by Britney Franco

Yesterday, we SPARK girls had a mock fashion show outside of the Condé Nast building in Times Square, New York, and publicly voiced our opinion on how Teen Vogue alters the bodies of the girls who appear in their publication. We made sure that people saw how girls were affected by this; after all, 75% of girls feel depressed after only a few minutes of reading a fashion magazine. That isn’t exactly a statistic that a magazine can take pride in, and we wanted Teen Vogue to realize that and think about the well-being of their readership.

However, we were disappointed in the results of the meeting set up with the editorial staff. The SPARK representatives–petition starters Carina and Emma alongside our Executive Director Dana Edell–met the staff the magazine for less than five minutes, and the staff made no mention of the campaign or the magazine’s photoshoot process. Instead, they gave Emma and Carina copies of Teen Vogue and told them to use it to “learn about the magazine,” as though we didn’t already know about it–I’m a Teen Vogue subscriber!

This was obviously disappointing to us, but we will still continue on our mission to get Teen Vogue to stop altering the appearances of the girls in their magazine. Teen Vogue has an incredibly large readership that supports them immensely, and now it’s time for the magazine to do the same for their readership. Teen Vogue has the power to change how girls feel about their bodies when they read their magazine, and they can lead other publications to do the same. People (including you, reader!) can continue to support our cause to help teen girls everywhere by signing our petition to have Teen Vogue make a commitment in the pages of their magazine to never altering models’ bodies or faces. We want people to stand up for teen girls and help us get Teen Vogue to do the right thing; they affect the lives of their readership in so many ways, and we want them to use this ability in a good way. They have the choice to be the heroes in this story; help them make that decision.