On the five magazines I have chosen, they all have a main image of a model of which a young teenage girl may want to look like. Cover lines across these magazines are also very repetitive, such as; the best workout for a bikini body, the best and worst beauty tips, and how to get the hair you want. As all of these cover lines, or similar to, are all repetitive across every magazine for a young teenage girl, this will be a big influence on how they may think, and make them act upon how they look. With some of these models in low cut tops, this is what a young teenage girl is going to be made to think that this is what the fashion is, and therefore will adopt this style at such a young age. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/30544/popular_teen_magazines_and_their_possible.html?cat=25 This link talks about how much teenage girl magazines have an impact on the teens themselves and how they should change the way they present things within or on the front page of the magazine. They talk about how it is said to be that beauty is within, yet all over the front of every teen magazine, there is not much more to life than beauty, and backs up the point I have made about this, making teenage girls feel more under pressure to makeover themselves.
http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Much-Do-Magazines-Influence-Todays-Teens?&id=1062736This link again relates back to how teenagers want to be more like the models on the front of the cover and how they will do anything to become like this. They also enhance how important it is that more and more young teens are becoming older on the outside because of applying makeup and wearing clothing that isn’t for their own age range. This backs up my point about how there is not much more to beauty in the teenage generation as they are trying to all become someone they’re not and growing up much quicker than they should.
All of the above five magazines, the models they have used are white; this may come across very bias and make black teens feel as if they aren’t able to read it. This would make them feel like they aren’t able to read the magazine and because the magazine portrays a lot about beauty over the front page, this would influence the teenager and how they feel, because they would take it to heart, like most young girls do, and think that only white teens have beauty. http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/0708/070822-fashion.html This link backs up exactly what I have said about British magazines not enhancing black beauty enough. A quote from this website says: “You don't really see black models on the front covers of mainstream magazines in Britain.” This tells us that because they are hardly seen on the cover of any British magazine, that black teenagers within this area feel as if they aren’t allowed to read it.
Also, there is nothing about a teenager with disabilities represented on the cover of these magazines and will also make these teens feel as if they aren’t obliged to read it either. This would have a big impact on these teenagers as I expect they already feel like they’re on their own because of having a disability, and with these magazines, they have presented it to be all about looking your best, and this would make these teens feel like they aren’t able to read it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7481784.stm
This website talks strongly about how disabled models are refused by magazines because of the way they look. Again they claim that beauty is found within, yet a quote from here says: ‘Disability is largely ignored by the mainstream.’ To any young teen, seeing someone like themselves on the front page of a young teenage girl magazine would want to make them read it, yet because all the mainstream magazines avoid using models who have a disability, it makes these young teens feel rejected because they portray beauty as someone who is “tall, slim and physically "flawless".”
In conclusion, by using able and disabled, and black and white models the magazines would draw in a much larger target audience, as it would be aimed at a lot of different teenagers, whereas at the moment the mainstream magazines only have a niche audience because it is very stereotypical of what beauty is meant to be. Some magazine companies might argue that by using a model with a disability could put some readers off buying the magazine, but it’s against all the teenagers who suffer from not feeling like they are able to read it because of only having one type of person on the front cover.
Magazine companies should do a lot more to reduce such impacts on teenagers today. They should remove things from the front cover about ‘the bikini body’, ‘the perfect hair’ and ‘top ten ways to pull a guy’ because if the magazine is aimed at a much younger end of teenagers, the cover lines and stories within should be based much more around that age group. I feel as if they should add more things about beauty being within not on the outside of you, and that everyone is different, and unique. This would then help reduce many teenagers with depression, and eating disorders, because the magazines would be making each teen feel like they are good enough already and that they don’t have to be ‘tall, slim, and physically flawless’ to be beautiful.
Magazine companies should do a lot more to reduce such impacts on teenagers today. They should remove things from the front cover about ‘the bikini body’, ‘the perfect hair’ and ‘top ten ways to pull a guy’ because if the magazine is aimed at a much younger end of teenagers, the cover lines and stories within should be based much more around that age group. I feel as if they should add more things about beauty being within not on the outside of you, and that everyone is different, and unique. This would then help reduce many teenagers with depression, and eating disorders, because the magazines would be making each teen feel like they are good enough already and that they don’t have to be ‘tall, slim, and physically flawless’ to be beautiful.
