Girl’s Life is a popular magazine aimed for young girls probably in middle school and early high school. The magazine itself claims to be “covering the topics that are important to adolescent girls ages ten and up.” While it’s name is based on the popular Boy’s Life, which started in 1911, Girl’s Life has different creators and constructs content that involves topics such as hair, fashion, style, peer pressure, confidence and of course, relationships. While at first the magazine looks to be seemingly innocent with the material, but taking a longer look, the magazine can reveal the position in which young females are placed into. Many of the headlines and articles in Girl’s Life revolves around physical appearance and beauty. Although this may help some girls pick out hairstyles and beauty products, it also can promote negative atmosphere of an appearance centered world and also feelings of insecurity. Headlines on this particular cover include, “83 Pretty Party Looks,” “Sleigh your beauty game,” “Silly things to *stop* saying” and “Secret Crush Signs.”
This magazine begs the question of how do we view young females and how much do we think that they are worth in this world? Despite the magazine being a piece of entertainment, Girl’s Life, places a lot of emphasis on physical beauty. What are the expectations that we have for females and what do we expect them to value at tween ages? The articles in these magazines reinforce typical female stereotypes and give the mentality that beauty and male attention are important goals to work for.
I think this concept of gender stereotypes is a great one for your civic artifact and should be targeted. You could go into the different parts of the magazine and write about different facets of gender stereotyping.
I would like to see more analysis of this particular cover. How do the headlines reinforce the idea that young girls need to do x thing to feel pretty or to be accepted. I think this is a great artifact though, and I would be interested to see if any young girl magazine promotes healthy body image.
I think this was a really interesting topic to cover, especially us being young adults, looking at the way girls even younger than us are viewing themselves these days is scary…
I believe you should add more content about the magazine when doing this artifact. I do agree although that the gender stereotypes should be more informed more for the public. especially if it targets and deals with younger audiences. I think it is a great concept that you should pursue.