I can’t say I have ever looked to Seventeen magazine to provide a lot of body positivity. But this apparently something that originate in one of their issues:
The Body Peace Treaty
Remember that the sun will still rise tomorrow even if I had one too many slices of pizza or an extra scoop of ice cream tonight.
Never blame my body for the bad day I’m having.
Stop joining in when my friends compare and trash their own bodies.
Never allow a dirty look from someone else to influence how I feel about my appearance.
Quit judging a person solely by how his or her body looks — even if it seems harmless — because I’d never want anyone to do that to me.
Notice all the amazing things my body is doing for me every moment I walk, talk, think, breathe…
Quiet that negative little voice in my head when it starts to say mean things about my body that I’d never tolerate anyone else saying about me.
Remind myself that what you see isn’t always what you get on TV and in ads — it takes a lot of airbrushing, dieting, money, and work to look like that.
Remember that even the girl who I’d swap bodies with in a minute has something about her looks that she hates.
Respect my body by feeding it well, working up a sweat when it needs it, and knowing when to give it a break.
Realize that the mirror can reflect only what’s on the surface of me, not who I am inside.
Know that I’m already beautiful just the way I am.
While I think the bit about the body just being the surface is just regurgitating the same old “it’s who you are on the inside that counts” crap, and the “too many slices of pizza” thing is playing into the supposed-morality of food, I like this list.
What do y’all think?
10 Comments
I like it…with reservations. As you mentioned, the attaching of morality to food consumption re: the dreaded extra slice of pizza/scoop of ice cream (trumpets of DOOM!). It’s kind of hard to reconcile a list like this knowing that probably 10 pages into the issue, there are diet tips. But Seventeen and pretty much every woman’s magazine on the earth have always talked out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to self-image and what have you.
I like it with reservations as well, already mentioned above, but my particular reservation is this:
Quiet that negative little voice in my head when it starts to say mean things about my body that I’d never tolerate anyone else saying about me.
If you’re the type of girl I was, you’d tolerate a lot of nasty things being said about and to you, so I’d bump up against that on this point.
Yeah, Jane, the double-speak is a large part of why I haven’t read women’s magazines in YEARS.
SisterCoyote, I saw that as well – I wish they had, instead, gone with something about not allowing that negative voice to say mean things you wouldn’t want said to someone you love.
I think that the fact that someone on that magazine is trying to deal with body image at all is amazing. I’m older than most and have seen so much negative stuff in women’s magazines that I stopped reading them in my 20s, over 30 years ago. But despite this, all these magazines are reinforcing the idea of judging yourself by appearance only, even knowing its no meter. Whatever happened to teaching our youth to judge by actions, what you do? For that matter, judge not – least ye be judged?
Remember that even the girl who I’d swap bodies with in a minute has something about her looks that she hates.
This is the one I have the biggest beef with. Why is it a fucking given that every woman hates something about herself? Why should this make ANYBODY feel better about themselves, if it’s true?
I like it too, but, well, it’s Seventeen so I think any positive message young women might get from that pledge will be more than cancelled out by all the body negative messages in the rest of the magazine.
Why is it a fucking given that every woman hates something about herself? Why should this make ANYBODY feel better about themselves, if it’s true?
Because the reason you hate something about your body isn’t because your body is ugly, it’s because all women in this culture have been taught to hate our bodies, no matter what they look like.
Tari, I think that one is actually trying to get past the envy that so many people get trapped in – and not just about bodies. We look at someone else and we don’t see their problems, the things with which they struggle and we think our own lives are crap and worthless and therefore we are crap and worthless. Reminding yourself that no one has it perfect helps break down that fantasy that if you could just look like HER, everything would be perfect. When, in reality, SHE probably isn’t any happier than you.
It’s a cold sort of comfort because it does depend on the idea that most women dislike their bodies. Unfortuantely, that’s also true.
I think I get where it’s coming from…I just think it’s bullshit “body peace.” Knowing that most women hate something about themslves, body-related or otherwise, makes me horribly sad. Maybe I’m a freak, but I don’t see anything positive or encouraging in that – not even if the aim is to remind people that nobody’s “perfect.”
If this is from Seventeen, let’s see them back it up by filling their magazine with pictures that represent people of all sizes being awesome, instead of shaming the vast majority of their readership with a constant parade of Size 0’s.
Because isn’t the logical next step to having a belief acting on it? *just saying*
I must admit, I am not impressed by the Body Peace Treaty. I read Seventeen from age eleven through my teen years (I was a magazine junkie back then, what can I say) and they’d run something “body positive” every so often although it was way overshadowed by the usual teen/women magazine stuff in every issue – skinny models, highlighting of “flaws” and ways to “fix” them, promotion of consumption as a way to happiness, blah, blah, blah. So this is really nothing new or revolutionary. And the negative aspects in this list (well-noted by other responders here) really bother me and in my opinion completely undermine it’s purported intentions.
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