COSMO’S LITTLE SISTER
Meet the new Cosmo Girl.
She’s not that alluring, scantily clad 20-something seductively posed on a cover of Cosmospolitan magazine. She is a fresh-faced young girl between ages 12 and 17.
Dubbed the spunky little sister of the racy Cosmopolitan, CosmoGirl! made its debut at special events in Los Angeles and New York over the past week. The new teen fashion and beauty magazine hits the newsstands on Tuesday with 850,000 copies, more than double the number typically printed for a magazine launch.
Just how well young readers--and their parents--receive the new CosmoGirl! remains to be seen. Sexy big sis Cosmopolitan carries with it a certain, well, reputation--not necessarily one for wholesome young girls.
Newsstands already are crowded with other teen fashion and beauty magazines, one of the hottest growth categories in traditional and online publishing. Well-established magazines Seventeen, YM and Teen were once the purveyors of fashion and beauty to the youth market. Now, publications like Jump, Twist, Girl and Latin Girl are reaching out to girls who have outgrown Disney Adventures and Nickelodeon magazines but are too young for Cosmopolitan and Vogue.
“Until about three years ago, there were three magazines serving a teen demographic of about 30 million,” says Jump Editor Lori Berger.
New teen magazines claim to be filling a void in the media, providing girls with tools to build self-esteem. But psychologists, editors and parents have mixed feelings about how these magazines and their images of beauty are affecting the emotional and physical well-being of girls in America. The flurry of new publications means they are popular with girls, but they come at a time of rising concerns about our celebrity-obsessed culture when girls are already having more problems than ever before with body image, eating disorders and self-mutilation.
CosmoGirl’s project editor, Atoosa Rubenstein, 27, is passionate about helping what she calls “the inner girl.”
“We don’t use sexy images, and we don’t have stick skinny models,” she says. “We’ll leave that to our big sister. We are about empowering girls.”
On the plus side, new magazine titles are reflecting segments of the teen population that until now were largely ignored by mainstream fashion magazines.
Girl, launched in the fall of 1998 by Mode magazine, presents models of every body type and ethnic background. Other new titles like Latin Girl, Latina and Honey (for African Americans) also include images of beauty notoriously underrepresented in mainstream media.
The magazines try to build self-esteem in readers by using real-girl models with braces and profiling women who have overcome the odds. They encourage self-improvement by providing tips on getting better grades and good summer jobs. But these stories seem to be overshadowed by fashion spreads and celebrity profiles that emphasize appearance and advertisements that appeal to beauty to sell products.
When tackling sticky subjects such as sex, editors insist they strive to be responsible, presenting information girls need to know for health purposes.
“We could do a story saying girls shouldn’t have sex. But the pregnancy rate is up. So our ‘Smart Sex Report’ in the January 1998 issue said, ‘If you are having sex, this is what you need to know,’ ” explains Jump’s Berger, who spent a month on the phone with concerned mothers. “We were bombarded by subscription cancellations.”
Dieting, as a general rule, is a taboo subject. The editors at Jump and Girl say they emphasize fitness and healthy eating instead.
But some are not convinced.
“These magazines are positive in the sense that they are giving girls a voice, but negative because they are conditioning them to a world of consumerism and anorexia earlier than ever before,” says clinical psychologist William Pollack, a specialist in gender issues.
Images in Mainstream Magazines Dominate
Although new magazines such as Girl and Jump, which won a Healthy Weight Journal Award for depicting girls of all sizes, may be making headway in reflecting girls’ bodies more realistically, their circulation numbers are dwarfed by monoliths Seventeen, YM and Teen, which still use mostly traditional models, rarely larger than a size 6.
Images in advertisements of bikini-clad bodies and clear skin alone have the power to make girls concerned about their appearance at a critical age, says psychologist Mary Pipher of Lincoln, Neb.
Pipher sounded the alarm about America’s girl-poisoning culture with her 1994 bestselling book, “Reviving Ophelia,” which describes how a looks-obsessed, media-saturated world robs girls of their self-worth at a young age.
“These magazines are about making money by turning children into consumers. I don’t like them because they sexualize girls when they are too young to be sexualized,” she says.
A few teen magazines are combating the negative messages that advertisements can send by cutting them out altogether. Ms. magazine, a champion of feminism since July 1972, went ad-free in 1990. A similar alternative magazine for teens called New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams followed suit when it launched in 1992.
New Moon was created by Joe Kelly and Nancy Gruver of Duluth, Minn., because they could not find appropriate reading material for their twin 11-year-old daughters. They decided a girls’ magazine should not be adults telling girls what they need to know and created an editorial board made up of girls ages 8 to 14.
“The girls who started the magazine were adamant about not having ads. They were aware that having ads could possibly compromise the content of the magazine. It’s hard on one page to tell a girl it doesn’t matter what she looks like, and on another have an ad selling makeup,” explains Managing Editor Deb Mylin, 27.
