Magazines

The magazine 'Creme' is the most popular teenage girl's magazine in New Zealand, and has the slogan "a girl's best friend". This is suggesting that the magazine wants to offer you advice, be the one you confide in, be your best friend. It is basically the same as any other teenage girl's magazine; the same cardboard cutout of the small, cute, perfect girl, and pages of articles that lack in substance, ranging from boy advice, to the latest celebrity gossip. Because that's all that's important right now, right?

Not only is it laughably cheesy (with every second word abbreviated into cringe worthy slang that nobody uses), but it is also almost downright insulting. Granted, this magazine is aimed at the 10 - 16 year old age range, so I wasn't expecting a five page article on the civil war in Ukraine (though it would have been more interesting than Sarah Hyland's favourite colour). Because magazines do still have a target audience, and the majority of young teenage girls are not overly interested on Russia's status in the war, it is not included. But the editors could have at least kept in mind that while teenage girls may be young and occasionally immature, we aren't stupid.

We can handle a look at more serious issues than 'who wore what' to the red carpet. We can handle knowing about different cultures, we can handle knowing about different sexualities, we can handle knowing about disability. Give teenage girls some credit! Yes it's interesting to know what some celebrities are up to, but we don't need fifteen articles on them, with a further eight articles on boys. But there was nothing on the subject of ethnicity, disability or anyone with a difference. It was almost as if the magazine wanted to convince girls that difference doesn't exist. So often we see magazines screaming out "be yourself", but then society says "no, not like that".

One of the main articles focused on a popular British Youtuber, Zoella. Zoë Sugg is twenty three years old and runs a fashion and beauty vlog, and is among the top 100 Youtube subscribers. She often makes videos on what kind of makeup she uses and what clothes she buys. However, Zoë also suffers from serious anxiety, and made a twenty minute video on how she has suffered with it through her life, and how other people can try to deal with them. "If this helps at least one of you watching this, just one of you, then it's totally worth it." However not once did the magazine focus on her mental issues, instead they decided to ask her what her favourite song was. Again, teenage girls are not stupid. We can understand mental illness, and not only that, but we need to understand mental illness. 18% of adults in the US are suffering with anxiety, and that's just the United States. Many teenagers may be suffering with anxiety, and feel like their issues are being ignored in favour of celebrity gossip.

Representation is a big problem. The only kind of girl represented in this magazine was the small, skinny, pretty, white teenager. Of all those fifteen articles on celebrities, not one was a person of colour. Lupita Nyong'o recently won an Oscar for 'best actress in a supporting role'. She said that she was inspired by women such as Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldbury; and Lupita herself inspired a young, black American girl not to go and get her skin bleached after her acceptance speech for her Oscar. That is a perfect example of how three generations of representation can truly help those who are in a minority. But who is there to represent young Maori girls in New Zealand?

But this isn't a new thing. Magazines are often criticized for not showing girls 'real' issues. However, the magazine 'Girlfriend' has tried to tackle some of these issues. In 2005, the magazine allowed readers to take control with an initiative called 'U Make The Mag'. This allowed readers to vote on the covergirl etc. While some criticized it as a lazy technique, others complimented Girlfriend on it's attention to the readers. Girlfriend has also made a stand to place a small sign on the page saying whether an image has been retouched or not. This allows teenage girls to know that the perfection that you see on magazines, is often something that is unattainable, and not something to be striving towards. In a perfect world, we wouldn't retouch images, so that people can see what they truly look like, but that sad truth is: people aren't going to buy magazines if the covergirl/boy is not desirable. While this is a bad thing, at least Girlfriend are taking a step in the right direction when it comes to public awareness of things like Photoshop. Another campaign the magazine runs is the 'Self Respect Campaign'. The idea of this is to write articles that focus on things like self love, healthy eating (not dieting, there is a difference) and being happy. These articles deal with real life issues like how to deal with parents separating, unrequited love and career planning. This is the kind of thing all magazines should be doing. I remember one article in particular that really struck me (in a good way) was a two page spread devoted to explaining what asexuality was. Things like that are not everyday discussions in life, so where else would a young teenage girl learn about it aside from the media? The 'Girlfriend Guru' area of the magazine is dedicated to showing real girls in the pages. Not airbrushed models or celebrities, actual teenagers that are loving themselves. I find it difficult to put into words how much I love the idea, but I'll try one more time.

Reading or being about something, and actually seeing it are two different things. I can't count the number of times my mother has told me to love myself. It's not that I don't believe her, but it's easy for her to say, right? Because she's my mother and that's her job. But when teenage girls see other teenage girls loving themselves no matter what skin they're in, it's a little different. Because we relate to them. We are them. It's really easy to love images of perfection, but it's so difficult to love ourselves. When we see someone that is like ourselves being portrayed in a positive and happy way, whether they be small, large, black, white, Asian, short, tall, popular, pretty, different or unique; we can believe it. And that's what we need in the media to show us. We want the media to show us . . . ourselves.


References:
Zoella's blog posts on mental illness and how to deal with them (x x)
Girlfriend Guru Articles: (x)