Back in the day, I was an editor at and writer for teen magazines including Sassy, YM, Cosmo Girl, Seventeen, Elle Girl and Teen People. And every single one of those magazines was bombarded with letters and emails from readers asking the same questions. They all wanted to know if they were pretty enough to model and how they'd ever get boys to like them if they didn't look like models. My cubicle at work was plastered with photos readers from all over the country had sent in so we could evaluate them. But instead of doing that, I wrote All Made up: A Girl's Guide to Seeing Through Celebrity Hype and Celebrating Real Beauty (ISBN: 9780802777447) (because I had the very same questions and concerns when I was growing up.)
All Made Up debuted in 2006--right around the same time Dove Real Beauty Campaign released findings that only two percent of women describe themselves as beautiful while 72% rate their beauty as average and 47% consider their body weight as too high.
At the time, 86% of the approximately 10 million American girls and women who suffered from eating disorders reported the onset of their condition by age 20. And the world was spending $38 billion on hair care products, $24 billion on skin care, $18 billion on makeup and $15 billion on perfumes every year.
As a result, All Made Up quickly became an essential guide for teen girls (age 11-15) trying to understand which women are celebrated in our pop culture and why. More importantly, it (hopefully!) helped readers start to question whether it's their bodies that need to be fixed (and waxed, tanned, plucked…) or rather today’s commercially-driven beauty standards.
All Made Up was featured on the front page of USA Today and numerous other media outlets including CNN, NBC, ABC, NPR, and Canada's CBC. It continues to be used as media literacy text in middle schools and by programs and organizations aimed at raising girls' self esteem.
According to a 2004 report commissioned by Dove, only two percent of women consider themselves beautiful, almost three-quarters think they're average-looking, and almost half think they weigh too much. More than 8,000 young women auditioned for the second season of America's Next Top Model.
In the June international editions, Vogue launched a health initiative that aims to encourage a healthier approach to body image within the fashion industry. The first point in their agreement says Vogue "will not knowingly work with models under the age of 16 or who appear to have an eating disorder."
Girls today, even very young ones, are being bombarded with the message that they need to be super-skinny to be sexy.
NEW YORK (AP) — Lip service or sea change? Skeptics wonder whether Vogue magazine's vow to ban models under 16 or those of any age with visible signs of eating disorders is more hype than health.
Lip service or sea change? Skeptics wonder whether Vogue magazine's vow to ban models under 16 or those of any age with visible signs of eating disorders is more hype than health.
Parents, don’t panic. But maybe you should worry a little. Skinny jeans, the uniform of clubbing teens and arty twentysomethings the world over, have made it onto the back-to-school clothing lists of this year’s kindergarten class.
More than half of young women ages 16 to 25 are stressed out and conflicted, largely because media messages urge them to be both a "hot" girl and a successful career woman.
