Reviews For Seventeen Magazine

i first started reading seventeen when i was about eight or nine, (yeah i know, i was young, but it was my sister's subscription) and to be honest it was a lot better then, but seventeen still provides good articles and stories. one thing i disapprove of about this magazine is the fashion articles. the things they have their poor models wear are so outrageous that no one would dare wear them in public and the models themselves are sooo skinny! it's practically torture to look through the photo shoots. also, other magazines such as cosmogirl! and ellegirl try to focus on being yourself and bringing out your best features while seventeen has a tendancy to have articles to re-invent yourself or whatever. they have also been getting stingy with the overall length of the magazine. they used to be twice as big! on a good note, they do have very good beauty advice. that goes for makeup and what-not. but i guess if you decide you don't like it, the magazine does serve as a very good resource for collages!

Seventeen is an okay magazine. The real-life stories get on my nerves because they have nothing to do with issues many girls face. And also, I don't read stupid articles in Seventeen like "How to get a boyfriend in 10 days". The FASHION? Don't even get me started. The fashion is horrendously horrible. Atoosa has no fashion sense at ALL. They show all this mainstream, ugly ABERCROMBIE (yuck) crap. If you want real fashion that celebrities and models wear, get Teen Vogue. Seventeen is kind of addicting though with the make-up tips, losing weight things and uhhh...yeahhh.
If you're going to give this review a bad rating because I dissed ABERCROMBIE, go ahead. I'll know that you're an Abercrombie worshipper who has no style or fashion sense.
Overall, Seventeen is okay for the makeup tips and beauty tips and how to look good(NOT including fashion) and the articles are pretty fun to read.

I started reading this when I was about 12, and I stopped when I was about 15. So, Seventeen would not be an accurate title for this magazine. I'm 17 now and I read JANE and NYLON. I guess for the average teenager it's okay, but I just got rather bored with it. It's the same thing over and over again, really. I suppose I just read magazines that are slightly above my age group. I would recommend it to young teens, though, then graduate to JANE or something. Jane is a good stepping stone.

This magazine is great if you want some light reading about boys,makeup,boys,clothes,sex, or boys. If you want a magazine truly worth your while, try Ellegirl or Teenvogue. If you are a preteen of ages about 11-12, DO NOT subscribe! This magazine is, indeed, for people that are around Seventeen years old, and unless you want to know about a lot of stuff you won't need to know until your married, stay away. But it is better than YM. But still, if you are a preteen try J14 or M!!

I don't know if this is a magazine or a monthly glossy photo trip to the mall? Between all the ads for Sketchers, Tommy, Opi, Candies, Hard Candy, etc. and all the smutty articles I feel like I spent two hours at the mall food court listening in on private conversations of girls I wouldn't want my daughters associating with. I'm truly amazed that the sales staff refrained from selling advertising space to Victoria's Secret!!

All I do know, if this is seventeen, I'm locking the door and never letting my 11 year old out of the house!!

What kills me is where I had the chance to catch up on one of my old favorite magazines - you guessed it, my OB's office. Having to go once a month for nine months gives you lots of free time to read and look at magazines. I guess they also need to cater to all those pregnant teens who also have to wait to see the doctor - because after giving birth in February, you may want to slim down and see what you can wear to your junior prom.

I read Seventeen when I was a teenager, and I don't ever remember it being like this. Maybe Alzheimer's has set in and maybe it's some 20 years later - but YIKES, I don't think I want my daughter reading this when she gets to be old enough.

From a mom's stand point I hope she's never "old enough" at 16 to need the type of "advice" these articles dish out - this is more like Cosmo for teenagers. I honestly have trouble believing this magazine caters to the majority of teen girls and not the minority - but maybe I'm still naive. Oh Lord I hope not.

In flipping through the pages and reading the articles I saw teens in belly shits, teens with tattoos and naval piercing, articles about sex and protection and which is best for you to use.

