The Content and Presentation of Teenage Magazines
Analyse and comment on the content and presentation, and the advertising of the Summer 2004 issue of Elle Girl magazine. Examine the relationship between features and the advertising in the magazine and consider in particular how this magazine tries to persuade young women to buy fashion and beauty products.
Elle Girl is a magazine aimed at young teenage girls. It contains fashion tips, general life advice and articles about celebrities. There are 130 pages inside the magazine, filled from top to bottom with pictures or text. There are adverts on at least 75 of these pages. This shows that there is at least one advert on every other page and many
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As I read on about “the beauty rule book,” I learn that it is ok to clash my finger and toenail polish, ironically after telling the reader that its ok, there is a list of the best nail polishes, where to get them, why to get them and how much they cost. This is another subtle advertisement.
The adverts inside the magazine vary a great deal, from clothes, to accessories, to perfume, to shoes and jewellery. There is very little consistence, but nothing advertised tends to be very expensive. The editor is fully aware that teenage years are not the richest times of your life, but yet shopping is still an incredibly popular thing to do. On page 21, the entire page is advertisements for what is or will be “In style” in the near future. By including within the adverts, products from “Topshop” which is very mainstream, “Boxfresh” which is more sportswear, and “Mambo” which is quite retro, they have managed to appeal to a fair few different people. The page looks slightly odd, because it follows the theme of “On the Tennis Court.” Everything on the page is to do with tennis, except for one very random
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This article starts off with good intentions; it alerts teenagers that their friends might be doing it and how to help them. It teaches you what the definition of self-harm is. If it is as big a problem as we are led to believe then it is important to let teenagers know what it is. But I feel that the article falls straight downhill, when it starts a new paragraph titled “Shame behind the pain” The reason I felt this way is because as they go on to describe individual cases of self harm they start talking about individual cases such as celebrities and regular people. Self-harm is a very private issue, which should not be publicised in any way. If the girls described in the individual cases gave their permission to be written about (which they probably did) then it is acceptable. But then the writer goes on to describe how Amy Studt and Brody Dalle of the Distillers have experienced it themselves. It then goes on to describe how the act itself is caused by their inner demons and is very “un-glam.” Perhaps Amy Studt has already admitted it several times before publicly but Brody Dalle took a very long
through some old things of my father's in the attic. I came across an old issue
I was flipping through some channels on the television set one day and came across a woman's talk show, "The View." It caught my attention when one of the hostesses asked the audience of mostly women to raise their hand if they thought they were truly beautiful. Much to my surprise the audience did not respond with very many show of hands. The hostess then introduced a study done by Dove, the makers of the body soap. Dove polled over 6,000 women from all over the country and only two percent of the women polled said they feel beautiful. Women are surrounded by images screaming physical beauty is more important than their talents and accomplishments. Women are deriving their self worth from an ideal of how they think they should look and how they think everyone else wants them to look instead of focusing on their sense of who they are, what they know, and where they are going in life. In "Help or Hindrance?: Women's Magazines Offer Readers Little But Fear, Failure," Mary Kay Blakely states, "Instead of encouraging women to grow beyond childish myths and adapt to the changes of life, women's magazines have readers running in place, exhausted." She goes on to say, "This is a world we have 'made up' for women, and it is a perilous place to exist." One of the biggest culprits feeding women's insecurities are the popular women's magazine that line the book shelves of grocery stores, gas stations, and waiting rooms. They supply readers and the occasional innocent passerby with unrealistic images of what women should be instead of showing diverse age groups and women with natural beauty. Reading through a couple of magazines, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Shape, I found nothing but hidden agendas and...
This article talks about the effects of media exposure on adolescents and the violence that is can bring. Using the social conflict theory it portrays the media as having a harmful impression on today’s children. The article shows how crime statistics have decreased the arrests for violent crimes committed by youth offenders has not (Fowler, 2002). The article also shows how the APA is teaming up with federal programs to help resolve these harmful effects that the media is portraying. The article shows that media is responsible for the social conflict that these adolescents are dealing with. The APA and other organizations along with the federal government are combating this problem from every angle (Fowler, 2002). While the article does speak of some statistics it may be inflating them by not including a breakdown of what violent crimes are being committed.
Nowadays, a standard stage of growing up is feeling the stress of one’s body image due to the growing pressure from society and media. In 2012 there was a survey that said “A full 50 percent of children from 8 to 10 years old report being ‘unhappy’ with their bodies” (ProQuest Staff). This is because when girls are growing up they see models/ actresses on TV and magazines that are thin and look beautiful and they think that’s what they are supposed to look like; unfortunately this is unrealistic. In 2006 there was a fashion model named Luise Ramos who died of a heart attack moments after she steps off the runway during fashion week in Montevideo (ProQuest Staff). News accounts later report that Ramos, 22, had been eating only lettuce and diet
Have you ever met someone who acted just as teens are stereotyped? Not many people have because they do not exist. Real teens are poorly portrayed in the media and are the complete opposite of their stereotypes. Books and TV shows make teens out to be wild or crazy, irresponsible and out of control. One hardly ever hears about teen-heroes. Instead, newspapers and magazines are plastered with stories of teens and crime. And while looking at commercial billboards and other related media, the regular teen seems to be sex-crazed and image-obsessed.
