Seventeen magazine knew what it was up against and called for a truce, or in this case something the magazine’s editor calls the “Body Peace Treaty” — a pledge to never digitally alter girls’ faces or bodies and to use diverse models of different body types, skin tones and hair textures, among other promises. The pledge was not only the right thing to do, it was the smart move from a public relations standpoint.
The magazine had found itself the target of a petition on Change.org to “Give Girls Images of Real Girls!” Julie Bluhm, a 14-year-old from Waterville, Maine, started the petition a few months ago, asking Seventeen “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.”
The petition struck a chord, not only with other girls, but with mothers and fathers, as well. As of this writing, more than 86,000 people have signed the petition. One mother who commented on the petition wrote:
I grew up reading “Seventeen,” and I spent a large part of my adolescence agonizing over the fact that I did not look like the models in magazines. Now, I am raising a daughter, who is the most perfect and awesome human being that I have ever seen. I want her to know that she is beautiful just as she is, because she is smart and funny and clever and talented, and that she does not need trickery or computer magic or expensive cosmetics – smoke and mirrors – to be “beautiful.” Our daughters are already perfectly lovely, just as they are.
Read more
