My Teen Magazine Years

I first discovered teen magazines when I was around 14 years old. (Yes I've always been a bit slow.) Back then, my main choices available were TeenMag, Seventeen and Cosmogirl, plus Australian 'zines, Dolly and Girlfriend. A lot of them seemed to be about cute boy bands, boy problems, embarassing stories (remember those?) and simple quizes. Seventeen was slightly better as it seemed to acknowledge their girls had some brains. (On a kind-of-related note, my love for saving money meant that I would only buy one each month or even none.) Later on, ElleGirl came along. I liked ElleGirl much more than the others -it was fun, colourful and had a casual style. But the truth was, I've never loved any of them. Sure, I would take ElleGirl over the rest, but still, none of the magazines had the style (fashion and layout-wise) that I was looking for.
That is until Teen Vogue came along. Teen Vogue was the closest to my ideal teen magazine that I have ever seen. It had seriously stylish clothes and the editorials were styled well. The covers were pretty and the cover girls were usually girls whom I liked the style of. I mean, you know those editorials where there is the 'celebrity's way of wearing it' and 'our way of wearing it'? I've always thought Teen Vogue's copying of said celebrity's ways of dressing was classier than other magazines' ways and actually looked quite similar to the celebrity's outfits. And yes, its small size made it cute, and convenient to buy and carry around.

Even the topics that the editorials talked about were somewhat interesting and relevant, (although they were seriously short and kind of superficial). One of the few things I didn't like about Teen Vogue were the annual 'Hollywood issue' and 'Music issue', but I still liked the fashion in these issues more than what I see elsewhere. Oops, I think I've been blabbering too much about how much I loved Teen Vogue. While I think Teen Vogue is certainly not perfect, it really is my favourite teen magazine out there.

What was your teen magazine years like? Which magazines did you like and buy?