Real Life Horrors
“I was kidnapped and sold to a brothel” ‘Bliss’ December 2006 “My midnight escape from a sick cult” ‘Sugar’ December 2006; these are just some of the shocking headlines which featured in the magazines I looked at.
Is this the kind of literature you thought your daughter was reading? These are not the kind of real issues I would have thought of as appropriate for the 13 year old readers of these magazines. Some of the stories I read, including the ones I have already mentioned, incorporated some vulgar and sometimes quite disturbing details such as ‘as I came round, I vomited on the floor. My head hurt and I was bleeding between my legs…’ the story continued along the same lines in a very descriptive manner. Stories such as these rarely occur in real life and are scare mongering, and can be very disturbing for young readers.
These articles do often include help lines enabling teenagers to contact an adult, however I think it highly unlikely that these articles would relate to an average British teenage girl. Though these stories are not stories that teenage girls relate to, they seem very interested in them. This makes me very uncomfortable as a parent and as a child psychologist as I find it difficult to associate the interest in such horrendous articles, to the other interests of the average teenager.
I think that stories that relate to the more common occurrences in a teenagers’ life’s, such as sporting achievements and charities, which they could get involved in would be more appropriate.
Picture Perfect
All the magazines feature flawless models, dressed to impress on the front covers, with headlines such as ‘184 a-list model looks’ and ‘sexiest party fashion’. To my 14-year-old daughter and young girls like her, these images are ones that they aspire to. With pictures coupled with the headlines, the covers entice them into the materialistic fashion obsessed world of the a-list celeb. The immaculate appearance of the models is simply not a realistic view of an average teenager, they’re even often air-brushed; the images portrayed could make young girls feel inadequate purely because of natural teenage blemishes. Maybe images of everyday teens would provide a more pragmatic outlook to ordinary girls. The covers are plastered in bright coloured text in varying fonts and offer various stereotypical ‘girly’ gifts such as pink lip-glosses for that ‘perfect pout’. These eye-catching fonts and free gift offers draw the young reader in, encouraging them to buy the over-priced magazines. The magazines are about £2.50 each which I would consider to be fairly expensive for a teenager as they usually buy several of these magazines with their pocket money, which is typically in the region £5 to £10. To me, as a parent, such magazines would be more acceptable if they were at a more reasonable price and featured fewer stories about celebrities’ ‘shocking secrets,’ and more about achievements and real issues.
There are a limited amount of ethnic minorities featured in these magazines. This is quite inexcusable as children and teenagers should be encouraged to interact interracially and also the lack of ethnic minorities appearing in this medium could make girls who are part of ethnic minorities feel isolated. There needs to be more of a balance of ethnicity shown in these magazines.
There is feature after feature of embarrassing celebrity exposures in these magazines. Is this fair? Well from the viewpoint of the celebrity, I’m sure they don’t appreciate being photographed at less than their best, but from the viewpoint of our children, they are being shown that it’s acceptable to mock the misfortunes of others.
These magazines are obsessed with appearances and less interested in deeper issues, this maybe an accurate reflection of today’s society. They place high expectations on young girls and can be very overwhelming.
Language Analysis
There is a mixture of Standard English and colloquialisms used in these teenage magazines. There are a lot of abbreviations throughout the magazines and the reader is commonly addressed as ‘us’ or ‘we’. This makes the reader feel like the article is addressing them personally. This, coupled with the use of colloquial language such as ‘celeb divas’ fashion tips,’ relates to the way teenagers often speak to their friends. It is easy, even as an older reader, to forget that adults have written the articles. There are several examples of alliteration, ‘cool catwalk styles.’ They make the headlines more interesting to the reader; they also use other techniques such as personification, to achieve this as well.
I think the writers use Standard English so as to make the reader feel more mature and the colloquialisms to make the reader believe the writer was a lot younger.
In conclusion, I believe that these magazines could maybe influencing young teenagers and not necessarily in a good way. Although the writers try to use language of the same level, the stories they produce, I think, should be aimed at a much older age group. I think it would definitely be advisable for parents to read these magazines before allowing their daughters to do so. In this way you can individually censor and decide what you think is appropriate for your daughters.
Chantel Sheridan 10.6
Ms. Cupid