No airbrushing for a popular teen magazine

Long lean legs, a teeny tiny waist, flawless facial features. That’s the stuff fashion magazines are made of, but not anymore for one popular teen publication.

After years of featuring only perfect teens, “Seventeen” Magazine now wants girls to stop obsessing about body image and to start appreciating their bodies.

They’ve come to this conclusion after pressure from more than 80,000 people who asked the magazine stop airbrushing perfection onto their pages.

Almost all the images you see in magazines, and online, have been photoshopped. Wrinkles from clothing and faces are easily removed. Imperfections in skin, poof, gone. Slim models are made even skinnier with airbrushing.

See if you can spot the differences in these photos from various fashion magazines. The photos on the right are the result of “digital diets” or airbrushing.

“Seventeen” magazine’s promise to stop airbrushing models, or at least tell readers how and why an image has been altered, comes after a Maine teen started a petition drive against the magazine’s airbrushing.

“I hoped that Seventeen would do this but I guess I didn’t think it would actually happen,” says 14-year-old Julia Bluhm.

In response to Bluhm’s campaign, “Seventeen” vows to:

Never change girls’ body or face shapes.

Celebrate every kind of beauty in our pages. Without a range of body types, skin tones, heights, and hair textures, the magazine – and the world – would be boring.

Always feature real girls and models who are healthy. Regardless of clothing size, being healthy is about honoring your natural shape.

Be totally up-front about what goes into our photo shots.

Help you make the best choices for your body – food that fuels you, exercise that energizes you – so you can feel your absolute best each day.

Give you the confidence to walk into any room and own it. Say bye-bye to those nagging insecurities that you’re not good enough or pretty enough – they’re holding you back from being awesome in the world!

That according to a letter in the magazine’s August edition, signed xoxo A (Editor-in-Chief, Ann Shoket)

Another petition effort is underway asking “Teen Vogue” to do the same. That campaign, started by a couple of girls from New York has more than 13,000 signatures in one day.

Will realistic, non-airbrushed images become the next fashion trend?

I talked about body image with a woman I introduced you to a few weeks ago, Makela Steward was Washington state’s first Miss Plus pageant winner, going on to the national Miss Plus America competition.

She won the title, with the highest points total overall.

She’s an accomplished educator with three degrees, wrapping up a year of teaching English at Seattle’s South Lake High School.

Now she’ll work on her platform for the year which is creating a more equitable education system.

“In certain areas of Seattle, and in cities across the country, there are students who may not live with their parents, who may be homeless or in foster care,” says Steward.

“There is a lot of disparity in education and not a lot being done, so I am here to make some noise about this topic.”

By LINDA THOMAS