Because of the developmental appropriateness of teen magazines,their influence on identity development has the potential to be great.However,opponents of the magazine argue that the identities illustrated between the pages-girlfriend,model,student,woman,sexual being-are often considered insignificant,weak,or even degrading.This weakness is an illusion founded on a history marked by thelimited documentation of the participation of women in so-called relevant historical activity.The identity historically accepted by women-including“the feminine virtues of passive goodness,personal service to others,and devotion to the domestic sphere”Ballaster Ros,Beetham Margaret,Frazer Elizabeth,and Hebron Sandra,“A Critical Analysis of Women's Magazines,”In Turning It on,A Reader in Women and Media,edited by H.Baehr and A.Gray,p.91,New York:Arnold,1996.has been limited not just by a conspiracy of patriarchy but by every woman who blindly accepts the supposed weakness associated with this identity.By escaping the idea of the female as not-male and associating femaleness with“pleasure and attractiveness”Mayer,Elizabeth Lloyd,“Erik H.Erikson on Bodies,Gender,and Development,”In Ideas and Identities:The Life and Work of Erik Erikson,edited by R.S.Wallerstein and L.Goldberger,p.95,Madison,Conn.:International Universities Press,1998.,as young girls did in an iteration of Erikson's study,a uniquely feminine power may be cultivated.Furthermore,perhaps the perception of weakness or insignificant success lies in the frame we draw around women's accomplishments and identities.The female space women create and celebrate is markedly different from the male power symbol and cannot be evaluated in the same way.Recognizing the strength in both models of power and identity may be the first step toward a goal of parity and a loosening of societal restraints binding women's identities.
While some teen magazines may be dismissed as“fluff”by teachers and librarians,researchers examining the practice of literacy remark on the agency associated with reading popular texts.Meredith Cherland,in an examination of girls'reading practices in a Canadian elementary and junior high school,encourages us to view the popular reading of teenage girls outside of school assignments as recursive.Cherland,drawing from Giroux,writes that girls'popular reading goes against the“hidden curriculum”present in many schools that would equate“the male experience...with human experience...literature(assigned in the school Cherland observed)...served,on the one hand,to validate only man's experience of the world and,on the other hand,to position female people as outsiders”Cherland,Meredith Rogers,Private Practices:Girls Reading Fiction and Constructing Identity,P.125,Bristol,Pa.:Taylor&Francis,1994.The girls Cherland observed turned to what some many consider“gendered”readings(including the Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High series)to supplement the literature offered in school.This practice turn toward the reading of scholastically antithetical texts is labeled the“literate underlife”by Finders.Finders,Margaret J.,Just Girls:Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High,New York:Teachers College Press,1997.Finders writes of the agency of girls who read against the masculine grain of assigned fiction and who practice literacy in subversive ways by writing graffiti,passing and reading notes,and reading adolescent magazines and popular fiction:“Literate underlife created opportunities to disrupt the official,to document a refusal to embrace the obligations of the institution”.Finders,Margaret J.,Just Girls:Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High,p.118,New York:Teachers College Press,1997.Thus,the action of reading in opposition to teacher-prescribed norms becomes,in the eyes of Cherland and Finders,an act of rebellion.
