By Laura Bates | July 5, 2012 This week, Seventeen magazine promised to publish un-photoshopped images of real girls, finally responding to 14-year-old SPARK activist Julia Bluhm’s campaign. Such pressure must continue argues author Laura Bates. Last week, two editions of Now magazine appeared on newsstands in the UK. The weekly issue featured a dramatic […]
We are tricked into thinking that women on magazine covers and on TV naturally look like this in real life…we need to fight back! By Miriam Nassif Name is Miriam Nassif and I am 14 years-old so I completely understand what it like to be a teenage girl growing up in our modern day world […]
“I won’t be buying Lovable underwear again” Melissa is another to write to Lovable to complain about its current Jennifer Hawkins ad campaign. What she has written is so important that I’m reprinting it from the Collective Shout website, where she posted her letter yesterday. How much more evidence does Lovable need that its current […]
Damaging the things I hold dear Yesterday, Sydney man David Ould wrote to Australian underwear company Lovable. He’d read my post on Lovable’s contradictory behaviour and felt he had to do something. It’s good to know there are men who care about the impact of unrealistic sexualised representations of women on the women they love. […]
GF’s ‘reality check’ needs a reality check Revolution: a: a sudden, radical, or complete change b: a fundamental change in political organization; especially: the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed c: activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation d: a […]
MTR on Gruen Sessions Last night the on-line version of the ABC’s Gruen Transfer, known as The Gruen Sessions was broadcast on the program’s site. The topic was the depiction of women in advertising. I was a guest on the panel with media analyst Jane Caro, advertising executives Russell Howcroft and Todd Sampson and host […]
We need more than this to make advertising, beauty and fashion industries accountable On the 7pm ABC News last night, a report on the Government’s new body image code was illustrated by the story of size 14 model Laura Wells, who was proud of her body and very confident, even though she didn’t conform to the […]
French-Marie Claire goes sans air brushing, but not sans camera tricks, makeup, lighting and models already near ‘perfect’. French actress Louise Bourgoin graces the cover of this month’s edition of French Marie Claire – hailed as the “totally non-airbrushed April issue”. Leaving aside the fact that it’s not totally non-airbrused because the women in the […]
Youth Minister Kate Ellis wrote a terrific endorsement for my book Getting Real: challenging the sexualisation of girls. I was – and am – very grateful to her for doing so. Ms Ellis wrote: Young women and girls today face extraordinary pressures to meet body image expectations that are unhealthy, unhelpful and unrealistic. The contributors […]
A special guest blog posting by Lydia Jade Turner on the Jennifer Hawkins Marie Claire photoshoot controversy. Lydia is Director and Public Health Advocate with BodyMatters Australasia and an Allied Health Professional specialising in eating disorders prevention. As an Allied Health professional specialising in the field of eating disorders, it has been interesting to observe […]
This on Nine MSN At last we can see “plus sized” women posed seductively, mouths parted slightly, dull eyes staring off into the distance, draped over some inanimate object looking passive and desperate for male attention.
Thought this Letter to the Editor in The Australian today from Leanne Torres in response to my Jennifer Hawkins piece yesterday deserved reprinting: IT’S wonderful, in theory, that a major women’s magazine is willing to admit its own “flaws” by publishing a picture of a woman whose body has been untouched by technology’s scalpel. However, […]
