A business owner and mother has gathered international support for her point-by-point take down of two magazines for children – one for boys and one for girls.
Shoshanna Keats-Jaskoll posted the covers of the Girls’ Life and Boys’ Life magazines to Facebook after discovering their alarming differences.
The mother of five from Israel targeted the editorial staff of the Girls’s Life magazine and used Boys’ Life as a comparison.
“Your cover has a lovely young lady with a full face of makeup and you invite your readers to ‘steal her secrets,'” Keats-Jaskoll said.
“The BOYS’ LIFE cover has in bold letters: EXPLORE YOUR FUTURE surrounded by all kinds of awesome gear for different professions — doctor, explorer, pilot, chemist, engineer, etc. subheading — HERE’S HOW TO BE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE.”
Keats-Jacksoll continued to take examples from each publication to illustrate her point.
“You to girls: Be like this girl. Wake up gorgeous, steal a girl’s secrets, slay on your first day, have fun, make friends…and kiss…and get all A’s,” she said.
“BOYS LIFE to boys: Be what YOU want to be. Here are some of your awesome choices! We’ll show you how!”
The business owner then pleaded to the female staff behind the magazine to be the firestarters of change.
“You are women. Working, professional women. Is this the message you are proud of? Is this why you became publishers, writers, graphic designers? To tell girls they are the sum of their fashion, makeup and hair?” She said.
“You CAN fight the tide of objectification of girls. You CAN create covers and stories that treat girls as more than hair, lips, and kisses.”
Girls' Life's founding editor and publisher Karen Bokram told Mic.com the magazine held much more substantial content if a reader were to look beyond the headlines.
"Our content of the entire magazine is for our audience and our audience has the same interests which is learning how to be the best version of themselves and that extends far, far beyond beauty and clothes and hair, which they know, because they read the whole magazine," she said.
"That's impossible to tell when you don't go past the surface. And we all know what happens when people judge a book by its cover."
The post has since collected almost five thousand likes since it was posted four days ago.
Users have commented on the post to share their support for the public call out.
"You are so right. While I chose to shorten my career and be a stay at home mom, it's ridiculous that our culture (women) can only complain about being objectified or limited by glass ceilings or lower pay, when it's perpetuated to be ambitious for your looks/personality in our media," one parent said.
"I don't buy my daughter (age 8) magazines like this because of the content. If they were girl power magazines or focused more on brains AND beauty not the other way around I might be enticed," another parent said.
Top Comments
Be an active parent, don't buy the magazines, teach your children about life and values and goals instead. Show them what's possible. Give them experiences. Make the m active participants in their life, not passive. Show them passion. Don't rely on the school system or the internet or media or their peers.
So, buy your girl the boys magazine and tell her to read it and be satisfied with that. Is her complaint more that boys magazines contain things of interest to boys or girls magazines contain things of interest to girls?
Can't we just get back to articles about The Project and what colour hair they have?
oh, so girls just have to be 'satisfied ' with that? Yep, that's the way to fix the problem. It may come as a surprise to you but some girls are not that interested in fashion and make up and for that matter some boys very well could be. The simplistic answer is 'well just don't buy the magazine if you don't like it' which is obviously true but why can't magazines aimed at teens not cater for all and not the stereotype.
What problem? Can we get past the look-at-me cherry picking this mother indulged in? There's no shortage of empowering girls magazines if she were to take a moment to look. She has a possible solution in search of a problem or she has a problem with boys being encouraged as well.
Because the stereotype sells better, unfortunately. These magazines are aiming to make money and selling a magazine that discusses make-up for boys isn't going to sell as well.