The content of many monthly girls'magazines may represent to the teen reader the parameters of available identity.In a 1991 published study of the content of teen magazines,Evans and associates examined patterns of content in three of the then most widely circulated teen magazines:Sassy,YM,and Seventeen.Evans and associates found a prevalent double message embedded in the contents of the observed magazines:“Although ostensibly governed by the theme of self-improvement,these publications seem to approach the topic largely through fashion dressing and physical beautification.”Evans Ellis,Rutberg Judith,Sather Carmela,and Turner Charli,“Content Analysis of Contemporary Teen Magazines for Adolescent Females,”Youth and Society,no.1(1991),p.110.While fashion and beauty care dominated the magazines in Evans's study,the results note,“Articles about interpersonal relations constituted the most frequent category of identity themes...(and included)articles about dating and heterosexuality...followed by general peer relations...and family issues.”Evans Ellis,Rutberg Judith,Sather Carmela,and Turner Charli,“Content Analysis of Contemporary Teen Magazines for Adolescent Females,”Youth and Society,no.1(1991),p.105.Erikson student and psychologist Carol Gilligan would find the magazines'emphasis on interpersonal relationships developmentally apt,as she postulates that adolescence is the period during which girls begin to navigate more complex relationships with peers.Gilligan writes:“As girls on the edge of adolescence gain cognitive and emotional capacities to know the relational world in new ways...they begin to grasp the realities of relationships and of women's lives in new ways.”Gilligan,Carol,and Brown,Lyn Mikel,Meeting at the Crossroads:Psychology and Girls'Developmmt,p.160,New York:Ballantine,1993.
Enter the teen magazine,with its plethora of advice columns from various experts and monthly quizzes to gauge normalcy.By addressing the issues at the forefront of adolescent concerns,teen magazines build a near impenetrable front of influence in the lives of adolescent girls.In addition,the teen magazine encourages a meta relationship-a relationship with itself.Finders again cites the“invisibility of adults”as an explanation of this relationship:“The invisibility of adults and the strong sense of sameness may have fostered a sense of seamless connection between their friends and experiences and those in the zines...Lacking a critical distance that fiction creates,zines were received as truths.”Finders,Margaret J.,Just Girls:Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High,p.162,New York:Teachers College Press,1997.Through the personalization of the messages within(the invitational editor's letter,the participatory quizzes,the publication of reader letters and concerns),teen magazines seek to foster a relationship between the girl and the publication.
Teen magazines offer illusory personalized messages to readers via the interactive components of the magazine,including-but not limited to-the letters to the editors,advice columns,embarrassing story submissions,and quizzes.
This illusion of personalization and even agency,not always found in young adult novels,may be what makes adolescent magazines an important and even necessary part of a library collection.Among the conclusions Currie documents in her study,the analysis of these interactive components of the magazines is of particular interest.Currie exposes the illusion of agency such columns promise,writing,“As in advice columns,(in quizzes)...the text offers the seeming pleasure of‘writing'Self;if the reader is to be rated a‘successful'-hence‘normal'-person,this writing must fall within the narrow confines of the values promoted elsewhere in the magazine.”Currie,Dawn H.,Girl Talk:Adolescent Magazines and Their Readers,p.206,Toronto:University of Toronto Press,1999.Currie argues that this kind of negotiation-between the subject and the text-produces a“subjectivity constantly engaged in self-regulation and normalization”Currie,Dawn H.,Girl Talk:Adolescent Magazines and Their Readers,p.207,Toronto:University of Toronto Press,1999.to the ends prescribed by the magazine itself.Catherine Driscoll assumes a similar stance in her ethnography of adolescent girls in western popular culture,writing,“girls'magazines foreground both self-surveillance and self-production,most explicitly in the problem pages and other scenarios of guidance.”Driscoll,Catherine,Girls:Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory,p.75,New York:Columbia University Press,2002.