eye of the beholder
by julie savage parker

Trained almost from birth that her job is to attract, to excite the male libido, many a young woman starts off life measuring her self-worth primarily or solely by the yardstick (well, ruler) hanging between a man's legs.

She willingly jumps through hoops—even rings of fire—suffering whatever she must to be beautiful in the eyes of the male beholder, blind to her own needs and values. Tweezing, waxing—removing of all politically incorrect organic matter from her body—she takes it all in her stride, no matter how painful or expensive. She is keenly aware that her surface is her trump card.

In Seventeen Magazine and The Disfigurement of America’s Girls, Lauren Eggert-Crowe (herself a very young woman) says:

Too often editors have considered their readers as consumers first and as citizens second. In the case of girls’ magazines, the ramifications are serious. Girls grow up believing that the lives and images portrayed in magazines are something they should aspire to. And they often have a weak sense of self-worth after all the tips on how to“fix” their appearance. They think their lives should revolve around what the magazines say: beauty, clothes, and boys.

Jean Kilbourne’s classic work Still Killing Us Softly: Images of Women in Advertising tells us that ads “will have you believe that women in the real world are all white and under 40; that no one is disabled and everyone is heterosexual; that a woman’s body is in constant need of improvement; that women need to look young, ‘beautiful,’ made-up, sprayed up, very thin, and perfectly groomed.” And according to Bakari Chavanu in Seventeen, Self Image, and Stereotypes, by their high school graduation, the typical teen will have seen 22,000 hours of television—twice the number of hours they have spent in school—along with 350,000 commercials. [from Volume 15 Number 2 at rethinkingschools.org, a rich and fascinating issue on the impact of media on self image!] Take a look too at Kimberly Phillips' 1993 article “How Seventeen Undermines Young Women,” (fair.org/extra/best-of-extra/seventeen.html). With 350,000 commercials under their belts, and almost all mass media reinforcing their indoctrination, it is no wonder that girls' self image shifts radically between the ages of 8 and18. [See too Mary Pipher's chilling Reviving Ophelia].

Is Seventeen Magazine the only culprit? Oh my, no! But it was one of the first magazines for young women—a magazine many of us grew up with. And for some of us, our growth was stunted by what we saw and read in those pages.

We could go on a rant for 40 pages on this topic, (and we may rant a bit—it is entirely too tempting!) but what interests us more than pointing the finger of blame is shifting the paradigm. If we are already grown-ups, how do we heal the damage done to our own psyches in our formative years? And how do we, as older sisters to the girls and young women reading this, er, stuff, now, help them see it for what it is, and stand proudly in their own beauty, no matter what form it comes in?

To start the movement in that direction, we invite you to write to your seventeen year old selves. (Didn't know you had an 'inner teenager' too, huh?) Tell the young girl you were what you have learned since then. Share these letters with us, if you like, and we'll print them in the July issue.