's motd Tues July 17, 2012

[Guest guest]

WHEN I WAS 17...

Tuesday, 17 July 2012

It was a very good year! Well, considering how overweight I was at 17

years-old, I'm really not sure how good a year I can

say it was. But I can say this, we had a lot fewer

things to worry about when we were still in high

school, right? But...one

of the things almost all teenagers worry about. even

to this day is...how they look.

How many of you ladies remember buying Seventeen

magazine when you were in high school?

How many of you ladies remember buying Seventeen magazine when

you were in high school? I guess you could think of

it as the Vogue

magazine for young girls. Well, seems Vogue and Seventeen have a little

something in common lately. They're both trying to do

something about the self-image that women have of

themselves. Hey, I like that!

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago, I did a

message about how Vogue was going to

stop emphasizing the super-thin models who most-often

grace the pages of their magazine. Well, it seems Seventeen is now

following a very similar route.

A 14 year-old young lady wrote to Seventeen and took the

magazine to task for overdoing their efforts to

picture the "perfect" model.

Young ladies thumb through the pages of Seventeen each month and

see not only girls their age who look to be about a

size two or four but, on top of that, everything else

about them looks "perfect" in every way. (There's a

reason for that, which I'll get to later.) The

interesting part of this story is that a 14 year-old

young lady from Maine wrote to Seventeen and took the

magazine to task for overdoing their efforts to

picture the "perfect" model. And how do they achieve

that?

Well, many of Seventeen's photos

were retouched to reflect what they considered to be

"perfection." The photos were often photo-shopped,

air-brushed and edited to make the models look

thinner. The air-brushing even included removing any

signs of a pimple or blemish. (Oh my, if it could

only be that easy in real life, huh? LOL.)

The point is, that teenager from Maine seems to have

started something. She was tired of the unrealistic

portrayal of her peers on the pages of Seventeen.

She wrote and complained to the magazine and even

started her own online petition effort, ending up with

over 80,000 teenagers who supported her. And because

of her efforts, Seventeen promises

that from now on, it will celebrate every kind of

beauty and feature "real

girls and models who are healthy!"

I can see beauty in a woman of any color,

nationality and yes,of any size!

Good for you, Seventeen!

Along with Vogue,

both publications have earned a dose of newfound

respect from me. I tell you all the time, there is no

specific definition of "beauty." I can see beauty in

a woman of any color, nationality and yes, of any

size! Remember,

the most beautiful part of who you are is not what the

human eye can see. What really makes you beautiful

comes from within you and shows up in the way you

treat others and the way you treat...yourself.

Celebrate your beauty and,

remember, it's never too soon to look, feel and be

beautiful, even as young as...17!

Love,