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If you think this heralds hypocrisy, you aren't the only one shaking your head. Last year, Seventeen magazine launched a campaign on positive body image in conjunction with Dove. They've also included a "Body Peace Expert" who answers teens' body image-related questions. How can Seventeen follow its own body-positive philosophy and campaign goals when the magazine pushes the very thing it denounces?

"Naked Labs wants to be brutally honest with us about our bodies in a way a mirror, scale, and maybe a personal trainer could never deliver - a full-length mirror equipped with an array of 3 Intel RealSense depth sensors designed to accurately capture the body in all its glory, producing a 3D model in just 15 seconds. Aimed to aid fitness enthusiasts and athletes in tracking their head-to-toe measurements and body fat percentage with a greater level of accuracy than formerly available at home scales, this is either a dream or nightmare."

"Among men, the overconsumption of protein powder is enough to constitute an eating disorder, says Richard Achiro of the California School of Professional Psychology. Men are being driven toward a lean, muscular body by low self-esteem and gender role conflict, "which is an underlying sense of insecurity about one's masculinity." "The way in which men's bodies are being objectified by the media is catching up rapidly to what has been done to women's bodies for decades," said Achiro."

Every bit as unattainable as Barbie-doll proportions and the heroin chic look are the broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, fat-free, and muscle-sheathed male physiques littering today's media. Researchers are beginning to pay attention to what these stimuli do to the male body image. Guys, it turns out, have body issues too. 

"A magazine with no Photoshop whatsoever? Yes, it finally exists. Changing the magazine game is clearly an uphill battle, but Verily, a fashion and lifestyle magazine aimed at women 18-35, is making its best case. The idea for the publication began to hatch back in 2011 with the premise that most mainstream magazines for women deliver narrow and often negative messages, ones that make women feel bad about themselves rather than good and "fail to reflect our lives or our philosophies as women." They also fail to reflect what we actually look like. Thus Verily's mandate: "Whereas other magazines artificially alter images in Photoshop to achieve the so-called ideal body type or leave a maximum of three wrinkles, Verily never alters the body or face structure of the Verily models.""

"Any revolution in the depiction of women's bodies is not going to come from marketers, whose job it is to construct a narrative in which a person is incomplete until a product is purchased-and so must create feelings of unworthiness and desire, as well as an impulse to change. The problem with looking to companies, even well-meaning ones, to determine ethical standards is that the effort will always feel cynical at some level. And so, as it ever was, the representation of the female form will continue to be a battleground."

""After year in space, astronaut Scott Kelly no longer has same DNA as identical twin," the headline of a story on the Today Show's website, published Thursday, declared. Seven percent of his DNA, the story says, "has not returned to normal since he returned from space." Pretty amazing news, right? Too bad it's not true. This week, dozens of news organizations published stories with this or similar information. They cited a NASA study on the effects of space travel on the human body, with two subjects: astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly, identical twins. In 2015, Scott flew to the International Space Station and lived there for 340 days-a record for an American astronaut-while Mark stayed on Earth. Scientists examined the twins before, during, and after the mission. While the study certainly detected some interesting changes in Scott after his return, space did not alter 7 percent of Scott's DNA, the genetic code found in the cells in our bodies that makes us what we are. What the NASA study found was that some of Scott's genes changed their expression while he was in space, and 7 percent of those genes didn't return to their pre-flight states months after he came back. If 7 percent of Scott's genetic code changed, as some of the stories suggested, he'd come back an entirely different species."

"By being unreal, she is an error-proof ideal. And by being the ideal, she represents a liberation from celebrity as much as its fulfillment. A pop singer today is, mostly, a beautiful image of a person who sings other people's material, and those other people, the creators, are mostly forgotten. "There are plenty of people who can do great music but who will never get on stage because they're not young, fit, beautiful people," says Amy Fineshriber, a fan who also occasionally works for Crypton Media. She has a point. When was the last time you saw a bad-looking pop singer? Hatsune Miku spares the creators the need to have the bodies they cannot have. For the imperfect, the overweight, the shy, the normal kids with regular bodies who just love pop music, Hatsune Miku bears the burden of the perfection demanded from celebrities, so that these kids can make the music they want to hear."

"A diverse cast of models shows how the standard of beauty for women has changed dramatically over time. BuzzFeed posted an amazing video this week to illustrate justhow much the "perfect" female body type has shape-shifted throughout the centuries, from the voluptuous curves of the Renaissance to '90s heroin-chic"

"Yet another way in which boys are apparently becoming just like girls: They are obsessed with their bodies, according to this front page New York Times story today. They are obsessed to an unhealthy degree. They count calories, drink weird powdery shakes instead of eating normal meals, take pills that alarm their pediatricians. We have thinness. They have "muscle enhancement."  We have the well-dressed skeletons in the H&M ads. They have The Situation, who, since rehab, lifts up his shirt a little less this season but still enough to make masses of American teenage boys jealous."

