Teen+Magazine+Analysis

Here, I present my magazine analysis of a teen magazine for Judith Dorney’s Developing Adolescence (EDS372). My analysis revealed a trend of superficiality and shallowness in the magazine //Teen Vogue//. My personal opinion on the magazine was negative, but I remained impartial during the analysis, until an opinion was necessary. I found that the magazine was 75% advertisements, with a strong focus on looking pretty and behaving a particular way. Also, the magazine claimed to focus on fashion and pushed expensive trends and brands. I focused particularly on the advertisements which were hyper-sexualized and inappropriate considering the target audience. This assignment revealed the unbelievable pressures faced by teenage America, especially girls.

I believe that this will help me combat the lifestyles, mindsets, and choices that the American media influences my students with and therefore represent my students best interests. The struggles of the student outside of school are directly proportional to their learning style and habits; thus if I can remove the stress of media influence from my classroom then I my lessons will go farther.

Jason Weiss Professor Dorney EDS 372 March 4, 2010 Teen Magazine Analysis: //Teen Vogue// 1A: //Teen Vogue// is a fashion magazine with emphasis on cutting edge and avant-garde fashion trends. The magazine consists nearly entirely of visual advertisements or pictures. Thirty-three of the 178 pages of the magazine could be considered articles with around 100 words each. The remaining 145 pages are advertisements or fashion pages with only very small captions for outfits or makeup being modeled. These visuals attempt to glamorize three different things: fashion, makeup, and sexuality. The images express adolescents as sources of ludicrous amounts of disposable income with near compulsive desires for fashion and makeup. The content pushes materialism and narrow concepts of beauty with sprinkles of pop culture. 1B: Beauty is the upmost concern within //Teen Vogue//. Most ads are attempting to sell clothing, fragrance, or makeup. Each of these ads is attempt to appeal to a teenage girl’s insecurity. Certain ads are overtly sexual, such as the DKNY “Delicious” fragrance ad which shows only the lower face of a young blonde woman with pink, shiny lip gloss holding a candy apple up to her mouth which is open slightly (//Teen Vogue// 49). Another ad for PRVCY Premium denim depicts a young woman soaking wet in only a white tank top and PRVCY Jeans pressed up against a wall with a distant look upon her face (//Teen Vogue// 45). Clearly sexuality is also thematic within //Teen Vogue//. Through these themes adolescents are represented as materialistically concerned youths. 1C: The only message throughout this magazine, if there is one, is that beauty runs about as deep as make-up. //Teen Vogue// constantly reminds the reader with a poorly organized magazine of just how important it is to look good and keep up with fashion. The poor organization of the magazine is due to the pattern of advertisement versus original material. The organization of the magazine could only lead the reader to believe that the emphasis must be on the ads and not the articles; often the ads break up the flow of the magazine leaving the reader with a “Juicy Couture” ad where the next piece should appear. The message here is clearly claiming that adolescents have no attention span, require little interaction, and a lot of prodding. 1D: //Teen Vogue// is aimed at a population of about twelve years old to nineteen years old. However the writing, organization, and content clearly point towards a cognitive level of twelve to fourteen years old. For example, fashion breakdowns portray a handful of teens that are about sixteen to eighteen years old smiling while they model the clothes (//Teen Vogue// 134-144). The age group of the depicted teenagers is ideal because they have the most to purchase both the magazine and the products. A Guess ad depicts a young female wearing only a jean jacket and sun-glasses. The jean jacket is being held around her breasts and the shot ends at about her ribcage (//Teen Vogue// 61). Cleavage is clear in this ad as her carefully placed hand leads the eye down the photograph. Sexuality and high fashion are standards set for developing adolescents. 2A: Prominently represented in //Teen Vogue// are teenaged, white females with a heterosexual orientation who clearly have money to spend. In terms of dimensions, the girls tend to be small, skinny, somewhat large breasted depending, with obvious curves. According to //Teen Vogue// these females are seeking the highest level of fashion possible while remaining on the cutting edge. The advertisements create pictures of what beauty should be, thus creating a culture among readers that you must look like these girls. 2B: The underrepresented within //Teen Vogue// are minorities and men. Men are only present when attached to the arm of a female in the magazine, with the exception of an article on Nick Jonas. Minorities are also difficult to find. Out of all the advertisements very few are solely minority and most of the minorities are near or around white females. In fact, the represented quality of teenager within the magazine is narrow enough to exclude most adolescents- perpetuating the need to change how one looks. Adolescents being targeted by this magazine have an interesting relationship to Erikson’s theory of the eight stages of life. Erikson claims that as humans develop they go through specific challenges to the psyche. These challenges shape personality and attitude throughout life. The most pertinent of these stages for an adolescent are the Latency Stage, age’s six to eleven, and the Genital Stage which occurs during puberty (Erikson 280-281). In the Latency Stage, the child is faced with a general challenge of “Industry vs. Inferiority” The essentially means that the child will either develop an “excessive feeling of inadequacy and inferiority” (Erikson 280). It is crucial in this stage that the adolescent be able to perform in life without questioning themselves based on inferiority (Erikson 280). //Teen Vogue// manages to foster a sense of inferiority