Teen Magazines: Pros and Cons
Teen magazines often mean “magazines for teenage girls”. Teen girls today are the biggest part of the audience of teen magazines, so more magazines are created especially for them. If you walk into a supermarket, you usually see shelves with lots of magazines and newspapers on display. It’s easy to tell magazines for teenage girls: they usually have a female celebrity on the cover, for example an actress or singer who is popular with young people. The title of the magazine and some of its articles are printed in bright letters on the cover. Many teen magazines have a “glossy” cover. Some of them are the size of your usual sheet of paper, while others are small enough to fit into a schoolbag or handbag. The latter trend is popular today, because it’s easier for girls to carry the magazine around with them. They can read it in buses, on the subway, in cafes, and share opinions about it with friends at school. Some of the most popular teen magazines are ELLE girl, Seventeen, Oops, Yes!, Cool girl.
The history of teen magazines is an interesting one. It is connected with the history of magazines for women and magazines for young people in general, as well as with literary development in Russia and Europe. Before the 19th century, girls were seen either as children or women, especially since they married young, and so they read either the available children’s or women’s magazines. However, there were separate attempts to divide the female audience and create magazines for more age groups. This happened in the 20th century. The magazine Seventeen appeared in the USA in 1944. It is one of the most popular teen magazines in the world today, and other teen magazines have followed it. The average teen magazine is published every month and has sections devoted to fashion, beauty, entertainment (music, books, movies), health, friendship, love, family. Two of the most important features of the magazine are the editor’s letter and letters from readers. Readers may get prizes for printed letters, and magazines often organize different contests for readers, which also attracts audience.
 By the 21st century, magazines for teenage girls have achieved a firm standing in the world’s culture and society. Most age-groups today have media that represents their interests. Teenage girls are recognized as a special part of society, marked by their age (12–19), interests, life experience. Teen magazines have become international. Issues of the same magazine are published in different countries, in the language of that country. For example, there is a Russian ELLE girl, an American one, and others. This is important, because teens from different countries can communicate with each other through the magazine. We live in the age of the Internet, and since many of these magazines have websites, international communication between readers has become even easier. Teen magazines are expected to include articles about real-life situations that teen girls encounter, not just entertainment material and articles about beauty and fashion. The magazines reflect the changing role of the modern teenage girl and the expectations, and ideas she has to deal with.
Teen magazines are popular and always visible today, so they attract a lot of attention. There are a lot of discussions going on about the positive and negative influences of these magazines. Readers generally like the magazines because they are bright, they print information which is interesting and useful for teenagers, they are not “dumb”; and they respect their readers by publishing articles about real-life problems of the modern girl. Those should be the characteristics of a good magazine, although there are as many opinions and tastes as there are readers. On the other hand, some discussions focus on the fact that teen magazines pressure young girls to achieve an ideal that isn’t realistic. This mostly has to do with advertising and printing pictures in fashion stories of models who are too thin.
In my opinion, the real negative points of a magazine would be confusing its audience – it should be clear whether the magazine is intended for teenage girls or women. It’s also sad if the articles in the magazine encourage girls to grow up too soon. Unfortunately, this sometimes occurs in Russian teen magazines. Not to mention, the products featured in them are incredibly expensive!
Teen magazines are created by people, for people – for girls. OK, teenage girls are sometimes vulnerable and they need protection from bad ideas. OK, magazines sometimes overdo it with advertising and pressing a certain beauty ideal. But there should be faith in the fact that readers do have brains and are capable of choosing what is real and what is destructive. Most importantly, girls should believe in themselves and follow their intuition. No magazine controls girls – they control what they like and do not like. With the right reader attitude, magazines for teenage girls can be fun, relaxing and informative.
By Evgenia Koptyug,
Novosibirsk
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