By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 11 years ago

Feminist Fuck Yeah: In response to 8th grader’s petition, Seventeen magazine agrees not to digitally alter images

little girl measuring stomachA serious Tuesday Feminist Fuck Yeah for Julia Bluhm and activists at SPARK. A couple months ago, the 8th grader launched a campaign calling on Seventeen magazine to feature one photoshop-free image per issue. Now 84,000 signatures later, the magazine seems to be hearing the message. Via Change:

After over 84,000 people signed Julia’s petition and she and her fellow SPARK Summit activists hand-delivered the petitions to the executive editor of Seventeen, the magazine has made a commitment to not alter the body size or face shape of the girls and models in the magazine and to feature a diverse range of beauty in its pages.

Teenage SPARK activists are now turning their sights on Teen Vogue–so you should probably sign that petition and keep the momentum going. As Julia writes, “If we can be heard by one magazine, we can do it with another. We are sparking a change!”

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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