Seventeen Magazine is an american teen magazine that targets teenage girls between the ages of 10-17. It provides tips on fashion, gossip, news, advice and interviews with celebrities that are adored by teenagers.
In a 2006 report done by Magazine Publishers of America, 78% of teenagers read teen magazines. With more than 3/4 of all teenage girls that were surveyed saying that they do read teen magazines, it’s safe to say that throughout the world those statistics would be very similar. This represents how many girls are accessible to reading these magazines which promote stereotypes, and encourage young girls to change the way that they look to fit the ‘ideal thin’ body image. A 1999 study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that teens between the ages of 15 and 18 spend an average of 13 minutes daily reading magazines, they also found that on a given day, about 6 in 10 of these teens will read a magazine. This shows us that teen magazines hold a major influence over young teenage girls, therefore leading to these young girls receiving messages that the magazine is sending them messages about body image, and the idea that thinner is better.
“Perfect Hair,” “GET YOUR BEST BUTT,” “Look Pretty!” Those three phrases are what your eye is automatically drawn to, due to it’s marginally larger font size in comparison to other phrases and it’s bright, bold colours. These phrases are typically what you would see on almost every teenage magazine in order to entice teenage girls into buying this magazine, so they can find out how to change the way that they look in order to achieve society’s standard of beautiful. Not only do teen magazine’s using brightly coloured, eye-catching fonts but they also use photos of teenagers favourite celebrities to entice the reader even more into buying the magazine. They are also using these captions to make the teenage readers feel insecure about themselves, so that they feel as though they have to know what the magazines tip was for “Look Pretty!” Which also leads to the company making a profit out of a teenagers insecurities, which is a form of exploitation.
In the 2008 August issue of seventeen magazine, Blake Lively is their cover girl. Most teenage girls know who Blake Lively is as she is a main character in the popular television show Pretty Little Liars. With having Blake on the cover of their magazine, this then draws the attention of all Blake Lively and Pretty Little Liars teenage fans to the magazine. Also it could draw more teens that may not know who she is but see her and think that they want to look like her, leading to them hoping that the magazine will have tips as to how they can look like her.
Blake is a beautiful blonde haired, blue eyed young adult with a perfect face and unblemished skin. This picture of her is placed on the cover of the magazine because she is considered to be media’s ‘ideal woman’ for young teenage girls to aspire to be like. On the cover she looks perfect – her hair is being blown gently by a wind machine, but still there isn’t one hair remotely out of place. Her skin is flawless, her make-up has been applied perfectly by a professional, also her petite frame is flaunted by her tight singlet and cardigan. As teenage girls look at this magazine, they automatically assume that in order to be on the cover like Blake is you have to look like her, as she is portrayed as one of Seventeen Magazine’s ideal woman. The magazine wants these teenage girls to believe that this look that Blake has is easily attainable, that all teenage girls will aspire to have but in reality it’s actually impossible. This is probably due to the fact that each and every photo in this magazine especially the cover, has had a photoshop artist spending hours ‘touching up’ and ‘fixing’ all of Blake’s imperfections that simply make her human. They want you to be fooled by this photoshopping tactic so that you buy all the products that they advertise in this magazine so you can appear more like Blake Lively so that they can make a profit.
Teen Magazines largely focus on promoting stereotypes, and promoting false representations of how teenage girls and boys think, act and feel about certain topics. An example of a false representation of teenage girls is that all normal girls are thin, girly, innocent, obsessed with boys and will change everything about themselves that makes them unique in order to get a boy. This representation is completely inaccurate and sends the completely wrong message to young teenage girls, and sets a bad example for them to follow. It is telling them that in order for you to be loved by yourself and everyone else, you must conform to magazine regulation beauty and change everything about you that makes you unique.
Teen Magazines affects society’s attitude and perception towards teenage girls through using an array of representations and common stereotypes. Teen magazines discuss various different topics but don’t branch out within those topics such as when talking about love, they only talk about love between a woman and a man. They don’t seem to address the fact that some teenage girls aren’t in love or obsessed with other teenage boys, but they are in fact are in love with another person of the same gender.They also never have pictures of disabled women in the magazine, there is a large portion of women in the world who struggle with a disease that has changed the way they look. Such as women who may have one of their limbs missing, or their hair has fallen off due to a treatment, they have been left disfigured, have scars, why are these women not considered to be beautiful enough to be on a magazine. They also don’t branch out with race or ethnicity of models inside the magazine, as inside the magazine it is predominately filled with caucasian women rather than black, asian and muslim women just to name a few. I simply don’t understand why they struggle to introduce more varieties of beautiful women in teen magazines that truly are role models for teenage girls, that aren’t required to be a size 0-4, that have different sexual preferences and colour of skin. Without these different varieties of women, teenage girls are encouraged to be seen as materialistic, superficial, gossipy and mean this in turn alters society’s perception towards teenage girls. Leading to society criticising the actions of teenagers more and more until they are taken to extreme lengths, whether that may be cutting themselves because they were bullied for not living up to standards made by magazines (looks standards, expectations of sexual orientation, race) or even worse extreme cases of anorexia, body dysmorphia, bulimia, depression, low self-esteem, low self-confidence and even suicide.
In my opinion, Seventeen Magazine, have a predominately negative impact on their teenage readers. This is due to the fact that these teen magazines support the idea of young teenage girls needing to know how to have perfect hair, perfect make-up, perfect body type and most importantly the perfect boyfriend. Furthermore trying to reel in readers with only materialistic and superficial tips and advice, all of the magazines have captions, pictures and whole pages dedicated to making teenage girls feel more insecure about themselves whether it may be because of body type or acne. This will lead to teenage girls flicking through the magazine and buying products that are ‘guaranteed’ to make them feel beautiful, even when they already were to begin with. Not only do magazines need to stop sharing unrealistic representations and false stereotypes of ‘the typical teenage girl’ but all media outlets do.
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