Sunday, November 01, 2009

Teen Vogue

Oh my suffering Christ alive! Just what the world needs. Teen Vogue.

As proof that the devil is a real person and probably owns a publishing house, Vogue is pretty good evidence. If you had to sell the idea of Vogue to a Vogueless world then you could either make your pitch that you’d be launching a glossy, classy magazine featuring fashion in order to make the world a better, more stylish place and that hey, women are interested in handbags and shit right? Or, you could pitch that in a world full of image conscious and neurotic zombies that can’t think for themselves and will pay to read something that makes them feel like a fat failure and people would STILL invest.

But Vogue for kids? What the hell? I thought that teenage girls already bought Vogue, how else do they become dysfunctional and have eating disorders? Apparently though there’s money to be made from explicitly exploiting teens. It’s like grooming, but via the medium of the glossy mag.

Teen Vogue is essentially like weaponising anorexia.

But, you know, good luck with that, because I think teen girls have moved on from being impressed by photographs of other teen girls wearing scarfs and being informed that mittens are going to be big this winter. Is this really how teenage girls get their information these days, from a magazine? Certainly when I was a teenage boy they appeared to get their information like some sort of hive consciousness, by gathering in gaggles and chattering just below the range of human hearing, then all laughing at once.

These days I imagine that this has been replaced by texting and social networking, or hanging around bus stops drinking Merrydown cider.

Just what is the point of vogue anyway? To tell you what to wear, right? Okay, so somebody at Vogue thought that they’d be able to tell teens, well, anything? I tell you what, why don’t you have the next issue with a huge gatefold centrefold that has ‘clean up your room’ written on it, see just how much influence you have over the mind of the average teen. Unless your magazine is delivered in text form during the ad breaks for some dreadful ITV talent show, you’ve got no chance.

What are teen girls wearing? Leggings and Ugg boots. Always.

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