"Still, progressive forces are not entirely asleep in the empire of images. I think of YM teen magazine, for example. After conducting a survey which revealed that 86 percent of its young readers were dissatisfied with the way their bodies looked, YM openly declared war on eating disorders and body-image problems, instituting an editorial policy against the publishing of diet pieces and deliberately seeking out full-size modes-without “marking” them as such-for all its fashion spreads.(27) I like to think this resistance to the hegemony of the fat-free body may have something to do with the fact that the editors are young enough to have studied feminism and cultural studies while they got their B.A.’s in English and journalism. It’s easy, too, to be cynical. Today’s fashionable diversity is brought to us, after all, by the same people who brought us the hegemony of the blue-eyed blonde and who’ve made wrinkles and cellulite into diseases. It’s easy to dismiss fashion’s current love affair with full lips and biracial children as ethnic chic, fetishes of the month. To see it all as a shameless attempt to exploit ethnic niches and white beauty-tourism. Having a child, however, has given me another perspective, as I try to imagine how it looks through her eyes. Cassie knows nothing about the motives of the people who’ve produced the images. At her age, she can only take them at face value. And at face value, they present a world which includes her, celebrates her, as the world that I grew up in did not include and celebrate me. For all my and cynicism and frustration with our empire of images, I cannot help but be grateful for this."