The History Of The Universe As Told By Wonder Woman

The Seventeen Magazine Project

Adults have long professed that popular media feeds our children, especially young girls, the wrong impressions of what it takes to be considered valuable and normal. As most adults know their opinions are not usually held in the highest esteem by teenagers. The Seventeen Magazine Project by Jamie Keiles is interesting and compelling because it exhibits the interest and desire to address this problem by an actual teenager (not that she is the only one). 18 year old Jamie firmly states one of her goals as, “spreading the word about healthy body image, media bullshit, and why we need a broader definition of beauty.” For one month Jamie focuses her project on following the advice of Seventeen Magazine, whose target audience is teenage girls. She states her exact mission as seeing “what would happen if an actual teenager were to apply these tips and tricks to her life.” Jamie has managed to gather a large following through her campaign to redefine everything that different media aspects have ingrained into our society for generations. Jamie has called on her followers and people that feel alike to send in slogans and phrases aimed at media outlets especially magazines.One of my personal favorites(maybe because I’ll have all three soon) is the phrase that says, “into beards, bellies, and glasses where’s my hot guy poster.”

As a twenty-seven year old man I feel that Jamie’s project is a fundamental breakthrough that will hopefully change the mind set of current adolescents and  lead to a new blueprint for future generations of children(maybe mine).While her project revolves around the teenage girl centered Seventeen Magazine the same issue exist in magazines that  target other age groups and genders. Most adults, to a certain degree  still view beauty as what they see on the cover of a magazine or other media. Just the other day I saw I guy on the cover of a magazine and I thought to myself I wish I still looked like that. Even though I am not particularly overweight or out of shape I definitely don’t have the body I did when I was in the military. So when I see a guy in the media looking like an action figure it makes me want to go the gym, not because I’m unhealthy, but because that’s what society has thought me that being “attractive” is. The media shaped my sense of what being attractive is the same way that it did for Jamie and millions of other children. I hope Jamie’s project can be the beginning of the end for media dominated perceptions of beauty.

Guest Blog Post written by Larry Guster, Vaquera Film intern and film student at the Art Institute of San Francisco at California who hails from Mississippi.