This certainly isn’t the first time that models and booking agents at Talent Management have heard someone express outrage about the use of digitally modified images in the media. But it is the first time we’ve heard it quite so loud and clear from a 14-year-old girl.

For years magazines have been called upon by health professionals, editors and various celebrities to stop excessive airbrushing due to the negative impact that it has on readers – particularly young girls. Now the young girls in question are speaking for themselves and actively joining the fight against overuse of photoshop.

School girl Julia Bluhm has rallied over 12,000 signatures on a petition aimed at Seventeen magazine that demands the publication commit to just one spread per month consisting of unaltered images of models or celebrities. The petition is entitled “Seventeen Magazine: Give Girls Images of Real Girls!”. It comes after Glamour Mag Cindi Leive’s recent statement that she would ask photographers for Glamour “not to manipulate body size in the photos we commission, even if a celebrity or model requests a digital diet”.

Bluhm hopes that Seventeen will follow in the footsteps of Glamour and become a more relatable magazine for herself and her peers. On Mashable.com this week she is quoted as saying: “Seventeen magazine is supposed to be a relatable magazine. How can we relate to computer altered photos? Seventeen is popular with my friends and lots of teen girls. If they agree to print one unaltered spread a month, they could start a trend that will help so many girls like me feel better about their bodies.”

The young activist wrote in her petition letter: “Girls want to be accepted, appreciated and liked. And when they don’t fit the criteria, some girls try to ‘fix’ themselves. This can lead to eating disorders, dieting, depression and low self-esteem. To girls today, the word ‘pretty’ means skinny and blemish-free. Why is that, when so few girls actually fit into such a narrow category? It’s because the media tells us that ‘pretty’ girls are impossibly thin with perfect skin.

“Here’s what lots of girls don’t know – those ‘pretty women’ that we see in magazines are fake. They’re often Photoshopped, air-brushed or edited to look thinner and to appear like they have perfect skin. A girl you see in a magazine probably looks a lot different in real life.

“I’m a teenage girl, and I don’t like what I see. I want to see regular girls that look like me in a magazine that’s supposed to be for me.”

If you would like to add your name to Julia Bluhm’s petition you can do so at www.change.org