Yahoo LifestyleTeenage girls call on Teen Vogue to ‘keep it real’
A group of young girls has taken on major US magazines, including Teen Vogue, to end airbrushing of models on their pages
In the US, teenage girls have taken to the streets to protest against the use of airbrushing and promotion of unrealistic ideals in magazines including Teen Vogue, which are aimed at an under 20s audience.
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An initial protest secured a written promise from Seventeen magazine not to digitally change body shapes in photographs. Following this, a group of around a dozen girls headed to Time Square yesterday, near the offices of Teen Vogue, and catwalked along a makeshift red carpet, holding ‘Keep it Real’ signs. The group collected more than 28,000 signatures for their protest in just over a week.
Seventeen editor Ann Shoket published its pledge in an issue of the magazine, which is what the protests organisers are hoping Teen Vogue will do.
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One, 17 year old Emma Stydahar, said, "I remember looking through these magazines and thinking, 'Oh I wish I had her legs. I wish I had her waist.' It was, like, this is what beautiful is and this is what I look like.”
The group claims that the use of digital image manipulation in the magazines threatens vulnerable young readers’ self esteem and gives them unrealistic ideas about beauty and normality. They suggest this leads to depression and eating disorders.
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Teen Vogue agreed to a meeting with the protesters and offered this statement: "We feature healthy models on the pages of our magazine and shoot dozens of non-models and readers every year and do not retouch them to alter their body size. Teen Vogue pledges to continue this practice.”
But the executive director of SPARK, a protest group the girls have worked with, commented that the home page for Teen Vogue’s website at the time of viewing showed realistically there was little variation in body shapes, with 15 very thin female models, 13 of whom were white.
The girls are pushing for Teen Vogue to put their pledge in writing on the pages of the mag. And good on them! As another of their protest banners reads, let’s get real, all girls are beautiful!
