I came across an article last week about this image that was generated by graphic designer, Katherine Young, to highlight the stark difference between the messages girls are receiving from the media and the messages they should be receiving about what we value in them and what they should value in themselves and their peers. The image on the left is a real magazine cover, and the one on the right is Katherine's creation. The "model" featured in the second one is Olivia Hallisey, the 2015 Google Science Fair Grand Prize winner.
It's been a long time since I've been a teenager, but I remember seeing headlines like this and soaking them up like communion wine on broken bread. With messages like this front and center, it's no wonder girls get lost in beauty-centric culture and body dysmorphia before they ever make it out of middle school... and it's no wonder we did the same for generations before them.
An excerpt from Lightness of Body and Mind (page 158)...
"Diets and fitness schemes mess us up because they are based on making us less of who we are. Don’t eat that food you love. Do this exercise you hate. The whole approach doesn’t make sense. It’s backward, and it starts in adolescence, the very first time we identify the thickening of our bodies as a defect rather than a source of power, as we ready ourselves for the challenges of adulthood.
From there, we embark on a mission to shrink ourselves, to make our bodies smaller than they naturally are. We spend enormous energy controlling and depriving ourselves with no concept of how insane the pursuit has been from the very beginning. And then there is the backlash. All of that time and effort spent hacking away at our native bodies does nothing but send us ricocheting back to all the food we resented giving up in the first place. It backfires, and unnecessary, unwanted weight piles on.
Enough already.
Bodies are beautiful because of what they can do, not because of how tiny they are. It’s easy to forget what matters: the ability to bound up a flight of stairs to share good news, or the ability to stand outside on a cool, fall evening watching a storm roll in, with legs and strong abdominals to hold you up; clear vision to see dark clouds over a gray sky; ears to hear the scrape of leaves blowing on the sidewalk; the smell of rain on the horizon; and a chill on your skin."
The climb from one magazine cover to the other is steep, but for the first time in my lifetime, that climb is in motion. There is a conscious, purposeful movement afoot to value intelligence, vitality, and creativity over thigh gap and pouty lips. It's happening on Lenny Letter, in Taryn Brumfitt's film Embrace, and on social media around the world.
Shame on designers and magazine editors who want to fill our pretty little heads with paper thin distractions, and power to any girl—or human being for that matter—using her or his smarts to get the job done and finding beauty in people of all shapes and sizes. It's up to us to shape our own values. Let's make some noise.
