the impact of the media on youth

– by Kelsey Horvath

It is widely known that the media influences young people every day – in things they see, hear, and experience. I decided to interview someone related to this theme to discover how they felt and what they knew about the media’s manipulation of youth. I conducted an interview with Rachel Funari, lip magazine’s founding editor, via email. I wrote this essay on my findings, including some of my own opinions and views as well as Rachel’s.

I chose to interview Rachel because lip magazine is so opposed to the media’s manipulation of young women, making it a stark contrast from many popular young women’s magazines. I structured a lot of my questions to emphasise this contrast.

I also chose to interview Rachel because it would be much easier to gain a clear, unbiased view of how the media works. Someone working at a corporation that largely employed the use of media manipulation would not give completely truthful answers.

I successfully gained information concerning both these topics. However, the main body of this essay is not factual; it is a combination of mine and Rachel’s opinions, with additional facts to support our statements.

One of the first issues I focused on when structuring my questions was the subject of contrast. When I asked what the main differences were “between lip magazine and a mainstream magazine for young women such as Dolly or Girlfriend”, Rachel supplied me with a detailed list. One of the main differences she noted was that issues of lip magazine rarely contain information about celebrities, instead focusing on less well-known women who were successful in fields such as business and politics. I saw that by doing this, lip magazine tries to introduce its readers to a variety of rewarding career paths.

This illustrates the fact that most magazines for young women attempt to “manipulate people, women especially, into feeling insecure and to believe that spending money on something is the answer to fixing it”, as Rachel replied to another one of my questions. This information showed me that these magazines make their readers feel insecure by showing them glimpses of a lifestyle of someone that is generally thought to be perfect.

The magazine then shows its readers advertisements of beauty products that, according to the advertisements, will make them look like the celebrities that the reader has just been mentally comparing themselves to. By interspersing articles about celebrities with advertisements for beauty products, popular magazines for young women manipulate readers into buying things they do not realistically need. This is where Rachel pointed out that lip again differs from mainstream magazines for young women, because “lip is 99 per cent content, with hardly any ads”.

Rachel also told me that lip magazine acknowledges eating disorders and other health problems suffered by young women, providing a variety of recounts of personal experiences, whereas mainstream teenage girls’ magazines only ever contain gossipy articles about celebrities who have had eating disorders. This showed me that these magazines are not showing that celebrities are human too; they are putting the celebrities down, making an example of them.

Another difference that Rachel pointed out between lip and mainstream magazines is that in lip magazine, submissions of stories, art and poetry are encouraged. There is very rarely a submissions page in a popular girls’ magazine. I realised that this symbolises that lip magazine encourages its readers to pay attention to what is going on around them and to take part. Popular girls’ magazines don’t want their readers to take notice of the world around them. The magazine finds it easier to deceive people who are interested in nothing but their own problems.

Rachel also showed that lip‘s fashion articles focus on individual style rather than the popular trends advertised in magazines with a lot of celebrity content. I saw that this means of advertising the clothes is another way of getting the readers to try and reach the standard set by the celebrities in the magazine.

One of the other differences in Rachel’s list was that lip contains much more realistic sexual content and is a lot more truthful about what a sexual relationship entails.

In short, lip magazine tries to make its readers aware of the manipulation of the media that they are being subjected to, whereas popular young women’s magazines try to make their readers feel insecure about their appearance, personality, and life, in order to buy products that will supposedly “fix” these problems.

While interviewing Rachel, I was able to gain her viewpoint about issues of media manipulation in teenage magazines. My second question asked her opinion of the media’s manipulation of young people. Rachel replied that “the media manipulates people, women especially, into feeling insecure and to believe that spending money on something is the answer to fixing it”. This is true especially of popular teenage girls’ magazines, where girls are encouraged to buy beauty products to try and fit themselves into the idea of “the perfect woman” projected by the magazines they read. This “perfect” ideal is symbolised in the form of thin, stylish, famous and beautiful actresses, singers and models.

In one of my questions, where I asked Rachel what she believed was the biggest issue in mainstream magazines that robs women of their individuality, she replied “that there is only one idea of woman portrayed. The contemporary woman (and young women) is someone who cries to her best friend and eats chocolate when her boyfriend dumps her; comes into work with hangovers from drinking too much; uses shopping as therapy; is on a diet; spends an inordinate amount of money on the right clothes and hair and makeup … and is sexually experienced.”

This is a collection of characteristics symbolised in some of the celebrities shown in articles of teenage girls’ magazines. These magazines completely omit the idea that “ordinary” women who work to make an impression on the world can be just as content with their lives as celebrities are. “One doesn’t have to be famous to be special or well loved” was Rachel’s reply to the question “Celebrities are provided as role models in popular young women’s magazines. How do you feel that these typical role models should be changed?” The part of her answer to this question that I quoted here sums up the situation perfectly: “ordinary” people are just as loved by their friends and family as celebrities are, perhaps even more so.

By portraying only one type of stereotypical woman, mainstream magazines are “robbing their readers of their individuality”.

In summary, lip differs greatly from most magazines for young women. For example, lip magazine tries to help its readers understand their lives, sort out their problems, and also become aware and interested in the issues in the world around them. Mainstream magazines do not do this; they encourage their readers to become self-absorbed and conform to trends set by celebrities.

When I was doing this assignment, I gained a valuable insight into the media’s manipulation of youth through magazines for teenage girls. I saw how these magazines encourage girls and women to fit into a profile of characteristics symbolised by the celebrities present within their pages. These characteristics are not particularly useful to the girls and women later on in life, and the need to fit into a profile limits their feelings of capability and makes them feel insecure.

In short, teenage magazines not only present distorted information to their readers, they also distort the readers’ manners of thinking by doing so.