To what extent should magazines be held responsible for the social ramifications of the representations they offer?

In this modern day teen girl magazines are still a very popular source of celebrity gossip and finding out how to be 'popular' or the most good looking girl you can be. Question is should the media and people behind these magazines be posing these ideas to young girls. It seems that magazines will promote anything to get their magazines off the shelves and into some young girls hands. Some girls that buy these magazines can be as young as a child below 13. This is surprising as they cover such adult idea's as sex and how to improve your body. For example when you see most covers of girls magazines these days you see the main image of a 'perfect' women, an image of beauty that most girls would aspire to be like. These image are almost always photoshop rendered, so this is not giving young minds a good idea of what true beauty is. Also not everyone will have the typical 'long fair hair' that you see in most of these images as everyones taste is different but is this to say it is wrong to want to look different. This image and the taglines that would accompany it give the reader the idea that 'if they buy this magazine they will learn the secrets to looking this good' which is very misleading. Once more these main images seem to always be smiling which suggests that they are 'so happy because they look this good' which would further incourage a young mind to purchase the magazine and uncover the secrets. This view of 'attractivness before anything else' is not the idea we would want to put into a younger womens mind. We should be encouraging younger girls to treasure things such as logic and natural beauty instead of trying to get them to purchase the latest make-up product or telling them '5 steps to a hotter body'.

The focus on boys in these magazines is disturbing, should girls as young as 12 be worrying about how good they are at kissing or boyfriends in general. Mostly in these magazines boys are put in a negative light, mentioning 'cheating' and producing the idea that girls are above boys in many ways. But also boys are shown as somethign that women aspire to have and something that you need to look good to get. This tells young girls that boys do not appreciate things such as being smart as much as they appreciate 'the perfect body' or 'the perfect hair'. Girls of such a young age should not be given these ideas by media magazines and should learn about relationships/sex in other moderate ways such as the education system or parents. Young girls of this day and age are too influential to be putting these ideas in their head, they should be concentrating more on their education than looking better than their best friend.

 In conculsion i believe that what these magazines are suggesting in some cases is wrong. The focus on external beauty should be toned down alot but not erradicated. They could focus alot more on traits of personality and the concequences of being a bad person. Also the focus on boys and sex is unnessasary at such a young age, a young audience does not need to be told about 'sexting' and stories about celebrities ex boyfriends as this could give them the wrong impression about boys for the future. Parents should not let their children purchase these magazines without knowing what social ramifications that these media products can have on some people.