Fourteen-Year-Old Against Seventeen
Brad M. Griffin | May 18, 2012
What happens when a 14-year-old girl decides to take on Seventeen Magazine?
You may have caught this news feature recently, but that’s exactly what’s happening. Eighth-grader Julia Bluhm decided she’d had enough with the unrealistic expectations places on girls (and guys) in Seventeen and other teen mags and media. A teen blogger, she joined forces with teenagers around the country to petition Seventeen to run one “unaltered” photo spread a month of real teenagers.
Awesome.
Nearly 75,000 have signed the petition at change.org to date.
I love that real teenagers are standing up to the media monsters of our culture to say they’ve had enough. Will it change a whole industry? I’m not sure. But perhaps other real kids will be inspired to make changes in their own lives, schools, and communities.
What courageous acts by teenagers have you been inspired by lately?
Brad M. Griffin is the Senior Director of Content for the Fuller Youth Institute, where he develops research-based training for youth workers and parents. A speaker, writer, and volunteer youth pastor, Brad is the coauthor of over a dozen books, including 3 Big Questions That Change Every Teenager, Faith in an Anxious World, Growing Young, several Sticky Faith books, Every Parent’s Guide to Navigating Our Digital World, and Can I Ask That? Brad and his family live in Southern California, where he serves as Pastor of Youth and Family Ministries at Mountainside Communion.
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