Essay

In this essay I will be talking about the influence magazines have on teenage girls by looking at 5 different episodes of ‘Seventeen’ magazine and the codes and conventions that make young girls change their looks and actions.

The main image on each cover is a young woman celebrity who is seen as ‘perfect’ smiling and looking straight at their target audience, young teenage girls. As if to entice them into buying the magazine; most photos in magazines are altered so that wrinkles, fat, and pores disappear. Readers only see perfect and unrealistic bodies represented, having a person who is the image of perfect makes young girls want to buy the magazine to look through and be influenced by their looks and almost copy them. This is a type of insecurity that magazines cause in young vulnerable teenagers, they publish relationship facts, make-up tips and hair tips to lure the teens into trying these themselves

using ‘pretty’ on all five magazines makes girls feel paranoid and self-doubting on whether they look the right way, they desire for the skinny, shrunken look and diet and a large proportion get anorexic. They worry about a bad hair day and want to miss school if they even have a tiny spec of a zit on their face.

Four out of five of the magazines have articles about ‘best’ body, but or flat abs these articles often include information on how get "perfect" ab muscles, advice on how to apply makeup, and tips on what to wear that will make your body look good, Teen magazines are a way for a teenager to find news about the newest fashion trend. Advertisers, marketers and designers know that fashion is very important to most teens, so magazines are a very profitable way to persuade teens to purchase a particular fashion product magazines often include ads for beauty and hair products, clothing and perfume. Many of these ads feature women that are underweight ‘the best spring cloths’ ‘the cutest clothes’ ‘ultimate beauty guide’ ‘perfect hair and ‘party hair’ all five sub headings telling teens how they need to change making teens feel they are not right because they are not what everyone else looks up to making their lack of confidence fall more and more every time they read a magazine When people are unhappy with their bodies, it can lead to depression, anxiety, or even eating disorders.
Each magazine has the colour pink in, because pink is stereotypically a ‘girly’ colour making girls feel they have to be girly in order to purchase this magazine making teenage girls feel as though they will not be accepted if they do not follow these rules causing them to be ashamed of their indifferences and individuality; and making them follow a code, be girly, be pretty, wear this, don’t wear that, magazines are a guide on how teenagers live their lives and most don’t even know that it’s happening because it is such a discrete way of controlling them.