I realize it's been a while but what can I say? Life happened, as it often does.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am outraged. I was reading an issue of Seventeen Magazine and there was a specific article in it that absolutely disgusted me. This article was about the "secret perks" of being a single teenage girl.
This article had little stories from "real teenage girls" about how their lives are so much better after breaking up with their boyfriends. One girl talked about how she was with her boyfriend constantly for the first two weeks of college so she did not make any friends, but once they broke up she was able to be "a better friend".
Are you actually shitting me? Are "real teenage girls" in fact so obsessed with boys that they can't even focus on connecting with anyone else? Really? This is the message you want to give to younger readers? The message that if you have a boyfriend you can't be a good friend because you have to spend all of your time with him?
I have a very close friend who has been in a relationship with another friend of mine for over a year now. Not only are they both still very good friends with me and several other people, but if the three of us are together, they make sure that I do not feel like a third wheel by including me in conversations to the point of making inside jokes with me. They have a HEALTHY relationship which allows them to have other friends besides each other. They still spend a large amount of time together, but they can still "be a good friend" because they still have good friends! Instead of glorifying the idea of a boyfriend maybe we should be providing these young adults with information on how to manage a healthy relationship.
I find it extremely insulting that they also included "Skip shaving your legs for a week!" as one of the perks. Let me make this as clear as I possibly can,
YOU.
DO NOT.
HAVE TO.
CHANGE ANYTHING.
ABOUT YOUR BODY.
THAT YOU DO NOT WANT TO.
IN ORDER TO PLEASE SOMEBODY ELSE.
If your partner demands you to shave something, have something removed, dye your hair, lose weight, get a piercing, wear certain clothes, or something else you do not want to change about your body, YOU SHOULD NOT BE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH THAT PERSON.
This magazine geared towards young women contains a few articles about "how to get killer confidence" and all this cliche bullshit about accepting yourself as yourself, while the vast majority of the magazine is centered around the usual beauty industry formula of getting women to buy their products.
passive aggressive exaggeration of a beauty "flaw" + impossible standard reinforcement with fake photos - women's self esteem + fake solution = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ for the beauty industry
If have or know someone who has a teenage girl, I highly recommend checking out her magazines so you can see for yourself the kind of ridiculous bullshit that is being shoved down her throat.
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No words of wisdom right now all I can say is UGH
