Especially for Parents
News and Commentary by Sharon Secor
August 2003
'Girlie' Magazines: What Today's Teenage Girl Reads
In 1944, the first issue of Seventeen hit the newsstands, one of the first magazines of its type. Today, Seventeen remains one of the most popular teen magazines for girls, boasting more than two million readers, and it now has a counterpart on the Internet. Inspired by the success of teen magazines, adult women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan have created teen versions, such as Cosmo Girl, which also has a website.
The difference between those early Seventeen magazine covers and the covers of today is simply stunning — girls were in dresses with smiles, without a trace of the overt sexual posturing of such modern cover girls as singer Beyonce, featured on the June 2003 issue, thumb in belt loop tugging down to reveal even more of her already exposed pelvic bones, and actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in an almost identical pose on the cover of the May 2003 issue. The stark contrast between the two periods of time demonstrates clearly the degree to which images of teenage girls have been sexualized in mainstream media.
The essence of Seventeen's content has not changed through the years. The primary focus still lies in fashion and how to be appealing to the opposite sex. However, in the early days of the magazine, girls did not look forward to the broad array of work place opportunities that they have today. Thus, it is disappointing that today's Seventeen magazine has not moved beyond a focus on how a girl looks, with each issue jam-packed with ultra slender girls, pierced bodies, and advertisements for products ranging from the usual excess of cosmetics and clothing, to hair care and color, to the body hair removal products necessary to wear those very low cut jeans and skirts. An advertisement for Gillette Satin Care Shave Gel features a girl resting naked in a pile of leaves, with a few leaves strategically placed. A Herbal Essences advertisement contains a transparent double entendre.
In the early days of Seventeen, the assumption behind the focus on attracting the opposite sex was that the expression of that attraction would take place within marriage. Today, that assumption is gone. On the Seventeen website, in the Sex and Body section (subtitled let's get down to the nitty gritty), a teenage girl can find a clinical description of the physiological process of sexual excitement and orgasm. She can take quizzes to determine her level of knowledge about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. She can find advice on how to "deal with a pregnancy scare" and how to know when she is ready for sex. Although communicating with parents or adults is often suggested throughout the site, it does provide information on how to obtain contraceptives without parents finding out.
In Cosmo Girl, a teenage girl can read about transgendered youth and the process of going from female to male. She can view such illuminating photos as two girls kissing and, in the June/July issue of this year, on page 42 she can read a short piece, titled Busy Buddies, describing a same-sex sexual experimentation between two teen girls. Cosmo Girl brings women's confession-style magazine and Jerry Springer Show-type content to its teen readers, with lurid tales of girls gone wrong and graphic stories of sexual abuse.
Although Cosmo Girl purports to be empowering and girl positive, it still relies heavily on the classic "look pretty and get-the-guy formula." The images typically impart a slender view of beauty. Pierced and sexualized teens appear in clothing ads with shirts unzipped to below the breast; female models appear in ads in just their panties - and less.
At the Cosmo Girl website, a daily quiz reveals that 77% of respondents were pierced professionally, as opposed to the 10% that did their own and the 13% that had none. On July 19, 2003, the site featured a section with various males bared to the waist, titled Eye Candy Unwrapped, exhorting girls to vote for the one they'd like to see naked. There were flashing, revolving titles - Why Don't You Have A Boyfriend, Free 4 Sexy Guy Posters, Get A Better Body In Two Weeks. These are the messages that "empower" the modern girl.
Those early Seventeen magazine covers provoke a touch of sadness, recalling a time when 14-year-olds were still allowed to be children. They offer a glimpse into a world where children were not shoved into sexiness and where the most serious of sexual decisions were years away; a world in which child sexual behavior was not validated and condoned by society at large, and in which the sexualization of children was not so intricately linked to the profit margin of so many corporations. Looking at those cover-girls from the past, it is unmistakable how much our own teenage girls of today have lost.