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Teen Magazines

I believe that believing in the internet romoting self esteem creates low self esteem!... or something :D

On another note, Gurl I think you are probably right. They promote a certain look and it's not just they that are guilty. The whole of society is enmeshed in "group think" forested by rampant and unchecked age of the corporations. The media have defined what beauty is and that's ridiculous! Beauty has many forms and is never perfect no matter what standards are set. Short, skinny, tall, thin, fat... whatever. There is beauty in everything. I personally find the skinny "super models" to be ugly. Give me a women with some character, and some curves ;)
 
RainbowGurl said:
I beleive teen magazeens promote low self esteem.


I agree, mostly. The overt mission of teen-girl magazines is to serve as a training manual with the lesson that what other people think of you is the most important thing in your life. The most popular columns and stories are about embarrassing moments and revenge. Individualism is usually rewarded with social ostracism. Clothes are crucial. Acne is a good reason for suicide. Anorexia is a sexy subject. Obesity is social death. And for every problem, there is a product advertised as the solution, so they also train girls to be consumers.

There are probably some exceptions to this. I read about a father who started publishing a constructive girls magazine when he realized the negative effects on his own daughter of other magazines. Forget the name, but it was full of role models, nutrition info, crafts, career ideas, etc. Sounded kind of nice, but probably didn't sell really well.
 
SillyWabbit said:
I believe that believing in the internet romoting self esteem creates low self esteem!... or something :D

On another note, Gurl I think you are probably right. They promote a certain look and it's not just they that are guilty. The whole of society is enmeshed in "group think" forested by rampant and unchecked age of the corporations. The media have defined what beauty is and that's ridiculous! Beauty has many forms and is never perfect no matter what standards are set. Short, skinny, tall, thin, fat... whatever. There is beauty in everything. I personally find the skinny "super models" to be ugly. Give me a women with some character, and some curves ;)
I guess thats why yuo like me so much then? ;)
 
I totally agree. They first breathe the insecurity into you, then provide the 'solution' aka 'hot buys right now', but those 'solutions' only make it worse, resulting in a bunch of broke, low self-esteemed kids.
 
I don't read "teen magazines", simply because I get embarrassed just looking at their front pages, embarrassed over how bad their cover stories and pictures are, that is. Teen magazines are as far from anything that is beautiful, poetic, artistic, interesting or anything else which my mind would care to endure, I find it sad that there are so many of these empty magazines and so few magazines that are truly worth reading. Perhaps that is why there are books? I do, however, read both Metal Hammer and Mojo quite often. That has nothing to do with books though, that is only because I am a music freak and I will be forever and ever until I die (in a gigantic puddle of someone elses blood for example). And to the poor Teen Magazine's comfort (or something) I must say that I am not in any way or another proud of the front pages or "cover-art" of Metal Hammer magazine (you are most welcome to hire me as an art director at the end of my education, I mean this sincerely). Mojo has a more charming look to its magazine, and the front page isn't as glossy as most of the others magazines. I hate glossy front pages. Why do they exist, why?! For no reason at all than to simply gloss? Yes, I think so.
 
I dont think it really matters what magazines promote. If you're old enough to read that kind of material and you have the money to buy it then you can decide what type influence you want to be under.

Everything promotes low self-esteem if you look at it in a certain way. heck..my car promotes low self-esteem if I choose for it to.

I read magazines a lot and I dont think "Aww. I wish I looked like that" because I really don't want to be airbrushed.
 
AnnaRenae86 said:
I read magazines a lot and I dont think "Aww. I wish I looked like that" because I really don't want to be airbrushed.
If only more teens thought like you it would make things much better as they wont bring themself down or compare themself to other people they see around them.

I notice when it comes to these teen magazeens it seems to be like, oh you have to look a certian way to be beautiful, you have to be less than 7 stone to attract love...

This is just my opinion, others may think diffrently of course :p
 
I'm curious to know what readers of their magazines have to say in regards to their parents objecting to the content of these magazines. I've seen some of the sex surveys and that kind of thing and wonder if anyone's parents objected or at least had a heart-to-heart about the content that in their eyes, might have been objectionable. I know parents who forbid their kids from reading these kinds of magazines-though they quickly gobble them up at the school(which is why the past issues are gone forever in some girl's locker) Any thoughts?
 
i read YM religiously for a while.. [when i was 11] i'd be excited to go to B&N and sit on a couch and read all the teen magazines...

one article i recall was about a comparison of how a guy and a girl handle having a date that day. highly unrealistic. it annoys me now, looking back on it. it made it seem as if a girl spends all her day, starting at 6:30am, religiously worrying about this date with a random guy. i remember something how the girl started with yoga, and there was a lot of details about her mysterious zit. it was just completely unrealistic
 
RainbowGurl said:
I beleive teen magazeens promote low self esteem.
Hmm...I'm not sure I agree. Some magazines might, but that's a generalization about a VERY large category of magazines and isn't necessarily true. I read Teen People on a pretty regular basis, and I've never felt bad about myself afterwards. Like all magazines, yes, it has beautiful, thin models. But they discuss issues like bulimia/anorexia and cutting in an obvious attempt to make teens feel better about themselves and stop dangerous activities. They've never said, to my knowledge, that you need to be thin to be loved or need to be perfectly beautiful.
 
Yeah, but I think most teen girls (no offense to anyone here) often assume and are gullible enough to believe that they have to look like the girls on the front cover. Normally, teenagers don't have enough of an attention span to read all the articles and instead just assume their entire belief system off a couple of words on a page. And incidentally, those words are most often ones that do not encourage them.
 
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