Is "real" progressive?

How progressive is real?Germany's Brigitte

This week Germany’s biggest women’s magazine Brigitte made a surprising announcement: models are out, and real women are in.

The magazine made the decision to stop using professional models in their editorial content after receiving many complaints from readers saying the models are too skinny. Instead, the glossy will feature prominent women and “real” women in their pages.

I must say that it’s refreshing to finally see a women’s mag take a stand on this longstanding problem in the magazine industry. Despite giving lip service to the “all body types are beautiful” mantra, most women’s rags continue to populate their pages with ultra-thin models, making many women’s magazine reading experience a complicated love/hate relationship.

But while this move seems progressive it begs an important question: Exactly what kind of real women will be featured?

I ask this in response to an experience I had as an intern at Seventeen Magazine. Seventeen often uses “real girls” in their editorial features – usually in a type of story that asks a question and has readers give their response with their accompanying pic. I was often in charge of rounding up these girls and interviewing them. On one occasion my editor called me into her office and asked me to find some real girls that would give the magazine “diversity.” She asked me to find “one attractive Asian-looking girl and one attractive black girl” to feature in the story. The catch was clearly twofold: the magazine wanted to appear progressive, while maintaining a narrow version of who exactly would qualify as “attractive.” In this particular case it was girls who had “hints” of their race, while still fitting into normative versions of white femininity – thin bodies, big smiles, long straight hair, and European-like features.  Evidently, not very progressive.  

Then there’s campaigns like Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, which purports to celebrate a diversity female beauty. A recent tv ad in the US featured young girls participating in seminars that supposedly, “give them self esteem.” While it’s hard to argue against such a campaign (although there’s been a lot of great criticism since the campaign launched several years ago), it’s important to remember that ultimately, Dove is trying to sell us something.

Similarly, glossies like Brigitte and Seventeen are also trying to sell us things. Will Brigitte’s advertisers let the magazine use larger real women (and I mean size fourteen, not size eight!)? Or lesbian real women? Or African real women? I hope so, but it will be interesting to find out…  

xo, jessalynn