Ashley Greene, your head looks kinda funky.A month ago we told you the story of one 14-year-old girl with a mission: stop Photoshopping in Seventeen. She’s now won her battle, and it has started an anti-Photoshop revolution.
Julia Bluhm launched a movement with her petition on Change.org (with help from the SPARK movement), 84,000 signatures strong. All she wanted was for Seveteen to include one ‘unaltered, photoshop-free’ spread in every issue. While the movement did get the magazine’s attention (Bluhm even got to meet with Seventeen‘s Editor-in-Cheif) no immediate action was taken to agree to Bluhm’s demands.
Until now.
In their latest issue, Seventeen published their new “Body Peace Treaty.”
Nothing like this has ever been seen in so large a publication. Although this is still in the early stages, and Seventeen has not yet actually done anything to uphold this treaty, it’s a step in the right direction for sure.
But it doesn’t stop with Seventeen. Now, two SPARK summer bloggers, Carina Cruz and Emma Stydahar, have created another Change.org petition against Teen Vogue. The petition already has 15,000 signatures, but has yet to gain any sort of recognition from Teen Vogue‘s editors. Cruz and Stydahar have warned that if Teen Vogue does not meet their demands to stop Photoshopping models, the magazine should expect a protest outside their building, just like the one that happened outside of Seventeen earlier last month.
Lovelies, what do you think of all this? Are you happy Seventeen has vowed to stop Photoshopping? Do you think Teen Vogue will do the same?
guest
I don’t care. Fashion magazines were meant to sell a dream, not self esteem. I remember my mom telling me that fashion shoots are always done in the most flattering way possible and then they are airbrushed (pre-photoshop). I don’t care of magazines stop using photoshop. I don’t see myself buying them any time soon.
guest
Eh, they won’t. I love how people are gung-ho about all this but it is a plot to get more of these teens to buy and read their magazines. Do teens even read these magazines anymore?
guest
There is a reason that magazines/photo spreads edit photos- to make the model and products look better. Leave everyone’s ‘self esteem’ out of the way for a moment. If they took 200 photos and there are several they can use, but she has a strand of hair in her face in one, her left eye looks slightly lower than the right in another, or her calves don’t look even, the clothes aren’t falling properly etc. then they’ll change it in post production. At the end of the day, clothes look better on models, and models look even better (unreal sometimes? yes, realistic? not always) when photoshopped. No one would buy the product if an advertisement for beauty cream had an unphotoshopped model who’s tired and has dark circles under her eyes… they need to sell their product.
orchid / 177 posts
I’m not surprised Seventeen promised to stop using photoshop on the actual girl parts (though I believe they will edit the couture section in the back however they please), but Teen Vogue shouldn’t have to. It’s TEEN. VOGUE. If you’re looking at magazines for self-esteem and a girl who’s been shopped bugs you, go hang outside in the park with real people. I read Seventeen and Teen Vogue religiously, and I’ve never given one crap about how photos were edited. They’re trying to sell products and represent fashion. Make a real beauty mag and read that, Carina and Emma. But I like your efforts.
guest
That’s how products sell — they make you feel bad for not being perfect, and then you buy their product hoping not to be such a worthless piece of s—, but it doesn’t work. It’s a false sense of fulfillment.
Fashion is an illusion, and Photoshopping helps to produce. The whole appeal of those magazines is that you think it’s possible to look that “effortlessly beautiful.” It’s art.
guest
I personally have no problem with photoshopping. I don’t have a problem with people who fit into the ideal naturally either. But what if it’s full of ‘perfect’ people and you KNOW they are like that naturally but you probably never will be? would make you feel like a freak.
What I just don’t like is that people have the idea that there is this one ‘normal’ way to look. 70 years ago there weren’t any magazines, and no Tv and no internet and you weren’t bombarded with images all the time. These days you DO see half naked (or totally naked) people at every corner, but they all look the same, so you think that’s how everyone looks. It would be cool if they had one section with random people from the street, just to show what nature looks like.
I used to buy a teen magazine that always featured two young people (man and woman) naked. They were over 18 of course. I always found that rather interesting and it gave me cofidence bc I wasn’t the only one with ‘flaws’.
guest
* I meant to say many not any.