"According to Musburger's wonky logic, McCarron earned a hot girlfriend by being really good at throwing a pointy ball around on a field. In case you're still wondering why people like myself find Musburger's comments creepy, I'd now like to issue a friendly reminder that a) girls are not prizes that you win for being good at things and b) when you issue uninvited commentary on women's looks or bodies, this is why we throw things at you."

"n this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes -- images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne's groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence."

"An educational film, entitled It's a Look, meant to highlight how carefully constructed - and not real - fashion images are. It's a Look comes with an accompanying lesson plan, and it's targeted at high school girls aged 15-16. Says Shulman, "I decided it might be helpful to show what goes into the creation of a Vogue fashion picture, as a way of illustrating the skill and artifice that makes the final product." This endeavor is a result of the magazine's recent Health Initiative, a pact between the 19 international editors of Vogue to encourage a healthier approach to body image."

" a new "study" from marketing firm PHD recommends a strategy that crosses the line from merely targeted to outright predatory, explicitly advising brands to seize on the times of the day and week when women feel the most insecure about their bodies and overall appearance in order to sell beauty products and other goods."

"In recent years, the web has exploded with images, blogs and microsites that glorify dangerous weight loss at any cost. Photos of emaciated girls tagged with #thinspiration and #thinspo saturate Twitter feeds and Tumblrs. Waist-down shots picture girls in gym gear that hangs off their shrinking bodies. Pinterest photos depict women with #thighgap; they're so thin that, even with feet together, their thighs don't touch, a genetic impossibility in most, but one that can occur in the dangerously thin. In a sense, the phenomenon is nothing new. Similar photos have been online since the late '90s. But their volume and accessibility is unprecedented. One survey shows that between 2006 and 2008 alone, the number of such sites had increased by 470%. At the same time, dieters are getting younger. According to NEDA, 40-60% of girls aged 6-12 are concerned about their weight or about becoming too fat."

"Movie producer Ross Putman reads scripts for a living. He sees countless female characters introduced in over-the-top, absurd ways that usually focus only on the character's body type, age and sexual attractiveness. So Putman decided to keep track of these female character introductions by creating a Twitter account called @femscriptintros. Each tweet highlights the ridiculous (and sometimes rather depressing) ways women are being described in screenplays."

"A diverse cast of models shows how the standard of beauty for women has changed dramatically over time."

"U.S. Soccer, the governing body for the sport in America, pays the members of the men's and women's national teams who represent the United States in international competitions. The men's team has historically been mediocre. The women's team has been a quadrennial phenomenon, winning world and Olympic championships and bringing much of the country to a standstill in the process. Citing this disparity, as well as rising revenue numbers, five players on the women's team filed a federal complaint Wednesday, accusing U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination because, they said, they earned as little as 40 percent of what players on the United States men's national team earned even as they marched to the team's third World Cup championship last year. The five players, some of the world's most prominent women's athletes, said they were being shortchanged on everything from bonuses to appearance fees to per diems.

"Let's put something to rest: Facebook isn't spying through your phone's microphone to serve you ads for sweatshirts and seltzer water. It probably couldn't even if it wanted to. But if the social network isn't listening to you, that doesn't mean the rest of the world isn't watching. Advertisements in the real world are becoming more technologically sophisticated, integrating facial recognition, location data, artificial intelligence, and other powerful tools that are more commonly associated with your mobile phone. Welcome to the new age of digital marketing. During this year's Fashion Week in New York, a digital billboard ad for New Balance used A.I. technology to detect and highlight pedestrians wearing "exceptional" outfits. A billboard advertisement for the Chevy Malibu recently targeted drivers on Interstate 88 in Chicago by identifying the brand of vehicle they were driving, then serving ads touting its own features in comparison. And Bidooh, a Manchester-based startup that admits it was inspired by Minority Report, is using facial recognition to serve ads through its billboards in the U.K. and other parts of Europe as well as South Korea. According to its website, Bidooh allows advertisers to target people based on criteria like age, gender, ethnicity, hair color, clothing color, height, body shape, perceived emotion, and the presence of glasses, sunglasses, beards, or mustaches. We've been on the path here since at least a decade ago when the New York Times reported that some digital billboards were equipped with small cameras that could analyze a pedestrian's facial features to serve targeted ads based on gender and approximate age. "

"Many of the images are exactly what you'd think: blood, chunks of flesh, brains, and apocalyptic messages written in shit on prison walls. Then come the "after" pictures of spotless tiles-these new social media stars are crime scene cleaners, the people who clean up the worst messes in America. Why would anyone want to look at mattresses caked with the ooze of decomposing bodies? "People love to see the aftermath," said Neal Smither, 52, proprietor of Crime Scene Cleaners, Inc, based in Richmond, California, and its Instagram page @crimescenecleanersinc. "They're gore freaks... They have a certain curiosity we just seem to fit.""