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Of Mind and Body: Seventeen Helps in Peace Talks Between Young Women and Their Bodies

In honor of their newly launched Body Peace Project, which promotes healthy understanding of one’s body among young women, Seventeen magazine held a celebratory breakfast on a chilly November morning. The location was the publication’s headquarters in the Hearst Tower; guests of honor included November cover girl, Brittany Snow, ingénue film star of Hairspray and John Tucker Must Die, John Caplan, president of Ford Models, Jessica Weiner, Seventeen magazine columnist and self-dubbed “Queen of Self Esteem" and venerated plus-size model Emme.

All discussed the importance of instilling in women, from preadolescence to adulthood, the idea that they can derive self-worth in areas other than physical appearance; they also emphasized repeatedly that women should stop paying attention to the media’s preoccupation with celebrity cellulite and the like (quite ironic considering many of these people earn their livelihood on the basis of someone else’s so-called physical perfection). Although the tone and tenor of the coffee confab wasn’t completely grim, an air of sobriety did permeate the proceedings given the theme of the gathering.

“We are facing a very brutal war,” said Seventeen Editor-in-Chief Ann Shoket. “It’s teen girls facing their bodies.” She also added that Dove, which has used real women in its recent soap campaigns to show that beauty comes in a variety of forms and shapes, has just partnered with them on this project.

Snow, a survivor of a trifecta of eating disorders—anorexia, bulimia and binging—poignantly recounted her real-life experience to the rapt audience. Clad in an unseasonable-looking red and white paisley frock, Snow described how after being treated at a clinic specifically geared for those with eating disorders, she later found out—much to her extreme horror and sadness—that two young women whom she befriended while a patient had later succumbed to anorexia.

“Body image is so important because it affects so many people but it’s rarely talked about,” said Snow, “Being perfect is only an illusion. Hollywood is definitely not helping when it comes to this subject.”

Yet body image is a point of obsession for all women at one point in their lives, insisted Weiner who has made the media circuit, plugging this very same subject on TV’s “The Tyra Banks Show,” CNN and the “Today Show.” “Whether girls are wearing burkas or birkenstocks, they’re all worried about their bodies,” she declaimed.

Shoket ended the breakfast by urging attendees to sign their names to the Body Peace Treaty, which contained 12 resolutions designed to make young women feel better about their bodies.
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