Teens and Their Magazines

Teens and Their Magazines There is not a day that goes by where I don’t witness a teenage girl in the mall dressed very provocatively, wearing short skirts, tight shirts, and covered in make-up. The group of girls she associates herself with is also dressed very sexy and in my opinion inappropriate for their age. As they walk they giggle and hold conversations about fashion and what they did with their boyfriends last night. Checking out stores for the latest trends, they also take a look at some sexy lingerie in the display at Victoria’s Secret. Seeing some cute boys walking past they all follow the steps learned in Seventeen magazine’s “How to Catch a Guy” feature. Just making it home by curfew, they all rush upstairs to their room to read their latest edition of Cosmo GIRL with plans to do it all again tomorrow. Teen magazines are sending the wrong messages to young teenage girls. These magazines are urging girl’s to capitalize on their looks and transform themselves from the average girl to the “hot” girl. Girls are reading these magazines and conforming to the images portrayed in these magazines, without even realizing it. They are focusing more on their image and what other people think of them, than what they think of themselves. Most teen magazines center around making yourself look better with headlines consisting of “Dress to impress.” “Easy hair makeovers.” “Find the perfect hair, makeup, and style for you!” “Be a knockout! (Beauty and the Teen). Girls are faithful magazine consumers and they take what these magazines say to the heart, feeling pressured to live by the rules of the magazine. As a Kaiser Family Foundation study pointed out, 42 percent of the girls aged twelve through fifteen relied on magazines to keep abreast of current trends (Liebau). Teen magazines are constructing young girls to believe that in this world being beautiful or, as they say in the magazines, being “hot” is an obligation. Body image is also a huge depiction

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