Teen Voices, published by Women Express Inc., ISSN 1074-7494
Summary
Teen Voices might just be the anti-Seventeen magazine. The tagline of the magazine is “Because you’re more that just a pretty face.” The organization’s mission statement found on its website states, “Teen Voices supports and educates teen girls to amplify their voices and create social change through media.” The magazine offers internships for low-income young women in the Boston area so that they can create media by reporting, editing, and writing. The target audience for this magazine would be young women between the ages of 12-19.
Summary
Teen Voices might just be the anti-Seventeen magazine. The tagline of the magazine is “Because you’re more that just a pretty face.” The organization’s mission statement found on its website states, “Teen Voices supports and educates teen girls to amplify their voices and create social change through media.” The magazine offers internships for low-income young women in the Boston area so that they can create media by reporting, editing, and writing. The target audience for this magazine would be young women between the ages of 12-19.
Teen Voices was first published in 1990 and comes out twice a year. According to one of its funders, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the magazine has a readership of 45,000. Teen Voices magazine is full of book reviews, interviews with young women, recipes, original poetry and artwork, an advice column, quizzes, cultural critiques, and advice. Each section in the magazine has teen editors who are from the Boston area. The magazine is not published by a corporate entity and so it has no advertisements from major corporations.
Critical Evaluation
Young people who are used to sleek publications (or websites) might find Teen Voices a little less glamorous than what they are accustomed to. Many of the images of girls in the magazine are of real people who represent a range of colors, sizes, and shapes. If readers can get beyond the non-flashiness factor, they may very well be taken in with the content of the magazine which has a blend of pop-culture fun stuff like personality quizzes as well as more in-depth critiques like an article on the way that sex sells within advertisements.
Latina Magazine, Published by Latina Media Ventures LLC, ISSN 074820187609
Content Summary
Latina Magazine, published by Latina Media Ventures LLC, comes out ten times a year. The magazine was founded in 1996 by a Stanford Law School graduate. The target audience of this magazine seems to be Latina women anywhere from ages 15+. The magazine features articles on lifestyle, entertainment, beauty, culture and family and its covers have profiled famous Latinas such as Salma Hayek, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, and Sonia Sotomayor. The articles in the June/July 2009 issue covered a wide range of topics from “10 Reasons to Love Being Latina” to “How to Make Bistec Palomilla” to “The Right Sunscreen for You---and the Makeup To Go with It.” An essay in this edition comes from a Latina discussing the perils of being considered either “too Latina” or “not Latina enough” while another talks about Latino voting patterns. There are advertisements for products ranging from yogurt to television shows to weight loss supplements, but they do not dominate the magazine.
Critical Evaluation
This magazine seems to have an almost Oprah Winfrey O Magazine style feel to it. It covers a broad ranges of topics and isn’t exclusively focused on beauty and fashion as some other magazines geared to a female audience are. The broader range likely is attempting to (and is probably succeeding in) meeting the needs of a broader population and a wider age-range. This diversification of the content likely communicates to its younger readers a broader, more expansive definition of what it means to be a successful Latina woman. This is a refreshing change from Seventeen magazine which seemed to exclusively focus on beauty and fashion. The edition that I read did not have any lengthy articles or short stories--clearly, this is the kind of reading intended for quick reads while visiting a doctor’s office or after making a meal.
Slap Skateboard Magazine, Published by High Speed Productions, San Francisco, California, ISSN 074470030331
Content Summary
The target audience of Slap magazine seems to be boys and young men ages 12-30. The subtitle of the magazine is Skateboarding/ Life/Art/ Progression. The magazine comes out on a monthly basis and is rich with pictures of actual skateboarders performing tricks. The pictures are high quality with many of them taking up (nearly) an entire page. While the magazine does have some advertisements for boards and sneakers and other skateboarding related paraphernalia, much of the magazine seems dedicated to photos and articles about the sport/lifestyle. (This was a welcome relief from Seventeen which seemed to have an advertisement every other page.) The articles cover a wide range of subjects, from a reader who writes in about his struggles with reading as a dyslexic child and how he learned to read once his mom got him a subscription to Slap, to a photo essay by a group of skaters called LRG about their trip together (skating, of course) in China. The tone of the writing is casual. The narrative to one of the stories about the trip to China begins, “The children in China are a lot different from the spoiled SUV babies we have here in the United States. Their little babies are so cute, they look like real-life porcelain dolls. But the thing that really sets them apart from the babies here is the fact that they don’t wear diapers...”
Critical Evaluation
This magazine seems to have some of the indie, slightly rough around the edges feel to it that will likely appeal to it readership. It’s not a slick, corporate affair but clearly plenty of people put lots of time and energy into making it a quality experience for its readers. My main critique would be that I saw no images of girls or women skating (and there are lots and lots of skating shots in the magazine!)
Seventeen Magazine, Hearst Publications, ISSN 0037-301x
Content Summary
The target audience of Seventeen Magazine is teen girls ages 12-19. The magazine, which comes out ten times a year, has been in publication since 1944. Hearst Publications bought it in 2003 from Triangle Publications. The primary purpose of Seventeen seems to be to provide young girls with fashion, beauty and dating advice. Its current edition has multiple articles, quizzes and bits of advice related to the upcoming prom and is packed with advertisements for cosmetics, clothes and perfume. A title of one of the pieces that fall under the Health category shows girls how to “Look Hot in Shorts!” Its on-line edition features numerous quizzes including, “Am I a Good Kisser?” Seventeen magazine is a sponsor of “America’s Next Top Model.”
Evaluation
A critique of Seventeen might include its over-emphasis on beauty and attraction as a way of getting a guy; its hetero-normative ideals; its thick commercialism; and its over-representation of white models. Its implicit definition of what it takes for a teenage girl to succeed seems overly narrow.