HOW ABOUT ARTICLES ABOUT SAYING NO and saving your virtue? How about articles about why teen girls have sex - lack of a father, moms who sleep around, looking for love and attention, shall I continue. How about articles that don't glamorize the first time and ones that tell you how the boy will dump you as soon as he gets it and will eagerly call you easy to all his friends.

How about pictures of clean cut nice girls who didn't go to the Tammy Faye school of makeup application? How about pictures of 15 year olds who don't dress like hookers, showing more skin than they should at that age?

How about articles that encourage girls to find themselves and set goals and understand that having a boyfriend at 15 isn't the most important thing. How about articles that stress girls shouldn't be afraid to speak up and look smart, especially in areas like math and science class? How about articles that encourage girls to become strong independent women who don't need to dress and look like arm candy for some guy?

This magazine really frightens me as to what lays ahead for me in the next few years to come. I only hope I have laid the groundwork so my daughters will never become the girls of Seventeen magazine.



Recommended:
No

Seventeen magazine is a good and bad magazine. This is a great magazine if you love ads. But I don't, in fact, I despise them. Most of the magazine is ads for make-up and clothes.

The Good..

1) Glossy cover. It's great if you want to decorate your room with pictures of your favorite stars.

2) Trama-rama. These embarrassing moments all have a theme, most of them are funny, and I like to laugh.

3) Favorite Article. In the September 1999 issue (with David Boreanaz and Charisma Carpenter on the cover) I enjoyed Closet Cases. How to clean your closet, I needed that. My closet used to be a total wreck, now it's neat.

The Bad..

1) All the ads! I'm not just talking about the subscription cards, I'm talking about ads for Cover Girl, Gap, Clinique Happy, Lancome, Tommy Jeans, Candie's Jeans, Revlon, and more. That was only the first few pages! The table of contents starts on page 33, does that say something?

2) Ben's Life. A soap-opera story, that's supposed to have drama. It doesn't. I don't even know why it's in this magazine.

3)The Your Room article. In the issue I'm looking at, it features some girl who is obsessed with the X-Files. Interesting? I think not. I could really care less what a sixteen year old girl's room looks like.

4)Star Style, usually at the end of the magazine. This issue featuring Neve Campbell, who (I think) doesn't have any style at all. Besides the fact that this magazine shows clothes overpriced and similar to hers, aren't teenagers supposed to have originality? Uniqueness.

The Ugly

This magazine has more cons than pros. I would not recommend this magazine because it features thin girls. It sounds stupid, but girls want to be models, actresses, singers. They see all the people in Hollywood, in magazines that are thin. They want to be thin! I haven't seen a normal girl in any issue of Seventeen. Also, it is priced more than other magazines, too. The rich girl would buy all the clothes featured in this magazine, while the poor girl would beg her mom to go to the library to borrow a copy of this magazine.

Is this a good magazine? No. COSMOgirl! is better and has a greater content than this magazine.


Recommended:
No

Like all girls my age, I used to buy Seventeen magazines just to see some of the cool fashion and the trauma stories. However, I quickly grew out of that fad. The models depicted in the advertisements are grossly unlike normal teen girls this age. Most girls who read the magazine are younger than 17 anyway, and those who are 17 do not dress or even act like the magazine suggests.

Most of the pages of the recent Seventeen magazine are splattered with makeup and name brand advertisements followed up by occasional celebrity gossip and inane quizzes. Sure, taking these quizzes and reading up on other fashion may be fun, but it's pointless dribble to pass the time.

The producers of the magazine expect regular teens to go out and buy those products in order to follow their "beauty tips" for a better look costing over what the average allowance is nowadays. I think that the money Seventeen wants girls to spend on their looks is very inappropriate.

The only good things about the magazine are the Question and Answer by readers to the writers of the magazine and maybe the horoscopes if you believe in that stuff. The content of the magazine is mind-numbing, but if you've got a lot of time on your hands, it wouldn't hurt to flip through this magazine.

Many other magazines of this type such as teen people, YM, and Teen offer about the same content. I suggest that teens pick up a better magazine that has a better sense of reality and the real world.


