I talk body image, “real girls” and the difference between problematic cultures and problematic individuals, in this month’s Girlfriend magazine:

The real girl resurgence in recent years isn’t just a response to increasingly unrealistic images of beautiful women – it’s also a response to the increasingly “un-real” technologies used to create them (we’re looking at you, Photoshop and universal Hollywood cosmetic surgery). … [R]ather than taking that out on individual girls and women whose physical appearance might be more culturally celebrated than our own, we should direct our anger and activism at the systems that create those narrow images of beauty and privilege them over everything else.

It is not girls who are skinny or symmetrically featured or who wear lots of makeup who are the problem, but a culture that says girls who are all those things are cuter, cooler and more worthy of our attention than girls who aren’t – not to mention a culture that says even if you are all those things (whether you got there through your own efforts or the genetic lottery), you could still look “better” if you had Photoshop to trim your waist, thicken your hair, enhance your breasts or straighten your nose.

As Girl With a Satchel’s Erica Bartle has already noted, Girlfriend (formerly edited by Sarah Oakes, now by Sarah Cornish) and Cleo (newly-ish edited by Sarah Oakes) both feature Rachel Bilson on the current newsstand issues. Meanwhile, in other “Different Market, Same Starlet” news, marie claire and Dolly both feature Scarlett Johannson on theirs.

Anyhoo, the point of this post is to let you know that I have two stories in the current Girlfriend: both on the rather complex matter of teenage friendship.

Stay tuned for Cleo articles in a couple of months.