within the younger readers by bombarding the readers with sexualized ads and “perceptions” of beauty that are distorted. //Teen Vogue// is not the sole cause for inferiority crises among teenagers; however, the magazine does nothing to reestablish self-confidence in reader. Perhaps the most pertinent stage among Erikson’s theory is the Genital Stage. The Genital Stage, or Puberty, causes a crisis of “Identity vs. Role Confusion” (Erikson 281). An adolescent going through role confusion would find him/herself questioning how they look at others and how they are perceived. This confusion is only worsened by an oversaturation within the media of what beauty is and is not. //Teen Vogue// clearly expresses that beauty is skin deep and usually covered by makeup. For example, on page 81 of //Teen Vogue// an ad for Marc Jacobs fragrance is sexualized with a white female teen wearing only a white bikini in a grassy field. The girl is lying on her back with her legs spread and her head tilted back with closed eyes. The sexuality of teenage girls is now on a pedestal. No longer must a developing girl be unrealistically beautiful and fashionable, she also must now be innocently sexual. Role confusion hinders mental development because the afflicted is caught up on appearance- not uncommon from the readers of //Teen Vogue//. William Solodow also presents material that correlates with //Teen Vogue//’s message. Solodow creates composites of students named Maura and Raffi. Maura is an average girl who does well in school and generally maintains normal relationships. Maura is not a member of the target audience of //Teen Vogue//. //Teen Vogue// requires an amount of inferiority beyond Maura’s own insecurities. For example, Maura has developed a sense of “increased reality focus and attention to the detail of her environment” early in her life pushing her away from the allure of //Teen Vogue// (Solodow 28). Lacking insecurities great enough to warrant readership, Maura would most likely find //Teen Vogue// to be a waste of time, since she “observes reality in much closer, much more accurate ways” (Solodow 28). //Teen Vogue// presents an unreality that many teenagers may be able to see though, yet so many more are too taken by insecurities to look past the glimmering surface of mud within //Teen Vogue//. Raffi, however, is more in line with the target personality of //Teen Vogue//. Raffi is a trouble child who has issues fitting in and therefore responds by acting out (Solodow 29-34.) Eventually even his mother shuns him, only worsening the situation. Raffi is an adolescent with low self-esteem that desires to fit in or at least have friends. Had Raffi been a girl, he very may have been a subscriber. //Teen Vogue// attempts to give adolescents what they want to read, see, and smell. However, these sensual experiences only further establish a culture of materialism and artificial beauty. The collaborative works of Phelan, Davidson, and Yu give a basic overview of adolescents during transitional periods. In these periods is when a child could find //Teen Vogue// as a vessel of support rather than one of manipulation. In their studies of adolescent worlds, one particular transitional world stands out: “Different Worlds/Border Crossing Difficult.” An adolescent going through this transition: “must adjust and reorient as they move across borders and among contexts” (Davidson 15). As often as the student is reorienting, s/he would find confusion among the different roles in each world. This could lead to a susceptibility to the influences of a magazine that promises you perfect beauty, something that everyone in all worlds would appreciate without adjustment. Phelan, et al, also describe borders. Borders are cultural characteristics that separate and divide adolescents usually among a school (Davidson 11). //Teen Vogue// establishes and enforces borders throughout its magazine. Often its ads are predominately upper-class Caucasian teenagers. Working inversely, //Teen Vogue// brings in specific teens while excluding others creating a culture of racism. Based on the materialism in this magazine and the glorification of sex for a teen audience it is evident adolescents are merely one more age group to sell. In the capitalist world economy profit is the only drive worth mentioning and the only drive //Teen Vogue// is interested in. //Teen Vogue// costs $3.50 USD. The magazine runs actually original material in about a fifth of the magazine. Essentially //Vogue// is selling a 200 page book of advertisements and is making a double profit. In no way could //Teen Vogue// be called consumer friendly by that figure alone. How could a company that is make profits on both ends of production, while actually working less than most high school newspapers exist except for the profit? //Teen Vogue// is not representing real adolescents; //Vogue// is merely representing an impossible concept of adolescents to mystify children who do not have much in the way of self-confidence or external support. According to //Teen Vogue// adolescents are white, females living in the upper-class, with few concerns and beauty unending. These views of adolescents by adults are as warped as the images provided for pubescent and prepubescent children. The situation is far more dire than this, however. //Teen Vogue// is merely one magazine out of a thousand that portray adolescents in this way. Other magazines such as: //Tiger Beat, Seventeen,// and //Teen Beat// provide these images, but are targeted at even younger, “tween,” audiences. In a culture where profit is the prime motivation, everything else suffers. Solodow gave us means to understand children through composites. Each composite provides perspective on the drives of adolescents and the appeal of this magazine. By adjusting and tinting adolescence to be something it is not //Teen Vogue// is creating boundaries of race and gender, reiterating strict prejudice in the 21st century. Using critical analysis, //Teen Vogue// is a tool of manipulation and of the private sector. How could anyone develop in a society of not-too-tall, not-too-short all-blonde, all-money, females where men are merely sex idols?

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