Girls Ask ‘Teen Vogue’ Advertisers to Pull Ads Until Mag Nixes Edited Images

Nearly 10,000 people have joined a campaign asking Neutrogena, Tampax and Clean & Clear to stop advertising with Teen Vogue until the magazine publicly pledges to show diverse, unaltered images of real girls.

Emma Stydahar, Carina Cruz, both 17, and Britney Franco, 13, members of the girl-fueled SPARK Movement, are leading the campaign on Change.org after Teen Vogue refused to commit to dropping digitally altered images earlier this year.

In July, the young women launched a campaign asking Teen Vogue to make the same commitment to real, diverse images that Seventeen magazine made in response to a successful campaign on Change.org launched by their fellow SPARK Movement member, Julia Bluhm. Their petition to Teen Vogue received more than 46,000 signatures and was covered on CNN, ABC, and the first episode of the new Ricki Lake Show.

“When we met with Amy Astley, the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, she told us that teen girls didn’t dictate the content of a magazine meant for us. So we’re taking our campaign to their advertisers to ask them who they stand with, real teen girls or Teen Vogue,” said Emma Stydahar, who launched the campaign on Change.org with her fellow SPARK members.

“Nearly 10,000 people have joined our campaign on Change.org, and thousands more are sure to join in,” Carina Cruz added. “We are the consumers of these products, and we want them to take a stand against unrealistic images that hurt girls’ self-esteem. If we, as the voices of their readers, couldn’t compel them to change, maybe their advertisers can.”

Each new signature on the petition is sent via email to representatives of the three advertisers, Neutrogena, Tampax and Clean & Clear. While there has been no response as of yet, the young women behind the campaign say they are hopeful because the three companies share a commitment to diverse, authentic representations of real girls.

“If you look at the ads that Neutrogena, Tampax and Clean & Clear put in Teen Vogue, it’s easy to see that they value diversity and representations of real girls living full, happy lives. That’s what we’d like to see in Teen Vogue’s editorial content, and we want their advertisers to push them to get there,” said Britney Franco, the third member of the SPARK girl trio.

“This campaign is part of a recent trend of girls using Change.org and social media to change the American teen magazine industry for themselves and their peers,” said Shelby Knox, senior campaigner at Change.org. “It’s clear this brand of Internet-age girl power is resonating with people.”