More curves hit pages of women's magazines

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Teen Vogue picks non-models for snapshot portraits highlighting individual styles, and also showcases cool bedrooms. The back-to-school issues followed girls in Boston and Dallas as they shopped for clothes and school supplies.

Emily Weiss, 20, was chosen to go thrift shopping with the magazine in her hometown of Wilton, Conn. She is thin and pretty, but said she was chosen because of her individual style.

“Women’s magazines are fantastical and highly stylized,” she said. “For a magazine to incorporate real fashion from real people off the street is important.”

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Still too much pressure to be thin?
Experts are lauding the shift, but say the industry still puts too much pressure on girls to be thin and conventionally beautiful. And there’s no question magazines are still putting thin, beautiful celebrities on their covers.

Mary Pipher, author of a book about teen girls and body image, “Reviving Ophelia,” says anything that shows realistic women is a step in the right direction to help girls gain self-esteem. She argues in her books that teens are defined and pressured by the need to be beautiful.

“Presenting a broader range of beauty, even if it’s under the guise of selling cosmetics, gives girls more permission to think they too are attractive,” she said. “The ideal message is you’re great just the way you are and you don’t have to spend any money, but of course they need to sell magazines.”

Jean Kilbourne, creator of the “Killing Us Softly” educational film series shown in schools, has been tracking the influence of media on women for the past 30 years. She says the pressure has never been worse.

“The ideal is more impossible than ever before,” she said. “Technology now makes it possible to take a human being and make her flawless by using digital alteration, whittling down her thighs, whatever needs to be done.”

Kilbourne said the international obsession with celebrities also adds to the pressure, making girls believe they should be able to look like Jennifer Aniston or Julia Roberts.

“Showing real girls is just great sociologically,” she said. “Not only does it make more sense to show how a bathing suit will transform a person’s body by using a real body, but it makes women feel like they aren’t alone out there, that they are beautiful too.”

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