In this essay, I will be talking about how teen magazines affect the lives of their audience.
The main audience which are usually affected most by the representations of magazines are teenagers, particularly teenage girls. As shown in my previous tasks, most girl magazines, such as Bliss, have a main selling point which is fashion. The covers and coverlines, also shown in the above images, advertise the “Hot Holiday Buys” or the “must haves” in the fashion world. This can affect the self esteem of a teenage girl if she does not own these amazing clothes; this itself is an example of a social ramification.
Almost every girl’s magazine has a stunning celebrity model on the cover; someone who is idolised by adolescents - typically an A-list actress or a popstar. Most of these celebrities are naturally attractive but due to the increase use of programs such as Photoshop it is difficult to see the difference between a real image and a fake one. These alterations on images are used to make the model look as physically appealing as possible; this can mislead a girl by implying that this is a “perfect” body and is what every girl should like - The More cover above includes a coverline “All New celeb bikini-body cheats”.
Once again, a social ramification is a lack or loss of self esteem due to a young woman being unhappy with her appearance however it can lead to much worse things. There has been a noticeable increase in the number of Bulimia cases in young women over the past few years - http://bit.ly/djuEyc - and although there is a possibility that these increases have got nothing to do with the representations of women in magazines, it is difficult to think that they have not made a slight or even minuscule impact on these statistics.
Another general theme of a girl’s teen magazine is relationships. The above Bliss cover includes the coverline: “Boost your Dating Rating”, this is a good example to show how magazines suggest that a teenage girl should be in a relationship. Once again, these puff/plugs which talk about how to attract boys or boost your dating present social ramifications towards teenage girls who are the target audience for these magazines.
These magazines already tell young girls that they wear the wrong clothes and that their bodies aren’t right, now their saying it’s bad to be single. Consequences of this can lead to a young woman feeling neglected and that there is something wrong with them if they don’t have a boyfriend; this is not true.
Overall, the magazines which target the audience of teenage girls and young women does seem to be responsible for most of the social ramification of the representations they offer. The covers try to persuade a girl that what she wants is inside the magazine but in fact the girl is following the magazine like a guide; the magazine is telling her how to look, what to wear, etc.
I would like to see changes within the presentation of girl’s magazine covers. Generics such as fashion “must haves” and “how to get a great body” should not pressurise teens; they should help them if they want these things instead of telling them they have to have them. Sexualisation of the celebrity models should not be used as tools for what teenage girls should look like; it doesn’t matter what celebrities look like on the cover, as long as what is written about them inside the magazine is interesting.
