Task 3: Essay- To what extent should magazines be held responsible for the social ramifications of the representation they offer?

There are several social ramifications from magazines aimed at the teenage girl audience can affect their readers:

• Promoting plastic surgery or changing yourself by using make-up etc.
• Showing the relationships celebrities encounter and teenage boys. 
• Showing almost 'perfect' celebrities and promoting 'the look'.
• Pressuring parents into affording new fashions and trends, to help their children fit it.
• Issues that can come from teens reading these magazines - anorexia, bulimia. 

All of these can all affect a teenager’s view on society.

Plastic surgery is one major ramification that comes from teens reading these magazines. Many teenagers are easily influenced and feel although they must change themselves or make something about them better if they see others are doing it in magazines. Many young adults can be introduced to plastic surgery from a young age by just seeing it on the TV however they can feel that magazines are encouraging them to change to help them fit in, or feel pretty. Many teenagers also don’t realise that the cover girls on the magazine are just photo shopped, and that they don’t actually always look like how they do, it is unrealistic for anyone without being photo shopped or had permanent procedures to look perfect. Young teens shouldn’t be thinking that they are unhappy with their body and want to have surgical procedures but some magazines have changed the way they think.

Many teenage magazine magazines have article headings on the cover of their magazine with advice on boys and some on celebrity boys. The way they represent boys and relationships can be naive and sometimes a bit too advanced. Some magazines choose to show articles like this:

This can develop a state of mind to the young teenager in which they believe that having a boyfriend etc is all about what he looks like, and as long as he’s good looking and has the physical attraction it doesn’t matter about anything else. Also articles like this:

 on the cover can encourage teens to become more sexualised and encourages inappropriate behaviour. When the magazine is aimed at young teens aged between 11-15 these articles may be suitable for some readers but not all readers- it can influence the way they see themselves and how they fit it. Some teens may feel pressured to get a boyfriend, and flirt like it says in the magazine.

Many magazine covers also choose to include the celebrities that all look and are pretty much the same; they will all have the same job – either a well known singer or an actress often well known to the target audience e.g. Disney Channel stars, pop groups and female solo artists. They often have the same features, pretty, white, good figure, smiling and good clothes. If they have imperfections during the editing stage of the images for the magazine cover these will be fixed using Photoshop and other various techniques.  All these qualities can make the reader feel pressured into looking a certain way, if every time the next edition of the magazine comes out and the cover girl has exactly the same features as before the reader will begin to believe that’s the way to look, not always understanding that the cover girl is probably older, and things have been edited to ensure she looks almost perfect. This can also influence the child too feel although they must change to fit in; getting thinner, wearing makeup, using skin creams, more prettier clothes all of which is promoted on the cover.

Another social ramification that can come from these magazines can be pressure- pressure for parents to buy their children the more expensive clothes from the magazines, pressure on the teens to look good, and fit in and be what they see in the magazines. Often the teens with wealthier families can afford to buy the clothes in the magazines which are often more expensive than other clothes as they are from certain shops like New Look, River Island and Topshop. And the teens who can’t afford these clothes are often singled out, and sometimes bullied for not being up to date and ‘trendy’. This can create a status/class division which shouldn’t happen, especially not at such young ages. Also the fact that the trends are always current in the magazines and are constantly changing can make it hard for the parent to keep up, and for the child always to have the most recent products in the magazine.

Finally articles such as this:

Can introduce teens to weight loss and dieting which can sometimes get out of control, I personally think that this is the most influential topic, teens can be left feeling fat and in some cases suffering with body dysmorphia cutting down on what they eat, watching what they eat – in which can be good, but only to a certain extend. It’s good for children to be taught what’s healthy and how to look after their body, however teenage magazines promote it in every magazine with fad diets. The magazine’s are always showing women of the same body type and rarely introduce diversity and variety. This can have a social ramification of how the teens see themselves and others; it also introduces them to anorexia, bulimia and obesity. They always emphasis the ‘good’ and ‘best’bodies to have but never show that some people can be different.

Finally to conclude I think that most teenage girl magazines of today are very biased, they need to show the other side of everything. I think they are very focused around physical attraction and the way we look and they need to show diversity in people. One thing i would like the be removed are all the articles about ‘getting into shape’ and for them to be replaced with ‘eating healthily’ instead of being taught how to get thin teens need to be taught how to be healthy and how to go about it. I would also like to see fewer stereotypes on magazines – a wider variety of cover girls to show teenage girls that different is good.