On the shelves of your newsagent or supermarket are plenty of pink magazine front covers aiming to catch the eye of young girls.
They are mostly covered with brand names such as Disney, Barbie and Bratz and littered with the names of celebrity teens. There is free plastic jewellery, sparkly purses and eye shadow attached to their front covers beneath glamorous looking girls with swooshy hairstyles and shimmery blusher. Barbie and Go Girl! magazines are both aimed at girls as young as seven, yet they claim to offer ‘fashion and beauty tips’ as a key part of their content.
Cause for concern
Anyone at all concerned with the early sexualisation of pre-teen girls will be worried by how early girls are being targeted with this sort of content, even if the pages are generally filled with letters about pets and friendship. Interestingly, it is the BBC who is responsible for the bulk of this output. BBC Magazines is the biggest publisher of magazines for the pre-teen market in the UK. It is through their collaboration with Disney, Hit Entertainment and Ragdoll that we have so many branded magazines from TV and film.
