's so thin and that makes me feel bad? Do I blame makeup artists like Bobbi Brown for making people in magazines look so flawless because it makes me feel bad? Do I have the right to blame Marc Jacobs for making clothing that I look bad in because it makes me feel bad? No. These people are doing their jobs and instead of whine and complain and feel sorry for myself I would do something. Don't like your thunder thighs? Exercise some more. Don't like your oily skin? Take care of it and wash it everyday. Look bad in a piece of clothing? Wear another thing to replace it. Do something. Don't sit there and whine because no one will listen if you do. Don't let your insecurities control your ability to do something about them. The fashion industry isn't to blam...
But, if it was another fashion magazine, say, Vogue, I would say no. Fashion is supposed to be aspirational and artistic, not realistic at all. The people editing pictures can do whatever their mind wants to because it is their job to play with photos and make them more appealing. It is true that many girls are insecure, I myself am too sometimes, but do I blame modes like Natalia Vodianova because she's so thin and that makes me feel bad? Do I blame makeup artists like Bobbi Brown for making people in magazines look so flawless because it makes me feel bad? Do I have the right to blame Marc Jacobs for making clothing that I look bad in because it makes me feel bad? No. These people are doing their jobs and instead of whine and complain and feel sorry for myself I would do something. Don't like your thunder thighs? Exercise some more. Don't like your oily skin? Take care of it and wash it everyday. Look bad in a piece of clothing? Wear another thing to replace it. Do something. Don't sit there and whine because no one will listen if you do. Don't let your insecurities control your ability to do something about them. The fashion industry isn't to blame, nobody is.
Can we stop looking for people to blame and get off our lazy asses and do something ourselves? Jeez!
This magazine should stop photoshopping:
This shouldn't:
I'm just waiting for these magazine editors to give a damn about their readers.