And what of Teen vogue?

When it comes to communication, Liberal, radical and socialist feminists share the same sentiments regarding the media. Media seem to be the ‘main instrument’ when it comes to "conveying stereotypes, patriachal and hegemonic values about women and femininity" (Zoonen). Hegemony being the values of a dominant social group.
One of the main media culprits mentioned by Zoonen responsible for conveying certain messages to young and middle aged women were magazines. I have cousins who are in middle school right now and are very much into teen magazines such as Teen Vogue with their mom a Vogue subscriber. Zoonen talks about how liberal feminists say we learn to accept these “norms” through women’s mothering, in this case, my aunt seeing nothing wrong with Vogue and therefore subscribing her daughters to Teen Vogue.

A quick scope into this month’s topics in Teen Vogue were Fall Fashion, The skinny for fall (talking about jeans), Let 'em rip! (also talking about jeans), 10 most wanted-Get in touch with your girly side and of course the usual 10 things guys want most section. However, while looking through the magazine, the pictures seemed to intrigue me more. Below is a picture under the fall trends entitled:Little Ladies. What made me really think was what it said under the picture in bold-Bright Young things. My first question being “Who’s a thing?” and “Why are they things?”

What about this look entitled “Boy Crazy.” Is it named that because in order to get a boy you have to be looking like you’re in your underwear, or maybe you just have to act as dumb and uncertain as possible like the girl in this picture.

In further asking my cousins what all this meant to them, the response was of course, “it’s just for entertainment and fashion exposure.” This resonated with Zoonen’s point that in interpreting media texts, we either accept it as reality or see it as “common sense.” In reality, I do believe that these magazines have certain ideologies that they want to share. Young female readers rarely see the distortion of the pictures or text within the magazines. It’s deemed cool and from their point of view, “everything is questionable these days” so I should just relax.