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This month, Rylie Revercomb will talk about the trendy teen magazines that took over the 90s and early 2000s.
Tacky 2000s Magazines
Tacky 2000s Magazines
By Rylie Revercomb
By Rylie Revercomb
Some of the pastimes that teenagers and adults get excited about now are very different from what used to make them smile. Now, with the internet at our fingertips, it is easy not to find the joy in reading something on paper… something that’s real, something that is in your hands. Skip back a few decades, though, and the story is completely different. What do you mean there’s a scandal in the royal family?! That’s right. You could read about it if you subscribe to that trusty monthly magazine, though this might not seem like a big deal today. After all, anyone can just look that information up online. However, that is not how life used to be. Going out to the mailbox to find a subscription magazine used to be the highlight of the day. It was the only way to find out about the hot gossip, after all. Let's dive deep into one of the many popular trends of the '80s to 2000s… tacky teenage magazines.
Image by: Slate Magazine
These magazines started like any old newspaper did: some news popped up that needed to be shared. There’s a difference, however, between the neon-pink bold letters of teen magazines and the Times New Roman font of your grandpa’s favorite magazine. One deals in important news-- the other, in juicy gossip. You only get the hottest stuff from your teen magazine subscription. Because of that, mostly every tween or teen girl wanted to get her hands on one of these. To them, it was like the Holy Grail. Inside, each perfectly glossed magazine held information on fashion, crushes, boys, school, scandals and celebrities. You name it. Unlike any old newspaper, which most kids would complain about, these magazines seemingly only focused on what teens really wanted to see. Well, so it seems…
While the tackiness of these magazines made them popular, and a true statement of Y2K trends and culture, there is also more to them than meets the eye. In an article by The Washington Post, Julia Carpenter unearths some of the other subjects that these magazines were talking about. Carpenter writes that, for example, “In the early 2000s… Teen People was doing some really serious reporting on immigration and AIDS.” While most people only remember the magazines for their popularity and, Ooooh, here’s a pretty picture of a boy! that’s not all they were. At the heart of any teen magazine, or at least most, is true journalistic inspiration… which is most likely why these mags were so popular. The magazines gave teen girls what they wanted, but also threw in serious news here and there, as a way to introduce them to what true news and journalism looks like. IMAGE Magazine, a popular online magazine, states that “Teen magazines offer the first point of adult commentary, allowing young minds to become something of substance.” There you have it. Yes, the gossip is on the front page, quite literally, but there are also true journalistic stories just a few pages away from the fashion advice. Paper clickbait, so to speak, but in a more positive way.
Now the basics of what fills a teen magazine are out there: the gossip and the sometimes true news… but girls did more than just read these things. They were also interactive. Yes. Some pages encouraged readers to tear them out, to cut them, to draw on them, and to fill out tests. That is one of the reasons they were so addictive. Does My Crush Like Me Test? Any girl undergoing puberty is going to put at least a half hour into getting the exact answer to that question. Another fun thing to do, even if the pages don’t explicitly say you can cut them out, is to do so anyway. Many girls, especially in the '90s and 2000s, often made collage boards on their walls or slabs of corkboard with mostly magazine photos. The collages were made for different reasons. Some were used as inspiration for who they wanted to be, and others were just giant tributes to the maker's favorite singers and celebrity crushes. It’s why these magazines became so popular-- the interactiveness, the fun of it all.
Image by: Shop Look
There it is. Tacky magazines. Popular due to gossip, advice, some real-world events and, of course, the DIYs and quizzes that any of the interactive magazines contained. While it might not be true anymore, these pages used to mean the world to any tween or teen girl out there, and they still serve as a staple for the Y2K era even now. Tacky, trashy, fabulous. The best of any world.
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