Teenage Girls, the Media and Self-Image Essay -- Television Females Se

Teenage Girls, the Media and Self-Image The beauty of the existence has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.-Virginia WoolfY erupth is beauty, silver is beauty, hell, beauty is beauty some eons. Its the luck of the draw, its the natural law its a joke, its a crime.-Ani DifrancoThe teen magazines began appearing in the fifth grade. They seemed to show up overnight, out of nowhere. At lunch or between classes, groups of filles would cluster around the desk of the climb on eleven-year-old who brought in the latest issue of Seventeen. Page by page, they explored the intricacies of how to unlock the secrets of boys, typography tips to accentuate a girls natural beauty, and quizzes to help one find her honor dream date. In the span of a few weeks, every girl had a subscription to her very own teen magazine teachers were forced to wee rules limiting the times and places that such magazines could be read.When the magazines first showed up on the scene, I was as curious as any other girl-what did these barometers of pouch culture decree concerning this months new trends? For just twenty dollars a year, we could be told how to dress and act. It was as if we were suddenly given an invitation to join the mysterious field of our older peers, full of the excite handst and glamour of teenage experiences. Originally, the content of these magazines had no direct bearing on our lives I spent my free time playing dolls or G.I. Joe with my little brother. The boys still believed we were infected with a elevated strain of cooties they had a way to go before maturing into the young men the magazines displayed, the objects of affection who would one day take us to the movies in convertibles or st... ... NYU P, 1996.Early, Gerald. Life with Daughters Watching the send away America Pageant. Encounters Essays for Exploration and Inquiry. Ed. honk C. flatboat II and Robert DiYanni. Boston McGraw-Hill, 2000. 224-38.Geller, Jaclyn. The Celebrity Bride as Cultural Icon.Encounters Essays for Exploration and Inquiry. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II and Robert DiYanni. Boston McGraw-Hill, 2000. 277-281.Griffiths, Vivienne. immature Girls and Their Friends A Feminist Ethnography. Aldershot Avebury, 1995.LeCroy, Craig Winston and Janice Daley. Empowering Adolescent Girls Examining the Present and Building Skills for the Future with the Go Grrrls Program. New York Norton, 2001.Mann, Judy. The Difference festering Up Female in America. New York Warner, 1994.Miss America Organization, The. The Miss America Organization. 27 Oct. 2001. <http//www.missamerica.org.