This essay will look at the different ways in which young people are portrayed in the media. It will focus on how the idea of childhood innocence has been challenged by the media and rather than ‘little angels’ children are now seen as ‘little devils’ in the public eye. By looking at ‘The Bulger Case of 1993’ we can see where the idea of ‘little devils’ and children as evil beings began. It will examine why media stories of young people are focused much more on negative aspects such as crime and gang culture rather than positive ones. It will also look at how television programmes such as ‘Teen Mom’ and ‘Skins’ portray the youth of today and whether these programmes come across as a positive or negative portrayal of teenagers. The idea of a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ will also be examined and whether the way the media portrays children can be harmful to the construction of their identities and possibly lead to alienation.
The standard way of thinking while looking through magazines is to compare ourselves to the people we see in them. Innumerable teenage girls assume that the media’s ideal beauty is unrealistically thin women. Looking up to adults as role models, we are constantly influenced to be on a diet, to not eat as much, and to feel poorly about yourself if you aren't thin. Growing up with this expectation to be skinny, some women develop bulimia, anorexia, and binge eating. Americans today tend to believe that we can be as skinny as models if we just eat less, work out more, and get plastic surgery. Consequently, with technology growing, you can now alter a photo using an application called photoshop. Photoshop is a tool commonly used in magazines to enhance a photo to it more appealing to the consumers. The problem is, that many teenage girls don't notice the subtle changes the photo has gone through. Therefore unrealistic beauty standards women have been given are what makes us have negative body images.
A Single Youth Culture Youth culture and youth subcultures have been a subject of research since the early 1930s. It is most certainly true today that there is not one singular youth culture but a variety of different youth subcultures. The 90's can not be described as the same as the 60's or 70's or even the 80's. There are many reasons put forward by sociologists for this such as there are more styles available today, media influences us more and there is a higher disposable income per household to spend on fashions. This paper will explore the reasons behind the existence of youth cultures in previous years and why the same format has not occured in the 1990's.
both in bold font at the top of the page, the Fiat wants you to focus
The society and I know that Cosmopolitan is a magazine that is aimed at women and has been a women’s magazine since the 1960’s. My main message, as me being a constant reader of the Cosmopolitan magazine, that I am trying to get across to you is the certain advertisements Cosmopolitan decides to include in their issues every year. These advertisements create a controversy within the media and I am inspired to make a change to this. I am not only speaking from one woman’s point of view but in fact several of my friends, who are also readers of the magazine, have mentioned similar things to me and the negativity they are concerned it may create towards the women
Arielle Massiah SW 7300 Sunday, March 29, 2015 Article Critique Teenage Sexuality and Media Practice: Factoring in the Influences of Family, Friends, and School Jeanne Rogge Steele Literature Review and Theoretical/ Conceptual Framework The social problem that the research addresses is the outrageously high rate of unprotected teenage sexual engagement and encounters. The problem was made apparent due to a survey that disclosed that not only had “three quarters of the 2,439 participants engage in sexual intercourse by their senior year, half of the participants reported that they did not use condoms and one third of the population failed to allocate the use of birth control at all; drastically increasing their exposure to HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy”. Steele, 1999, p. 339.
This world has become immersed in online media from socializing on networking sites to seeking information on search engines. People of all ages have become reliant on online media, but the most engaged users are the younger, more easily impacted generations. Although there are many positive uses for online media, there are many negative uses as well. Unfortunately, it is all too easy for these negative effects to impede upon the perceptions of adolescents. Some countries have been trying to reduce this effect by expelling the inappropriate content of online media ("Influence on Children Media...”). However, in the United States, children are thrown in the waves, expected to stay afloat in this massive sea, but many are being dragged under the surface by the nefarious temptations media creates. Content that is not appropriate for the young, growing minds of children are easily accessible; a myriad of devices may be used to access this material, all at the click of a button. Without adult content filters on online media, adolescents of various ages are exposed to dangerous conceptions. A world of pornography, violence, and public humiliation lay in the user’s fingertips.
With the growth of magazine popularity, both online and in print, youth around the world are exposed to the ideas of gender expression, identities, and roles. However, with society’s influence, the spread of heteronormative, cisgender, and white ideals have been placed as top priority. After examining men’s fashion magazine, Gentlemen Quarterly, I discovered that much of their magazine revolved around the typical wealthy, white, straight, and able-bodied male. Despite their attempts to branch out to other minority groups, they are unsuccessful in breaking out of their classic audience. GQ’s website is built to automatically draw their viewers into articles, flashing large pictures and headlines immediately into their audience’s face. Most photos
In today’s world, advertising reaches and influences teens in both negative and positive ways. Teens are bombarded with ads through television, teen magazines, radio, and the internet. Advertisers know teen’s buying power and their willingness to spend their money. Many companies even hire teens to be “consultants” and trendspotters. They want to know what teens are thinking and their likes and dislikes. Some feel this is a good thing and that teens are letting companies know what they want. On the other hand, many believe all this advertising to teens has a negative impact on them. Ads show models with “perfect” bodies. “Every year, the average adolescent sees over 5,000 advertisements mentioning attractiveness” (Haugen). Some feel this leads to teens having low self-esteem, while others argue that it does not have an effect. These people believe teens have the power and control in the advertising world.
“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses” (Thinkexist, 2010). The mass media, including news, movies, magazines, music, or other entertainment source has become a part of daily life for many people. As the quote mentions mass media and its power are capable of influencing people’s mind and behavior. Contents in the media introduced to young people make it difficult for them to distinguish between what is real and what is not, as a result stimulating confusion and blind imitation. The mass media plays an important role in the increase of violence, sexual activity, and risky behaviors among teenagers.