News Alert! News Alert! Seventeen Magazine has selected this year's teenage role model, "MTV's Miss Seventeen," and she is... a Skinny, Blonde, White Woman! YAY!Now, I have nothing personal against "Jen" -- she sounds like an okay person who has been through a lot, what with both of her parents incarcerated and having to work three jobs and all. And yet she remains "perky and happy." Good for her. Oh, and "Jen" was mostly raised by her grandparents -- such a shockingly "different" story for a pretty white girl.
I find it remarkable that competitions which apparently factor in more than beauty still result in conventionally beautiful people making it to the finals. And a pretty, skinny, blonde, white woman winning. What, am I supposed to feel better cause she has braces? If the winner didn't receive a photo on the magazine's cover, would an unconventionally attractive woman have had better odds? Would a woman of color with a similar backstory won? Would a disabled dyke have had a shot?
Sheesh, I don't know why I'm kvetching. I really shoudn't have expected more from a magazine that features a Body Mass Index on its website's homepage -- all in the name of "health," of course. Of course.
8 comments:
Honestly, Jen looks a little scary to me, like there's a demon behind her perky-blonde facade.
On the other hand, Forty-seven Magazine selected this ugly potbellied dude for their Golden Closet Award!
i had braces too! she soooo like has my support.
Yeah that's the thing: braces are mostly just cosmetic surgery for affluent kids (or a way for orthodontists to dupe working class parents into unnecessarily expensive dental work for their kids, just ask my mom), so that photo strikes me as just an ad for orthodontics. The weird thing about braces is that nowadays they're really a glittering signal of perfection, rather than an expensive correction of deformity (which is how they began).
Braces erased my trademark gaptoothed smile, and I shall resent them forevermore!
Yeah, I had braces too because my "mouth was too small for my teeth." My parents and I both fell for that beautiful logic (er, lies). And now my teeth are straight and I have receding gums, probably due to having braces. Yippee! Now "Jen" and I can go walk arm in arm...alongside the "ugly potbellied dude."
Well.. I actually go to school with Jen, at UW-Whitewater... and she is actually a pretty nice girl.. I am proud of her for winning and putting whitewater on the map! Go JEN
Yes, I saw her on the Today Show and she seemed perfectly nice. Nowhere did I dispute that. What I was criticizing was a magazine competition that could do no better than selecting a role model who resembles typical fashion models in every way -- except the challenges she's faced growing up. If the magazine really wanted to find a role model who has had a parent incarcerated and who is paying her way through school, they could have gone to any inner city and thrown a stone. Instead, they handpicked one who fit their magazine's stereotype for who is beautiful.
Sarah D,
You seem to have a bunch of issues..
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