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Is anyone really surprised that Atoosa Rubenstei, editor of Seventeen, is into starving herself for pretty clothes? She works for a magazine that exists for one reason, and one reason only - to sell products to girls. In order to better sell those products, the editorial slant creates a perceived need for those products by telling women then need to fix themselves - fix their weight, wrinkles, cellulite, sun damage, hair color, hair highlights, you name it.
I have always found something insidious about these magazines talking about self-esteem, pretending to be 'for' women while secretly undermining them with the message that they need endless, endless fixing.
Girls are never going to get positive messages from the fashion rags. To suggest this is, or should be, a goal of these magazines is laughable. How many men do you think seriously see Esquire and Maxim and GQ acting as a compass by which to navigage the world, and a legitimate means for measuring their self-worth? Those magazines sell things to their audience too, but mostly it's stuff that purports to make a man's life better, more interesting, more fun. Not improving the man, but the man's life. And, with Esquire at least, there is some attention to the life of the mind - the fiction is good and the political essays are intersting. And any objectifcation going on is of the oppostie sex, and for pleasure. Women's mags, by contrast, objectify our own sex....and nearly everything in these periodicals points to improving the woman's physical self, with the implied promise that this will bring the rewards of landing a man.
I wasn't surprised to see Rubenstein's remark, and I think it's hypocritical to ask her to pretend she really doesn't think that way, when flipping through her magaizne for five seconds tells us that yes, she clearly DOES feel that way...as do all of the contributors and advertisers comprising the magazine's content. It would be downright bizarre to have this woman espousing a healthy diet and a 'we're all beautiful on the inside' message when the value of the products she is selling is predicated on the idea that no, women aren't good enough as they are, and never will be.
The answer isn't for Atoosa to become a hypocrite, mouthing the party line about loving youself for who you are no matter what size you are, all the while filling the pages of the mag with pictures of rail thin models, expensive handbags and shoes, a plethora of unnecessary clothing and accessories and a virtual avalanche of beauty products for hair, nails, skin, face and body that send the exact opposite message.
The answer is for women to stop lapping up the crap the fashion rags sell them. It's not likely to happen, though, until women stop accepting and perpetuating the notion that beauty and sex appeal are the most important qualities for a woman to possess. Stop blaming men, stop blaming the media....take responsibility and stop playing the game. Stop buying magazines that promise to tell you how 101 ways to make him wild/lose weight/firm up that cellulite/look 10 years younger. Don't buy it and don't buy into it.
