While the act of subversive reading may be a revolutionary one,theorists note that female readers actively negotiate the content of what some consider to be repressive and gendered texts as well.In Sherrie Inness's collection of essays,Delinquents and Debutantes:Twentieth Century American Girls'Cultures,a number of the writers note the tendency of readers to develop strategies for reading popular texts.Angela Hubler,writing of girls'reading practices,notes,“(girl readers)commonly focused on aspects of texts that confirmed female behavior they found desirable while ignoring or forgetting aspects that undermined these behaviors,”and she concludes,“it is clear that girls are not blank slates that unthinkingly reproduce the ideological messages written upon them.”Hubler,Angela E.,“Can Anne Shirley Help Revive Ophelia?Listening to Girl Readers,”In Delinquents and Debutantes:Twentieth Century American Girls'Cultures,edited by Sherrie A.Inness,p.281,New York:New York University Press,1998.Cherland echoes this observation,writing,“the thoughts and emotions of the individual girls-their sense of themselves,and their ways of understanding their relation to the world are constituted as a dynamic process...Each(girl reader)also creates and practices individual forms of resistance to these broad cultural forms.”Cherland,Meredith Rogers,Private Practices:Girls Reading Fiction and Constructing Identity,p.158,Bristol,Pa.:Taylor&Francis,1994.There is a certain dynamism that occurs when girls read literature and texts created“just for them”.Clearly,adolescent girl readers are engaged in a dialogue with the text not unlike the transaction suggested by Rosenblatt.While experience with a certain genre or text-type has the potential to inform the future reading of similarly themed materials,the ultimate product of girls'reading is the result of a number of textual and extratextual influences(e.g.,Cherland's“thoughts and emotions of...individual girls”).
The practitioner's dilemma in selecting these magazines for a school or public library collection arises as she weighs the consequences of supporting what Lehman and others deem the capitalist patriarchy that supports the publications themselves against the potential benefits associated with encouraging a“literate underlife.”If,as Cherland maintains,the public school curriculum confers male privilege via the assignment of“masculine”texts,the inclusion of feminized texts-like the teen magazines-in a school library's collection might serve to bring female readers to voice.Operating under the assumption that girl readers are not passive consumers,we might discover that the girls'reactions to and negotiations with these popular texts hone their critical literacy.Moreover,the greater availability of these magazines in schools and public libraries may foil the capitalist mechanism that supports their existence as fewer girls purchase in book and drug stores what they might read gratis during lunch period with a group of friends in the library.Teen magazines are powerful purveyors of image and identity.A cover spot on a hot teen magazine may guarantee a rising star success as well as boost sales of the publication.It is the inherent power relationship-between the teenage feminine interest(identity development,popular culture,relationship navigation)and the interests of the advertising agencies that influence magazine content-that is at the crux of the controversy surrounding the influence of teen magazines on their readers.The tone of intimacy and the creation of a feminine space between the pages of the publications mirror a self-awareness intrinsic in adolescent development.To begin reading a girls'teen magazine is to enter a world of self-interest,a uniquely feminine world concerned with not only appearance but also bodily function and interpersonal relationships.Ironically,or perhaps appropriately,it is the towering influence of the capital driving the publication of such magazines that sours the experience.The inner space created within the magazine is tainted by the pervasive advertising content;the princess is despoiled but,by the grace of the grounded reader,maintains hope for rebirth.
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