Back on my Soapbox Again

During my morning read of the New York Times, I found this article about 14 year-old Julia Bluhm, a Maine-bred 8th grader who is petitioning Seventeen magazine to include "real girls" (girls with a human amount of body fat, skin blemishes, tan lines, etc.) on its pages, as a first step to ending the airbrushing practices of lifestyle and high fashion magazines. I was really torn when I read this article; at first, I was smiling from ear to ear because someone was sticking it to the man and addressing a really pressing issue.  (Shameless plug: If you haven't already read my post about Miss Representation, a documentary that examines, you guessed it, the misrepresentation of women in the media and the hindrance this poses to women who otherwise would have aspired to careers in politics, business and entertainment, read it.  More importantly, go see the movie, or get the DVD from Netflix.)

However, as proud as I am of Julia for the crusade that she is leading (which, hopefully, more magazines and news outlets will take notice of; as a side note, I saw on the news this morning that Vogue is banning "too-thin" models from their photo shoots.  While "too-thin" is certainly subjective, it makes me really hopeful that such an iconic publication is declaring its commitment to change), I am still afraid for her.  Young girls (and even young women my age) are facing an enormous amount of societal pressure to conform to the ideal standards of beauty in a way that appears to be effortless.  Julia is a beautiful girl, based on the picture in the article, but I wonder if she simply is too young to have been exposed to those societal pressures yet and, thus, is better able to fend it off.  What will happen when she gets to high school, I wonder?  Or better yet, college?  I am afraid that even the most well-intentioned of these young girls will be pressured to conform to that same ideal, and will develop accompanying insecurities, such as eating disorders and a severe lack of self-respect and self-worth.  I am afraid for the future daughters I hope to have, because will it be worse by the time we get to their generation?  However, the fact that there is a dialogue, and we as a society are becoming increasingly aware of the ways in which the media manipulates women, makes me hopeful that, together, we can affect change.