Teen Vogue: Real Beauty?

Teen Vogue: Real Beauty?

Teen Vogue magazine is a miniature version of Vogue magazine for teen girls. This magazine focuses on the aspects of the hottest clothing lines, celebrities, and the latest news in entertainment. But what is the front cover of this magazine portraying to teen girls all over the world? Imagine you and your fifteen-year-old daughter are in the magazine isle in the Ingles grocery store. Your daughter leans over and picks up the newest edition of Teen Vogue. She stops and stares at the front cover. You see that she is contemplating something and an expression comes across her face that breaks your heart. She looks up at you and says, “Why can’t I be this pretty?” These magazines portraying beautiful women on the front covers with no flaws trigger girls into thinking that to be accepted and to feel beautiful in society, they need to wear makeup, the most expensive clothing and look exactly like the girls in the images.

This magazine brings to the table the enhancing images of an attractive woman on the front cover, normally a well-known celebrity, who teenage girls look up to. The bright colors of the text and the font also attract readers to pick it up off of the shelf. The diction chosen for the covers pull you in by using play on words like “all-American beauty”. The advertisers are appealing to teen girls through use of celebrity role models in order to get them to open up the magazine and see what is inside while getting more girls to subscribe to their magazines.

Society today makes women feel like they have to be up to date with the latest news and fashion to fit in. The advertisers skip straight to the younger generation in order to conform them at a young age into believing that makeup and expensive clothing is the way to go. The majority of girls just want to be accepted and liked for who they are, but these magazines take it a step too far and make teen girls conform to hiding their face behind makeup because they aren’t comfortable in their own skin and society does not accept all natural beauty.