Seventeen magazine vows to stop photoshopping images of girls
Alice Rodgers
WVoN co-editor
Seventeen magazine has announced that it will “never change girls’ body or face shapes” in published images.
The decision comes after 14-year-old Julia Bluhm started an online petition calling on the magazine to stop altering photos of girls to make them look ‘impossibly thin with perfect skin’.
The petition collected a staggering 84,000 signatures and asked the magazine to print one unaltered photo each month.
The petition gained even more interest when in May Bluhm staged a protest outside Seventeen’s main office, with signs reading: ‘The magazine’s for me, make it look like me!”
Ann Shoket, Seventeen magazine’s editor in chief responded by declaring that the magazine would be more transparent about its photo shoots and ‘celebrate every kind of beauty’ in their images.
In the editor’s letter in the August issue Shoket published a ‘Body Peace Treaty’, a sort of pact (signed by the entire staff) in which the magazine promised to only feature images of ‘real girls’ who are healthy.
In response to Bluhm and activists at SPARK (which campaigns against the sexualisation of girls), Shoket said that she realised it was time to be ‘more public’ about Seventeen’s authentic depiction of real females.
The letter also included a sample of an image of a girl before and after it was altered, claiming that only a few ‘minor tweaks’ were made to the picture of the 21-year-old model, such as the changing of the colour of the background and the removal of a single flyaway hair.
Bloom and the SPARK summit movement have now turned their attention to persuading Teen Vogue to follow in Seventeen’s footsteps on the basis that: “If we can be heard by one magazine, we can do it with another.”
To sign the Teen Vogue petition, click here.
Digital alteration is just on screen lying. You cant lie in other advertisements, how come they’re allowed to fake beauty ads? End photoshopping.