WATERVILLE, Maine — This quaint New England town seems an unlikely garrison from which to wage digital-media warfare. But as Seventeen magazine editors have learned, youth activism can be ignited anywhere, given the right spark.
With American teens consuming nearly 11 hours of media daily, according to a 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation study, what they see and hear often leaves them confused and anxious about their bodies. The numbers, from various studies, are startling: 32 percent of teenage girls admit to starving themselves to lose weight; nearly half say they wish to be model-thin; three out of four feel depressed or guilty after spending time with a fashion magazine; and 78 percent reach age 17 feeling unhappy with their body image. In a survey by InSites Consulting published this month, 88 percent of girls ages 15 to 25 said they would change something about their bodies, were it easy to do.
In April, Waterville eighth-grader Julia Bluhm, 14, journeyed to Manhattan to protest Seventeen’s practice of retouching photos, making girls and young women look sexier and less flawed. After an interview with CNN, she was invited to the magazine to discuss her objections and spent an hour doing just that. Bluhm and her teammates at SPARK — which stands for Sexualization Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge — eventually collected more than 84,000 signatures on their anti-Photoshopping petition, distributed online through Change.org.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/other/2012/07/10/confronting-sexualization-girls-and-young-women-spark-team-members-are-not-afraid-speak-and-take-action/2wVzzrvEeetbBBnqFCgSeL/story.html?s_campaign=8315
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