Girls find comfort in teen magazines

c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-For as long as there have been teen idols, there have been teen idol magazines, bridging the chasm between fame and obscurity, girlhood and womanhood. A 12-year-old may be unable to approach the cutest boy at school or the most popular girl in class, but she knows she will always […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-For as long as there have been teen idols, there have been teen idol magazines, bridging the chasm between fame and obscurity, girlhood and womanhood.

A 12-year-old may be unable to approach the cutest boy at school or the most popular girl in class, but she knows she will always be welcome in the pages of “Tigerbeat” “Superteen,” “16,” “Teen Machine” and “Right On,” all of which are owned by a New York company called the Sterling Macfadden Partnership.


“When you’re in junior high school, everyone doesn’t always like you,” says Cynthia Horner, editor of “Right On,” which is targeted to black teens. “The cheerleaders might not want to hang out with you. A pin-up can’t say, `No, you can’t come with us to the movies.’ It’s a friendly, smiling face, always there.”

Horner believes today’s children-isolated from their peers and coping with unstable home lives-have a greater need for celebrities than past generations. “I think they’re very lonely,” says Horner. “That’s why they buy the magazine, that’s why they become addicted to the TV and the radio. They have needs that aren’t being met within the family structure that used to exist.”

Teen magazines create the illusion and promise of intimacy. They conduct tours of the stars’ bedrooms. They ask the same questions a 12-year-old would ask: “Is Greg a nickname?” “Are you an animal lover?” “Do you drive?” They hold contests in which first prize is a small piece of the dream boy: an autographed T-shirt, a phone call, a video of the idol’s latest movie vehicle.

Ultimately, the magazines attempt to answer the most burning question of all: “Our readers just want to know, `If I met Jonathan Taylor Thomas, would he like me?’ ” says Randi Reisfeld, editor of “16.”

With their drooling devotion to the same young stars every issue, the magazines often appear to be created by a powerful cadre of child actor publicists. But Reisfeld insists that teenyboppers pick their own pin-ups.

“They tell us,” she said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that you can’t manufacture a teen idol.”

Reisfeld’s magazine was founded 40 years ago, launched on technicolor photos of Elvis Presley and James Dean. When she was growing up in the 1960s, she read it and learned that Paul McCartney liked cornflakes. By the 1970s-when Reisfeld joined the magazine-pretty boys like Lief Garrett and Shaun Cassidy filled “16,” and bubblegum bands like the Bay City Rollers were big. In the 1980s, the magazine fanned flames for New Kids on The Block and Menudo.


These days, teen idols are apt to be TV stars, and, like the magazine’s readers, they’re getting younger and younger. The average age for a “16” reader is 9 to 14, says Reisfeld.

Through the years, teen idols have always possessed a certain androgyny, but that’s especially true now that so many fans are in grade school. “You’re appealing to girls who are in that stage of life when someone who is overtly masculine is threatening,” she says.

Like teen idols of every decade, today’s “hotties,” as they’re called, are never aloof. That’s what keeps readers hooked. “There’s an accessibility about them,” says Reisfeld. “As if they might really be interested in you.”

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