On The Gospel According to Ann

Hello hello hello again, readers!

I'll admit it: this post is mostly a shout-out to my friend Jamie at http://www.theseventeenmagazineproject.com/. The idea is pretty simple: 30 days of fashion, beauty, and social commandments as issued by our Lord and Master, Ann Shoket, editor-in-chief of Seventeen Magazine.

I have a dirty secret: I'm a subscriber. Yes, I turn in my family's Coca-Cola Coke Points for 6 issues of garbage. I started getting it when CosmoGirl stopped printing and they moved my remaining subscription to Seventeen. Most of it serves as the basic material for my wall (including a really fantastic picture of Anthony Michael Hall smoking a joint in classy black Wayfarers from my favorite movie of all time, The Breakfast Club, from an article discouraging girls from hitting the THC), which is a 60-square-foot monstrosity of a collage done in a lot of shiny, semi-glossy magazine print.

Being my cynical self, though, I do have to question it. I keep most of my back-issues for collage material or just petty entertainment, but a lot of the girls and the lifestyles it promotes annoy me. For example, Whitney Port and Lauren Conrad have been cover girls for Seventeen multiple times in the last year. One issue I have, I blacked out both Whitney's eyes and mouth...which I kind of wish I could do to her in reality. These are two girls who gained fame for hook-ups, break-ups, and drama, and have used their not-so-earned fame to...what? Release a clothing line which they designed partially by themselves? Write two pieces of trashy teen literature about girls behaving exactly like they do? It's kind of shameful that these are the role models we as readers have been given.

What about Emma Watson's animal activism? She's beautiful, famous, AND has a cause that gives girls something to look up to. Or better yet, how about the young, female moguls and entrepreneurs they mention deep in the depths of the magazine in the 100-something pages, after the make-up tips and "Styles to Make You Happy"? Aren't THESE the girls we should be aspiring to be? Beautiful, independent, creative, strong?

So why Whitney and LC?

Waiting on the world to change,
Rachel Leigh