first, a word from club paxil : i made a doctor's appointment today (thank you mom & dad for paying for my non-insurance self), both to make sure i'm ok physically and to discuss the impact of leaving the club. i'm feeling mainly ok...a little nausea, a low-grade headache, the aforementioned narcolepsy, and occasionally i feel like my heart is going to explode. oh, and the nervousness and (i apologize to all those afflicted), my snappishness. i will tough this out. i meditated for 20 minutes this morning, and that helped.

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and now a rant : the fall 2001 edition of teen vogue is carrying a full-page advertisement for "Bloussant Breast Enhancement Tablets." seventeen magazine is carrying a quarter-page ad. what's wrong with this picture? a beautiful blonde woman, hair blowing in the wind, wearing a racing-type bathing suite, swim goggles casually around her neck...and her breasts filling the middle third of the page. literally. her breasts are the foreground. but that's not the worst.

bloussant is touted as the "natural" alternative to plastic surgery. it promises "increased cleavage, firmness and fullness." that's not all it's promising, either. the tantalizing reward for using this product? increased confidence and self-esteem because of larger breasts. excuse me? girls go through a marked decline in self-esteem and confidence as they hit puberty. depression skyrockets, eating disorders emerge, and things generally go nuts. books have been written about this. psychologists and social workers study it. but bloussant has the answer folks--these girls just need bigger boobs!

teenage girls need all the self-esteem they can get, and breast size is (obviously) not the answer. living in a society that doesn't tell them that they're only beautiful if their breasts are large would be a start. it's a cruel irony that advertisements such as these promise heightened self-esteem--the very thing that the existence of ads like these take away from girls. the basis of all marketing aimed at teenage girls is this: you smell bad, your skin isn't clear enough, your clothes aren't hip enough, your breasts aren't big enough. buy our products to remedy these problems. they smash the self-esteem of young women in order to replace it with the idea of consumerism as power.

Sassy magazine came out when i was about 14, and it was the only girls' magazine i've seen to date that had actual articles about important issues in the world at large. environmental articles, articles about education, articles about women's issues in other parts of the world. and the beauty advice was actually geared toward enhancing your own style, not making yourself into someone else's ideal. they used to run a two-page advertisement spread showing a girl in a bikini, promising that this company's miracle diet would help you "get the look that guys notice." Sassy readers wrote complaining letters, and the magazine stopped running the ad, and wrote an editorial apologizing for having run it in the first place. i was lucky to have a magazine like that. i give it a great deal of credit for influencing the woman that i grew into.(the editor went on to start JANE, by the way.)

but wait, there's more! Bloussant Breast Enhancement Tablets consist of four herbal ingredients: don quai, black cohash, fennel seed and saw palmetto. herbal supplements are not regulated by the FDA, and are assumed safe unless proven otherwise. but there may be dangerous interactions with other drugs a teenager might take, like birth control pills, antihistamines, or antibiotics. so not only are girls' inner selves in danger, but their bodies may be threatened too. teen vogue is running an ad (in the first half of the magazine, the big important advertising slot) that is all together dangerous. and the best part? it's doubtful that these pills actually work!

thankfully, the majority of teen magazines are refusing to run these ads, stating that they are completely incongruous with the purpose of their publication. i want to give all of them a big hug because at least they're doing that much right. possibly not unrelatedly, most of these magazines are fronted by women now...as for the publisher of teen vogue, Richard D. Beckman--he had no comment. what a surprise.

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i've got a lovely bunch of coconuts-beatpoetgrrl

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