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Hemp Necklaces Can Be Hot Too

I was perusing the September issue of Teen Vogue and came across an article about hair, featuring Leighton Meester, one of the stars of Gossip Girl. The piece seemed inoffensive...until the second sentence:

"But ask [Meester] about her own high school days, and she readily admits she wasn't exactly an upper-East side sophisticate. 'I had glasses, unplucked eyebrows, and I wore hemp necklaces!' she confesses. 'It's only recently that I've gotten comfortable in my own skin.'"

Does this make anyone else a little bit mad?

What was the most aggravating to me was that the author implied strongly that Meester dressed like that BECAUSE she had no self-confidence. She wore glasses, hemp necklaces, and didn’t pluck her eyebrows because she wasn’t confident. Apparently, everyone who wears glasses hasn’t “gotten comfortable in [their] own skin” yet… such as totally amazing women like Tina Fey or Lisa Loeb? Also conversely to her statement, people who are particularly confident might wear hemp necklaces because it’s an unpopular style, as opposed to less self-assured people being afraid to take a fashion risk. And the eyebrows… it’s a person’s choice, to pluck or not to pluck. There are people out there blessed with natural, no-pluck-needed eyebrows. Maybe Meester is one of the lucky few.

You can be as unconfident as anything and wear the hottest, most popular clothes, contacts, pluck (or even wax!) your eyebrows, and wear, uh, un-hemp necklaces and you STILL won’t be comfortable in your own skin. Or, you can wear all of those things and feel great about yourself!

I rarely look through Teen Vogue, but I know girls who revere it as a Bible of sorts. Will they stop wearing their glasses because Leighton Meester thinks that it makes them seem unconfident? I really hope not.



More articles by Category: Body image and body standards, Feminism, Media
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