But Karen Bokram, a former Seventeen editor who in 1994 started Girl’s Life for ages 10 to 15, believes neither the content in magazines nor the ads are to blame for girls’ poor body image and self-esteem.
“If I thought I could give every girl self-esteem by not putting out this magazine, then I would remove myself, but the research isn’t there,” she says. “It’s alarmist to say beauty magazines make girls feel ugly.”
Family, Peers May Be Biggest Influence
Reader surveys conducted by Girl’s Life found parents and friends, not fashion magazines, are the biggest influences on how girls see themselves.
Another survey asked readers to react to Girl’s Life swimsuit spreads that featured models from a children’s size 10 to a junior’s size 10.
“We got a lot of response, but one girl hit the nail on the head. She said, ‘You are not showing us the bodies we aspire to, you are showing us swimsuits,’ ” Bokram says.
Molly Kelley, 11, is shopping for magazines and books at Borders on La Cienega. She wrinkles her face at the mere mention of Girl’s Life, which is really more appropriate for her age than Seventeen, Teen and Jump magazines. Yet she favors these titles aimed at older teens and women in their early 20s. Seventeen, for example is aimed at 17- to 24-year-old women, but more than half of its readers are between the ages of 12 and 15.
Kelley’s mother, Amy, believes the magazines are too old for her, “but you can’t stop somebody from reading. I’m just happy she’s reading.”
Others believe the only way to protect their daughters from airbrushed, unattainable images of beauty is to keep them from reading the magazines.
“I don’t let my girls read teen magazines. I think they make them grow up too fast and want to be something they don’t need to be,” says Cathy Gatley, who lives in the Bay Area with her 10- and 13-year-old daughters.
“The magazines aren’t about articles. They are about selling things,” Gatley says. “They are just going for the younger market, so younger kids will start bugging their parents to get more stuff.” (Naturally, this only makes her daughters, Erin and Alex, want to read the magazines more.)
Kelley, the 11-year-old reader of Seventeen and other magazines, says, “They don’t make me want to be anyone else. They just make me want to buy more accessories.”
Publishers and blue chip advertisers such as Chanel and Revlon are reaching out to the younger teen because of their numbers and spending power.
The U.S. teen population, at 30.9 million, will continue to outpace overall population growth through the year 2010, according to Teenage Research Unlimited of Northbrook, Ill. Teens overall spent $141 billion in 1998, with girls spending an average of $96 a week.
Retailers are responding, too. Tommy Hilfiger’s Tommy line for ages 13 to 24 will arrive in stores next spring. Todd Oldham is launching a junior line; Ralph Lauren’s new line, Ralph, will be aimed at 16- to 24-year-olds; and Liz Claiborne recently acquired a license to produce a DKNY juniors line.
Could telling girls they need all these products give them the message that they are inadequate without the latest lip gloss color or a boyfriend? Girls may not realize that they are striving for an ideal image of beauty until they are much older.
“Every time I pick up one of these magazines and read about the makeup trends, I feel self-conscious the next morning and think to myself, ‘Gosh, I have all the wrong colors!’ ” says one 26 year-old.
Former Cosmopolitan Editor Helen Gurley Brown, author of the 1962 bestselling “Sex and Single Girl,” believes it’s all talk.
“We’ve been concerned about our looks since time began,” she says. “You can’t stamp it out by pretending it’s not there. It’s going to happen anyway, so it may as well be with our [fashion magazines’] guidance.”
There’s no denying girls are interested in makeup and boys, says Pam Nelson, who started L.A.’s Girl Press in 1997 when she could not find books for her young cousins. Girl Press recently published the bestseller “Girl Boss,” which teaches girls how to start their own businesses. Nelson understands teen magazines’ conundrum from a publishing perspective and believes tempering beauty and fashion with more meaty issues can be a tool for getting a positive message across.
“You have to package things in a way that draws girls in,” she says.
The issues addressed by teen publications of today may not be as heady as birth control and equal rights, which graced the covers of many magazines in the 1970s, but Ms. Editor Marcia Ann Gillespie is still hopeful.
“I am amazed with the political savvy of girls today and with the thoughtfulness they have about who they are in the world,” she says. “I see the way today’s young women are taking issues of feminism and making them their own.”
Perhaps today’s feminism, known as “girl power,” means not being afraid to embrace and revel in things that are girlie, including fashion magazines. And girls today may not be issue-oriented simply because they feel they don’t have to be, which is a victory of sorts.
Nelson says, “A lot of girls don’t realize what women in the 1970s did to get them where they are. But I’m almost glad they don’t have to worry about those issues.”
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Booth Moore can be reached by e-mail at booth.moore@latimes.com.
