MISCmedia by Clark Humphrey » Blog Archive SHE WAS JUSTâ€¦ YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN

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November 23rd, 2009 by Clark Humphrey

Thanks to ex-Rocket boss Robert Newman, I’ve found a Web page that collectsÂ every Seventeen magazine cover from the first issue in 1944 through 1968, plus a few select covers from subsequent years up to 1985.

Things to ponder about these images:

How the hell did then-Philadelphia Inquirer publisher (and future TV Guide founder) Walter Annenberg corral the resources and the staff, let alone the paper stock, to start Seventeen during the latter months of WWII?
Long before Mad Men, it’s been popular among the self-proclaimed hip to scoff at media/advertising images of women in the ’40s and ’50s. But these covers portray teenage girls with taste and dignity. These are personas of girls striding proudly into womanhood. Yeah, they’re impeccably dressed in the fashion industry’s latest odes to materialism, but (even into the Twiggy era) they’re shown as arbiters of fine aesthetics, as freshly-minted adults ready to handle the adult world’s burdens. The Seventeen Girl, back then, was no ditsy mall rat, but a mature and capable young lady to whom the mag’s younger “tween” readers could aspire. (Compare and contrast to this past September’s cover, with blurbs promising “Perfect Hair Every Day!” and “Flat Abs!” and teasing the shocker-story “My Coach Secretly Filmed Me Naked!”)

One Response

Ed Whitson writes:
November 23rd, 200910:36 amat

I call bullshit! Who are these “self-proclaimed hip” you speak of? Or, like ‘frat boys,’ ‘yuppies,’ and ‘boomers,’ (and other terms used on MISC to indicate ‘I don’t like that person’), is this another straw-man you’ve constructed to make it seem like you’re engaged in some sort of arguement? I mean, really — “self-proclaimed hip?” Is this really a topic of conversation for anyone: “You know, Buffy, I scoff at media images from 50, 60 years. They seem so undignified.”