As someone who religiously buys an issue of Vogue each month, I am no stranger to the seduction of a gorgeously tangible magazine; thumbing through the pages and scanning the witty headlines is thrilling to me, but my fixation only began recently. Prior to my late teens, there seemed to be no magazines catered towards me as a young adolescent, contrasting the flouncy images seen in movies of girls at sleepovers giggling over a juicy teen magazine. So what happened to this coming of age cliché?
Teen magazines had their heyday in the 1990s and were ubiquitous with cultivating a teenage identity. From style tips to relationship advice, the teen magazine was the first point of call for answering the youth’s burning questions. Now, there are no corporate teen magazines in print: giants like Teen Vogue and Seventeen are exclusively published online. It is reasonable to say that social media bears a lot of the blame for the decline in young readership. Teens are bombarded with influencer adverts and celebrity scandals everyday through social media meaning a magazine published twice a month featuring the same content is already outdated as soon as it hits newsstands. Another difference is the fact many teen magazines were written and edited by adults who perhaps lost the pulse sometimes on what teens wanted to read about. The allure of social media to a young audience is that the advice they’re receiving is being spouted by someone their age, and while these creators possess a relatable quality, social media has therefore become a breeding ground for misinformation.
It could also be said that teen magazines failed to modernise for a new generation of girls. In the 90s, teen magazines promised to foster the reader into a ‘perfect’ teenager with articles that emphasised the goal of femininity, resembling a more controversial agenda for the ideal woman. This did, however, mean that counter-publications appeared offering alternative ideas about self-acceptance and feminism, one in particular was called Sassy. But even rebranded teen magazines couldn’t save the genre from its demise.
There is speculation that the teen magazine could have its renaissance with regards to the pattern we’ve seen of Gen Z’s retro obsession. Many of us yearn for a return to physical media so we source a record player and take snaps on our film camera. Maybe someday teen girls will also be reading copies of a rebooted Sassy magazine.
Illustration by Amelia_Patterson_@patt_paints.jpg for The Student
