First Person Singular: Forget fashion magazine ideals

By Katie Hubbard
George Washington High School

Face it, girls. We’re all guilty of reading fashion magazines, whether it’s the latest issue of Seventeen or CosmoGirl. But the fact remains that fashion magazines are making a negative impact on teens across the country.

With celebrities and supermodels covering nearly every page, these magazines leave the teens who flip through their pages feeling self-conscious. And with their perfect bodies, hair without a strand out of place and flawless skin, these models present a level of perfection that’s impossible for teen readers to achieve.

Let’s face it. We all want to look like famous celebrities or have the bodies of supermodels, but it’s a fantasy.

Achieving these dreams is not realistic and causes girls to hurt themselves. When reality comes crashing down, it’s impossible to feel pretty.

Surveys show that teens are unhappy with their looks, and that’s understandable. Everyone has a tough time accepting the way they look, and with pressure to be skinny or drop-dead gorgeous, it’s hard to be comfortable in your own skin. But you shouldn’t go to extremes and endanger your health just to try for those six-pack abs or to lose a dress size.

Fashion magazines affect everyone. Life is not all about the glitz and the glamour of celebrities or being the prettiest girl in school. Teens should realize that and accept themselves the way they are.

So the next time you pick up an issue of your favorite magazine, remember to love yourself and your body the way it is, not the way some faraway magazine editor tells you it should be.