To what extent should magazines be held responsible for the social ramifications of the representations that they offer?

I think that teenage girl magazines should be held responsible for the majority of the views that their readers feel. I believe this because at the age of the targeted audience they are easily impressionable and get the majority of feelings from other media instead of creating their own opinions and living by them. I think it is easier for teenage girls to follow the “norm” than to stand out. This means that when an opinion is portrayed to them as right they are more likely to follow this than follow what their own opinion is, if they have an opinion on the identified subject. An example of this is when a teenage magazine portrays a certain pop star as “cute and talented” then the audience will automatically decide that they also like that certain pop star. Due to the high similarities in many of the magazines that are available to them they all form the same opinions of certain things. Something that is represented a lot in the magazines is boys. Whether its a pop star that they can only dream about or a quiz telling you if your crush is really the fairy tale prince they fancy, boys are all over these girls magazines. The models that are used in these magazine are all seen as what is thought to be good looking. This therefore makes the audience acquire a materialistic view of what all boys should be like. Another thing that makes up a large part of a teenage girls magazine is clothes and beauty. I feel that this causes a large social ramification within the community of teenage girls because they feel that they need to have the clothes that are classed as “in fashion”. This is both damaging for themselves and the people who can’t afford to have every one of the latest trends. This also hinders younger teenagers from finding out that they are as a person because they are all trying to become one. There are some teenage girls that can pull away from the stereotypes but these are then commonly picked on and bullied by those who do conform to the trends, which then makes them afraid to be who they are for fear of persecution. Linking to beauty, all the female models that are used in the magazine do not show girls that are going through puberty and feeling the changes that occur. None of them have spots or struggle with weight. Where as many teenage girls in this generation do. This is not a fair representation of what a typical teenage girl looks like. Seeing thin girls on the front of magazines makes the reader idolise this and want to be thin leading to problems like anorexia and bulimia. This therefore makes the magazines that the majority of young teenage girls read responsible for the social ramifications that they are made to conform to. 

Five magazines aimed at teenage girls

Conventions of teenage girl magazines:

• Large masthead that is in front of the model to make it stand out and visible to the target audience
• Colour schemes that use a large amount of stereotypically feminine colours
• Puffs and plugs that are related to fashion, beauty and real life stories and things the publishing company believe to be of interest to the target audience  to draw the attention of the audience to purchase that specific magazine over the others.  
• The model on the front cover is always placed over the centre or right third as this is where the attention of the reader is drawn first. 
• There are also varying shapes of the puffs around each of the models, normally straight lines are used to segment specific sections of information as depending on the size and colour of the font and puffs the audiences attention will be drawn to specific things first. 

Attempt at photography

The model is positioned in the right third of the image, and the camera shot is a high angle shot.  

 Model is in the last third of the frame. He is not looking at the camera but his eyes are a main focus of the image. It is a medium close up shot. 

 I have used a low angle shot in this photo and the model is in the right third of the image. 

The model is positioned in the centre and right thirds of the shot. he is mainly in the right third. it is a medium close up shot.