Entry 12: Seventeen Pretty Amazing

Seventeen Magazine has an annual contest where "real girls" can compete to get on the cover of one issue. It is judged by celebrities (this year's most notable was Emma Roberts), and the contestants have to have some kind of story or achievement. The girl who won is an amazing soccer player and an activist, and travels around to volunteer with kids in poverty. She also does something with cupcakes that have a cause. 

To be honest I had too look all of that up on Seventeen's website (if you couldn't tell I was basically copying something word for word). The contests don't really interest me. All of the girls are presented as perfect, selfless, kind and good-hearted people to great to actually exist in real life. 

The main thing I noticed related closely to the Miss Representation video we've been watching in class. What was the name of this contest again? ...Pretty Amazing. Really? Could they get any more contradictory? These stories are supposed to be about girls who make a real difference and have good characters, as opposed to the celebrities and models normally featured on magazine covers. And right off the bat, in the title, they undermine the whole message of the contest. 

This is an example of how second-nature it has become for people to base girls' worth off their outer beauty (or lack thereof). This magazine is written by women, for women, and about women, yet it still objectifies girls. Lindsay Brown is presented as having a beautiful personality, but on the cover she's obviously just had a big makeover and a healthy dose of Photoshop. Why do they have to emphasize her physical beauty when the story is about her inner beauty? 

It seems like a big reason for the objectification of women in media is the basic purpose of advertising--to make you feel like you need something. No one would ever buy anything if commercials made them feel adequate and satisfied. Come to think of it, we never do anything just to reassure ourselves we're good people. We read books that leave us with life lessons and food for though to improve as people, we date to have someone make us happy, not to share our happiness with them, we buy things to make life better, we read magazines (and the like) for information or advice. Our purchases have to improve us in some way to be worth the buy. Why do we constantly tell ourselves we need to be improved??? The pressure has apparently become too much for a lot of young girls.

The fact that this is a contest is also contradictory to the message. It's meant to give girls inspiration and motivation to be better people, but it pits us against each other as well. The contestants are definitely competing, and of course all the readers will inevitably compare themselves to Lindsay, and of course she'll be way better than all of us. 

So they have to inspire some kind of self-doubt in consumers to get us to buy their products. That makes it nearly impossible to market completely positively, and when the audience is a bunch of unsure tweens that little bit of negativity has a huge impact on their perspective and mindset. 

I don't see how this can be fixed. Without advertising and spending everything would collapse, but there are things in the media and in advertising that just can't be there; it's not fair to consumers, and it's doing serious damage to a lot of girls out there. So many products are built on this concept of what women should be, and you can't magically switch who the "pretty" girl is in movies and TV shows and expect it to be isolated from the world of advertising. So I think what Seventeen has done is about the closest thing possible to promoting the "beautiful on the inside" type of girl, even though it doesn't actually do that.