Recommended:
Yes

I began reading Seventeen when I was thirteen. I have a feeling that the majority of their readers are a few years younger than the seventeen year-olds I assume they're aiming at. That's probably because by the time these girls hit fifteen and sixteen, they realize just how superficial and silly teen magazines are.

Seventeen is the best magazine teenagers have available to them. YM, Teen, and Jump, some of the other publications that market to this age group, are more like the stereotypical teen mag, and tell you how to snag your man in eight easy steps. The models are mostly blond, spacy-looking, and twig-like. In Seventeen's favor I can say that it is trying more and more to vary the kinds of models it features. Also, it crams a lot of information onto each page, which gives you more bang for your buck. The layout is well done, and the font choices are acceptable. The stories and articles, although now (in my old age) seem somewhat trite, used to amuse me enough for me to renew my subscription a few times. I managed to overlook the drawn-out fashion sections, which picture photo-shoots with models and actresses wearing clothing no one would ever be caught dead in. I even ignored the fact that every quiz was exactly the same and always came out wrong.

What bothers me about Seventeen is that its editing staff is so fickle. On one page they'll mention how adorable the Backstreet Boys are, and a couple pages later they'll have a little blurb complaining about boy bands..."Ok, we've had enough, already!" The features on the cool-o-meter switch from the coolest to the least cool from month to month. I understand that they're just trying to report the trends, but what message are they sending to impressionable young women? That it's all right to follow the crowd, or even worse, every crowd at the same time?

Another thing I can't stand: they edit everything, from letters to the editor to trauma raumas, so that they are written in fluent Seventeen (or should I say Clueless?) lingo. They insist upon inserting words like "hottie" into every other sentence. No one actually speaks like that. Why don't they let the contributors' voices shine through? Is it really such a bad thing to be yourself?

Seventeen, unfortunately, is the best the media has to offer to teen girls. It does advocate being an individual, standing up for yourself, and the fact that "smart is sexy." Whether or not those same messages are sent when the editors aren't making it a point to send them is questionable. Reading in between the lines (never a good idea in fashion magazines) leads me to believe that the editors themselves don't believe looks matter less than personality and brains. They probably grew up reading their generation's equivalent to the trashy teen magazines we now have available to us.


Recommended:
No

The only reason Seventeen has lasted this long is because buying a Seventeen Magazine is more of a tradition or a ritual that girls go through during their time to mature and develop. In a way, it makes us feel more of a woman and superior.

However, trust me in this- once you buy a magazine, you will realize that this "tradition" is more about hype and fluff. The writers and editors of the magazine write their articles in a patronizing way towards teenagers. I find it very offensive that they think teens' highest priorities are boys and clothes, when many of us have more important things to concentrate on.

I found one of Seventeen's articles very offensive. I do not recall its name, but it is something like "the ten best tips on how to snag your crush". I think that the writers are giving young girls the wrong idea on what a woman's role is in our society.

However, I realize that Seventeen is more of a entertainment magazine than a breaking news magazine. In fact the magazine is good for its beauty tips and star information. Although I think that they replay this information through several magazines and do not give new tips very often.

Seventeen has improved, but gradually. I think its most important and helpful articles are from its College Corner. This section often has informative facts and news about colleges and admission.

Seventeen is very similar to other "teen magazines" like Teen People, YM, and TEEN. I do not really recommend any of these magazines, and after the second or even first issue, you will probably feel as I do.


Recommended:
No

I used to buy Seventeen a lot..I was caught up on the words on the cover telling me they had 30 ways to make my hair beautiful or 40 ways to get a boyfriend. But I got to thinking about why these magazines sell. Not just Seventeen, but most teen magazines as well as a lot of women's magazines. Magazines like these feed on women's insecurities by telling them they have some quick fix to all their problems. Low self esteem is what drives most girls to buy Seventeen and other magazines of its type. We might live in an imperfect generation, but lets not live where '30 ways to better hair' is the definition of our generation.


Recommended:
No