by Julia Bluhm You know how when something awesome happens, it takes a long time for it to sink in, and for you to realize what’s actually happening? That was how I was feeling the morning of October 13th. I woke up to a beeping alarm, curled up deep inside the covers of a floral-print…
by Julia Bluhm My mother made me costumes Made from colorful cloth and itchy Velcro, Of mostly ballerina-princesses, And fairies dressed in rainbow. After that phase passed, I wasn’t stopping. I got my first taste of online shopping. I was too “grown-up” for mom’s designs, But what I wanted was still hard to find. All…
In this edition of our Teen Vogue Homework, Izzy, Maya, and Julia got together to go through the August 2012 issue of Teen Vogue, marking “non-diverse” images (or images of white, thin women) with “diverse” images (images of women of color or non-thin women), and at the end of their journey, here’s what they’d found: 110…
by Julia Bluhm We all know that the media’s messages are having more and more of an effect on kids. Whether you’re reading a book, watching a movie, or just taking a walk down the toy aisle, everything marketed towards girls is pink, has to do with beauty, or ends with a prince charming sweeping…
By Julia Bluhm As a little girl, I wore Lands’ End clothes; I played with American Girl Dolls; and swung on the swings. I lived in a two-story house on a little street, in a little town. And that was my own little world. Anything outside was kind of a mystery. I don’t know if…
By Julia Bluhm There was a time when women had to wear corsets and huge gowns. There was a time when women were expected to keep their opinions to themselves, when they were expected to lift their pinkies while they were drinking tea. They were expected to be ladylike in a time when that meant…
By Julia Bluhm The perfect ballet dancer has to have a thin body, long legs, and a long neck and no chest. They have to be tall enough that their lines look long, but not so tall that they’re taller than their partner on pointe. They can’t be curvy, but they can’t be so bony…
By Julia Bluhm Let’s face it, lots of little girls love princesses. I’m not saying all do… but lots do. They see all the commercials, all the dolls in the store windows, they read all the picture books, and the “I love princesses” epidemic gets screwed into their minds. Princesses are kind, loving, and nice.…