Photographer Matt Frye took his kids to the local library in Kansas City where he saw his 7-year-old daughter looking at the cover of Girls’ Life — a US magazine aimed at 10-15 year olds. A few rows up was an issue of Boys’ Life — the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America. Matt sat them side-by-side and shared the snapshot on Facebook, calling it “a sad microcosm of what our society says being a girl vs being a boy means.”
Photo by Matt Frye, One Tree Studios
Headlines from Girls’ Life include “The New Denim Checklist (get ready to hear ‘I love your jeans’),” “Wake up Pretty (because mornings are rough),” and “My First Kiss.”
While Boys’ Life is all about exploring futures.
This dumbing down of what young girls should be interested in is nothing new, but I’m glad designer Katherine Young called it out with a quick mockup of her own cover.
“‘Wake Up Pretty’ was the most glaring part for me. There it was next to a girl who had went through a professional photoshoot and been touched up digitally and we are telling our daughters to look like her right out of bed.”
Matt and Katherine have both generated a ton of media coverage in the past couple of weeks.
Doing good > looking good.
Via Quipsologies.
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