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Waterville Junior High classmates Julia Bluhm (left) and Izzy Labbe traveled to New York City to protest Seventeen magazine’s use of Photoshop to adjust models’ appearances. They returned to NYC for a national SPARK (Sexualization Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge) meeting in August.

Call it a hunch.

Julia Bluhm, an eighth grader from Waterville Junior High, had a sneaking suspicion that not all young women were beautiful, thin and fit.

Yet, as Bluhm flipped through the pages of last May’s Seventeen magazine, there they were, in glorious color, one perfect teen after another.

Of course, it wasn’t just May’s issue. And it wasn’t just Seventeen magazine. These smiling stick-figures in minimalist fashions were everywhere, she discovered, seemingly taunting her.

“All fake,” Bluhm concluded.

Riding a mantra of “if you don’t like something, change it,” Bluhm and her Waterville Junior High partner Izzy Labbe set out on a campaign to shake up the good folks who, for starters, publish Seventeen. The magazine’s current circulation is 20 million worldwide.

“When girls read magazines like Seventeen, they shouldn’t have to be subjected to Photoshopped images and subliminal messages about the way they are supposed to look,” Labbe said.

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