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

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

My five examples of teenage girl-orientated magazines are Cosmo Girl, Bliss, More, OK and TeenGirl. They are all linked into the same genre, discussing fashion, young relationships, gossip and other teenage topics.

Most of these appear slightly more young adult-orientated whereas others sway more towards the 9-13 region. The most obvious upon apparent of the younger magazines is TeenGirl, which shows pictures of girls who look to still be at school age and dominant colours are things like lilac and calm purples and pinks, which stereotypically centre more around younger girls, before adolescence. Magazines such as Bliss and More are more attracted to young adults as they centre around the fashion genre, and take adult life more seriously as far as relationships and fashion are concerned.

The front cover of More (example left), for instance, is often unable to present a clear masthead as the other contents of the cover are barraged on, a la scrapbook. This however is not a negative factor, as it is the trademark style of a female fashion magazine and how readers would expect to interpret it anyway - moreover, magazines of this genre which do not sport these conventions all stuffed into one A4 page are considered to be too bare and plain. Main features of these magazines do not mean to be inappropriate but can at times be so, as shown statistically below.

Every leading piece of any industry, for example female-orientated magazines in the creative media industry, will have its controversies. Government consumers such as Watchdog value a handful of magazines under this genre to be too explicit for its average age of readers. An example taken from an article of The Telegraph insists that these magazines are 'sexualising' younger readers, and that Sugar magazine's shirtless pictures and sex-centred competitions and articles are encouraging the sexual minds of children aged as lowly as just eleven. Furthermore, Bliss magazine (average reader age of 15) advertises these similar kinds of sex-orientated articles and images that could potentially be deemed a breach of the deal with their industries. A given example of this according to these consumers is a picture of male underwear model Justin Gaston, stood without clothes on with his private parts censored by just a panel. These can encourage derogatory terms and potentially also unprepared premature sex lives among children in early adolescence.

However, despite claims by these government consumers, where I see where they are coming from, I do see a sense of over-protection and I think that decreased age engagement in sexual acts and knowledge and involvement in derogatory phrases is more down to the current environment of teenage socialisation and has little link to the magazine industry. All media goes by similar classifications such as the BBFC and they are rather on the more strict side and are often disobeyed and this is where the consumer's claims stem from, therefore I do not see any requirement to hastily censor all slightly unsuitable qualities from magazines from children from eleven plus, as long as they do not exceed obvious unwritten guidelines.