Julia Bluhm is a teenage girl in Maine who saw something that bothered her and set out to fix it. Specifically, she was disturbed by the airbrushed and Photoshopped models in Seventeen magazine, a publication aimed at and read by teenage girls who are constantly pressured to be thinner, prettier, cooler, more fashionable, and everything else.
So Julia started a petition, hoping to get some signatures and maybe the attention of the editors at Seventeen. So far, she has over 50,000 signatures and she's met with the editor-in-chief.
She has also helped continue the crucial conversation about our society and the pressures young women face to be accepted as "beautiful."
As a woman who grew up reading these magazines, wishing I were "skinny" like the models, not understanding that the hips and breasts that were developing on me were, in fact, quite beautiful in their own right, I applaud Julia. As a teacher who once had an ambulance drive up to her high school classroom to take a 15-year-old girl to the hospital to treat her for dangerously low blood sugar, I applaud Julia. My student had decided that skipping a few meals made sense in her weight loss plan. She was a beautiful young woman who felt she ought to be skinnier.
Sign Julia's petition. And every day, think about the pressure and demand we all place on each other to be prettier, better, everything-else-er, and maybe back off a bit. Focus on what is within. Recognize true beauty--a good heart, a sharp mind, a warm smile.
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