Sophisticated ahead of their time

Have you checked out recently any large newsstand chock full of magazines running from weightlifter specials to high intellectual fare like The New Criterion? Well, in that case, you may have come across a rather healthy crop of teen magazines. But, a rather special variety of teenie mags. Most are junior versions of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Elle and People, but also you find items with names like just plain Teen.

What distinguishes them from their seniors are all the ads for skin products, hair products and pop music in all manner of groups. As to content, there is an awful lot of text devoted to boy-girl stuff on the strictly junior high-school level. And celebrities rate high as a draw on the covers, along with features like “Star woes: Their most embarrassing moments.” This feature focuses on such celebs as Jason Wade, Anne Hathaway, Mark Blucas, D.J. Quail and Chyna – none of them exactly household names. (Except maybe Chyna, if you’re into wrestling.)

Sample embarrassing moment from Anne Hathaway: “I saw my crush in the water at my eighth-grade pool party and I decided to swim over to say hi. I guess I forgot to see if my bathing suit was on properly because when I came to the surface, his face turned completely red. I looked down and my boob had popped out! I had to go underwater to fix my top. We wound up being friends (later), and we joke about it to this day, but it was pretty devastating.”

You do get the level of prose and depth of expression, don’t you? Each publication does manage to slip in at least one serious type article – a kind of warning of “look what could happen to you if you’re not careful.” Teen People offers in its September issue “Death behind the wheel.” The subhead reads: “Car wrecks kill more kids in the U.S. than guns drugs, gangs or AIDS. Should lawmakers save teens from themselves by making it tougher for them to get a license?” But right beside it is a photograph of a 16-year-old killed racing another car. (“Kids race because there’s nothing else to do in the suburbs.”) The caption reads, “While devastated by his death, John’s friends oppose laws that would raise the driving age.”

Vacation gets the “Back to School” treatment with captions like “Teacher’s pet cops an attitude (and possibly detention) with short skirts, studs and bangles, bad-girl boots.” The models appear barely pubescent – just about right for Humbert Humbert. Indeed, old Humbert probably wouldn’t be too pleased with all the cool, funky youths, and profiles of youthful pop groups in these publications, he would find ever so much more pleasurable to slobber over in each issue the baby-faced, long-flaxen-haired, pouty-lipped teenies in their tiny skirts..

These teenage lasses have, as manufacturers and marketers have discovered for some time, spending money: money for CDs and DVDs, money for movies, money for pop concerts, money for products to give them shiny hair and bright complexions, money to buy all those new clothes to keep up with their chums. And they have parents willing to dispense that money.

Aimed at the 14 to 17 age belt, one of the latest junior mags on the market “Ellegirl,” according to Brandon Holley, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, “provides teens with a visually sophisticated and fun approach to fashion and beauty that celebrates an independent attitude with an international flair – an information super runway for the most diverse, global and brand-savvy teen market in history.”

I don’t know, but in its own way these junior mags, these savvy teen markets, are a form of little more than soft porn. No matter the occasional do-gooder article tucked into each issue, the general tenor of the publications is to make young girls old or rather sophisticated ahead of their time. The publishers may do great business, but what kind of young womanhood are they readying the world for?