Decoding Femininity: Advertisements and Their Teenage Readers

Currie (1997) conducted a study on how girls interpret what it means to be a woman based on advertisements in magazines.  She conducted interviews and focus group sessions with 48 girls ages 13 to 17, most of whom are not regular teen magazine readers.  The focus group sessions used 25 advertisements gathered from Seventeen magazine and the individual interviews allowed the participants to discuss the content from their favorite magazines.  The author found several themes common among respondents.  They rejected ads that that they felt were illogical or irrelevant; often spoke against ads’ portraying women with perfect bodies, but rarely spoke against society’s mandate for women to always look good; linked feeling good about themselves with looking good; and wanted to have the self-esteem and confidence that models personified.  Currie stated that the study is a perfect example of how people develop ideology based on the images that they see regularly.  She found that women may define who they are, but the conditions in which they must thrive are not of their making.

This study reminds me most of a poem that my mom used to hang in my room, which I included below, “Children Learn What They Live,” (Nolte, 1972). The things we see everyday have the most impact on the adults we become. This study focused on the role the media plays in young women’s development. Their role is important, but what children encounter and learn in the household, I believe, is equally important. If parents spent more time encouraging media literacy, so that their children understood the media’s role and actions, more young people would identify less with how the media says they should feel about their image and focus more on how they really feel about themselves as a complete person.

This is the actual poster that used to hang in my room

(Children Learn What They Live, n.d.)

A Feminist Analysis of Seventeen Magazine: Content Analysis from 1945 to 1995

Schlenker, Caron, and Halteman (1998) conducted a study examining feminist messages in Seventeen magazine.  They hypothesized that feminist messages would have changed over time as a result of the feminist movement in the 1940s.  The researchers examined all 12 issued of Seventeen from 1945, 1955, 1965, 1975, 1985, and 1995.  For this study, they used Pierce’s (1990) definition of feminism—“taking care of oneself, being independent, and not relying on a man for fulfillment or identity,” (p.297).  They categorized messages into three categories:  self-development, career development, and political/world issues.  Schlenker, Caron, and Halteman used a Chi-square analysis to determine if the content change from year to year was significantly different.  They found that there were a higher percentage of feminist messages for 1945, 1975, and 1995 compared to 1955, 1965, and 1985.  The strongest waves of feminism occurred during World War II (1940’s) and when women attained better paying jobs during the social reform movement (late 1960’s and 1970s).  The authors also stated that it was believed that there was another wave occurring in the 1990s, when the study was published.  Their study proved that the content in Seventeen correlates with the women’s movement.

This study helps portray the side of Seventeen that is less discussed in scholarly journals– the side of the publication that helps girls to develop into women who focus on more than just fashion, boys, and their bodies. If the magazine were to increase their coverage  of articles that promote female independence to match the level of articles on beauty and fashion, women really might really become a threat—brains and beauty. Of course not all men that can handle those women.

There are some men who can appreciate a woman who has it all

(Fashion In Motion, 2008)