Magazines Directed at a Teenage Female Audience, Essay, Task 3.

Cosmo Girl

Magazines directed at a teenage female audience

ELLE Magazine

Teen Vogue

I have looked on the internet for five examples of magazines which their target audience is the teenage girl. There are several key conventions which demonstrate why they are aimed at a female audience, specifically teenagers. These are my five examples:

Cosmo Girl, ELLE Fashion, Teen Vouge, Seventeen and Bliss.

After looking at each of the covers individually you can see several conventions of the teenage girls magazine. Colour, models/stars, Coverlines and content are all very important when it comes to marketing the typical teenage girls magazine.

Starting with the colour scheme I noticed that they all have a very similar palette. Most of these covers are not seasonal or special edition covers so I can display the generic pink tones used. All five of my examples have included at least one shade of the colour pink on their magazines. ELLE, Teen Vouge, Bliss and Seventeen have all chosen a pink tone for the Masthead on the magazine. Cosmo girl used the contrast of black and purple, purple is still a sterotypical girls colour, very rarely do you see a male magazine with soft toned colours. General product sales when related to gender have a strong colour difference; women and girls items are usually soft toned colours such as pinks, yellows and purples wheras men have reds, blues and blacks.

The content and topics within the magazine itself are very important to who your selling your magazine to. On the cover of these examples there is a reoccuring theme of fashion, health, body and the hottest gossip. All these topics are the general idea of what a young teenage girl would be interested in. When you see young girls out and about in the public they are usually sporting the hottest clothes and are sat chatting about their weight at a cafe with a light salad and coffee in hand. 

When it comes to the model on the front of the magazine itsimportant to use someone who is seen as a role model in image and a general inspirational star or model. On the cover of Cosmo girl you have the hugely popular teen actress Emma Watson, she has featured in all of the Harry Potter films as the character of Hermoine. Her character is smart and intellectual much like Emma Watson herself. You wouldn't see Emma in the public spotlight acting crude or misbehaving. This is what the magqazine companys tend to promote young, aspiring teens who are beautiful but do not have a bad public reputation. On the cover of ELLE you see Kristen Stewart from the Twilight franchise, many young teenage girls have Twilight on their bookshelves, so to sell your magazine get whos hot at the moment on your cover. The same goes for Cher on the front of Bliss, many girls watch programs like the X-Factor as it starts gossip and perhaps inspires them to do something like entering the competition themselves.

Seventeen Magazine

When I found the covers for Seventeen and Cosmo girl I deliberately picked two that were not english editions to prove a point. When you still look at the colours and the models on the front you can see that the steryotypical pink colours, role models and the Coverlines are the same. Both Selena and Emma are global stars, so you will need a model on your magazine that is known and is popular by girls internationally instead of perhaps a local role model. Pink shades again appear on both the covers, yellow and purple are still femine colours so there isn't much to go against the point of steryotyping gender colourwise. Taking a look at the Coverlines you can get the genral feel of them being related to the topics discussed earlier. Key words such as 'Amore', 'Look' and 'Food' all echo the previous point of girls gossping about their looks and their eating habits.

Bliss Magazine

What makes these five particualr examples audience as teenage girls is getting hard to distinguish, as many topics grown women talk about younger women are speaking about as well. Its a very controversial issue, many people these days are always panicing about the age of girls and what they are talking about. On the cover of Bliss one of the Coerlines mentions a girl getting risky surgery of a 'boob job' at the age of 16. Magazines are constantly being spoken about when it comes to being an influence on what young girls are talking about. Going back to the topic of having a star and a model on the cover is very controversial. Wen it comes to body weight and looks having a stick thin model in the hottest clothing isnt the most desirable thing that parents want their children to be reading about. The five I have shown as an example dont really have too much problems in the model/stars have used on their covers.

From these five examples you get a good feel for how the teenage magazine industry sell their magazines. Colour, topic and star/models are all very important when selling the magazines. Basically anyone who follows a lose stereotypical format can create or design a young teenage girls magazine.