Task 4

 One convention of magazine covers aimed at teenage girls would be the fact they all have a young, popular female models on the front either smiling or pulling a silly bubbly face. This is perhaps because the target audience look up towards some of these younger celebrities. In addition to this they may use younger celebrities because the target audience may feel as if their at a similar age to them and therefor may be able to relate to them. Lastly the fact there all smiling or pulling silly faces could be used to represent the magazine being fun, of which a teenage girl would stereotypically want.

Another convention used would be the use of typical girly colours, colours such as: pinks, purples and blues. These colours I believe are used to attract the eye of the target audience when buying because these are generally girls           favourite colours. Furthermore the use of the colours seem to be rather bright and hard to miss, so again the brightness of the colour used could be used for effect of grabbing the teenage girls attention.

A third convention used with in the front cover of these magazines would be the use of the puff and plugs. Puff and plugs could be used because generally teenage girls are either at school so don't have a job or at college with a job that pays minnimum wage, so I think these magazines deliberately have puff and plugs on the front cover to make the target audience think they're getting more for their money, by offering things like '312 NEW YEAR STYLE STEALS.'


Another convention used would be the use of serif font. Serif font is in typography, serifs are semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. I think magazines like this use serif font to make their magazine seem more girly so again it appeals to the target audience.

A last convention would be the use of the colour pink with in the masthead. I think this is because generally girls favourite colour is pink so by having  aping masthead will show the target audience that this magazine is specifically aimed at them.





   In this essay i will be discussing to what extent should magazines be held responsible for the social ramifications of the representations they offer. Magazines are highly influencing through their re-presentations of the truth. Teenage magazines  are highly influential to their target audience teenage girls, as they have targeted the vulnerable and easily influenced. These magazines however can have serious ramifications as i will be exploring through this essay.

Watch Dog says in a Telegraph article 'teen magazines are to blame for the early sexualisation of young readers.' Their to blame because they provide explicit content of which relates to sex. With in their magazines they offer things such as 'sexy style buys', 'body tricks' and pictures of attractive men. All of these features of content link to sex in one way or another. If a teenage girl reads these magazines on a weekly basis it will eventually start to influence her, as teenagers are easily influenced. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/4990907/Teen-magazines-are-sexualising-readers-says-watchdog.html

On Women's News it says 'Teen Magazines Send Girls All the Wrong Messages' . This article reveals how teen magazines are full of mixed messages, it also reveals how teen magazines put such a high pressure on to young impressionable teenagers on being skinny and being 'hot'. It highlights how influential these magazines can be in making a girl change their main priority to 'their bodies' due to always mentioning it with in their magazines. Perhaps now days teenage magazines have a big part to play in the upping of anorexia and starvation within teenage girls. As magazines influence them into wanting to be like the celebrities within them, so wanting to be skinny. 

http://womensenews.org/story/uncovering-gender/031029/teen-magazines-send-girls-all-the-wrong-messages#.Ulaln9uF86g

Another article on Learning Web Connect says 'teen magazines influence teen girls daily. They pressure girls into looking and acting a certain way. For three reasons, magazines have an unhealthy effect on growing girl teens: it makes teens long for materialistic things, glorifies unhealthy habits, and has a negative effect on body image.' So again like the other articles it discusses the horrifying ramifications of teen magazines re-presentations. Again highlighting how for example their images of celebrities, who are skinny and perfect, can cause serious health problems such as anorexia due to teenage girls feeling as if they need to starve themselves in order to look like the girls in the magazines they read. 

http://learningwebconnect.homeftp.org/thelearningweb/content/teen-magazines-and-their-negative-influence-teen-girls

Overall teenage magazines have serious impacts on teenage girls due to re-presentation of things such as what a woman should look like, although they believe a stick thin perfect celebrity is normal, it isn't. However a teenage girl is easily influenced and vulnerable so actually believes what they say. In teenage magazines i would like to see 'perfect body tips' and 'perfect celebrity bodies' removed from all of their magazines and perhaps see women celebrities of all shapes and sizes used with in their magazines to promote it does not matter what shape you are. By doing this i would hope to think it would reduce pressure on young teenage girls but also stop and reduce the amount of teenage girls with anorexia. 

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