i discovered this image from:

http://img1.bdbphotos.com/images/orig/8/b/8b4vfe255c4f8f45.jpg

The magazine that i was asked to access was a GIRL-FRIEND magazine which was released on April 2012. The actress/model they used was Lea Michele, to my insight i understand that that the magazine has used a well known actress however the way they have made Lea Michele is not nessary

The implications of representation that the media protray to the actual reality that is teenage girls is insanly out of proportion. To which Girls look up to these models they see in a certain magazine and  believing that they will never be good enough and up to this standard, making it a un realistic image to protray and inspire too be.

The media is producing thousand of magazines that are going global and  are under stating woman everyday making it impossible for woman to have any self respect when being caught in a image  I will look at Lea Michele as a example I will examine  all aspects of the front cover to what the media are portraying. Then I will also look into a few articles.

In the front cover of "girlfriend" magazine you will notice that Lea Michele is directed to pose in a sexual manner to try and attract the opposite sex, she is also posing in lingerie with a plain pink cardi over and i believe the purpose of this cardi is to ensure that not a huge amount is revealed to young 9-13 year old audience  however you do know what she is wearing underneath. It is pretty obvious to the viewer what lies beneath the cardigan.

You notice by the colour in the magazine that they are mostly pink tone in a way a light tone purple added in whites and a splash of black now and then, this to attract the age group audience for selling purposes, making it more based toward the girly girls in our society,  looking inside you notice that the editors have addressed articles such as for all the Reece Mastin fans  added  tour pictures to keep up to date with what a teenage boy of a generation is making of our life and capable of reaching his goals, they have used him because a major amount of his fans are of the age 9-13 years old this is for selling purposes again. another article that is protrayed in the magazine is ''how to have the birds and bees talk" how is this something that a 9 year old girl should be ready to read when the legal age to actually be sexually active is sixteen years old. This shows that the media is focusing young teenage girls  to grow up faster and maybe learn something that is hard to talk to their parents about in such way to them as getting a "head start", this shows to me that the media are forcing adulthood apon girls in a fast manner and they are making it harder for young girls to enjoy there childhood. You notice the amount of gossip that is protrayed in the book it beings to concerned how much time these young girls sending reader about someone elses life and judging them for some small mistake in their life they have done, the media understand that young teenage girls are obsessed with hearing about their favourite celebs and knowning where and what they are doing at all times, so you notice that the media have taking advantage of this.


Lea Michele is known from the teen show called 'Glee' to which this she is known to be a girly girly a girl who likes dressing up.Unfortunately the girlfriend magazine you see above does not show the true qualities Lea has portrayed in the past and before she was sucked into what the media was expecting to see.The qualities that are shown in this cover page are things such as: brown hair/olive white skin,brown eyes, no flaws, teeth have been whiten, eyes are shown to be photoshopped, curves are shown however she is insanly skinny anyway. There is also an indication of muscle tone indicating that she is perhaps a gym junkie also.  Lea Michele is doing a quite releaving pose which is showing men of the opposite sex that she is seen as  just a sex object. She is posing for the camera in lingerie and the fact that she has on a cardigan  is not losing respect in herself she may be confident of her own body but to pose in this certain manner for a 9-13 year old magazine is unnecessary. Her hair has also been styled in a sexual way making it look to the viewer that she is mature beyond her years, there is no sign of a pony tail or a french plait on the cover, indications that the viewer is made to believe that she is older than she actually is.

There is also the drop of the shoulder of the top, indicating what lies beneath the top. It is an image that should not be portrayed to its target audience of 9-13 year olds, its as stated above shows a woman well above there years sitting around in her underwear in a a provocative manner. The media is representing to girls of this age group that to be trendy and well liked such as in the program Glee that they need to have the perfect body and portray a sexual image well beyond the years, definitely not something that is appropriate for creating a stereotype for this age group of young teenage girls. In glee Lea portrays an innocent girl who strives for her goals which are aimed at the the music industry, and she is a member of the glee club ( a group of singers) to which they are in a way all the outcast that is shown at highschool and some jocks and cheerleaders have joined, it is a show that altogether breaks stereotyping and shows that different is good.  But the fact of the matter is the that sex sells and this image on the front cover of a magazine would have sold alot more copies for the magazine than what would have sold had the image of Lea in her turtle neck sweater undertaking her violin practice.

This representation to teenage girls is not good, it portrays among many other things that things outside of body image are important in the mind of teenage girls, that if you are good at music it is not simply enough and that there is a need to also have the right image to accompany that talent.  The reality is that most girls don't have the perfect figure they are not photoshoped to give themselves the perfect 10 body, if it is the 10 that the media are now looking at perhaps it is the size 8 a size well out of reach of many teenage girls. Most teenage girls are not proportionate in size, their breasts and bottom don't fall perfectly in line, they don't have flawless teeth and hair. Most girls don't hang out in their underwear. The effects of this representation on teenage girls merely puts pressure on teenage girls to be perfect and when they are not that they are not acceptable in society. This creates social values well beyond the cover the need for girls to think they need to do things such as teeth whitening, dieting, gym work to be accepted.

There are no models in the magazine that are disabled, however the magazine covers different ethnic groups with the same notion that the acceptable image of a different ethnic race is of a thin, sexually provocative young teenage girl. There are many celebrities offered throughout the magazine, some of which have negative images if the teenage girls were to dig deeper. Lindsay Lohan is shown as an attractive role model however if the reader were to do further research into Lindsay they would see that she has recently been released from jail and is now taking part of a drug rehab program. The magazine portrays as being normal girls dressed well beyond their years, in dresses more suitable for adults, there is no sign of teenage girls in converses and many are in heels rather than flat shoes.

In many cases you may notice that in some magazines the prices for some of the products are out of peoples/families budgets however you do notice the media do try and accommodate  for this by having items under $20 dollars and making sure that you dont have to have the best stuff to look prefect but to this they are making us believe that the best is everything and why should we settle for second best?

As you can see below is a picture of a young girl that wishes she had blonde hair, I believe that she is a barbie doll type of person and in her young brain she believes barbie is the only image that is known to be prefect the only image that friends and young boys will accept, she is asking to have the same hair colour as barbie and to this she may not be referring to barbie but barbie is a children's doll  and will use her as an example. To this day many 'older woman' still want to look like barbie, having the tanned skin tone, with the light blonde hair and big breast and slim figure,  however this is just the beginning for this young girl she is looking at the media and seeing many girls with blonde hair and thinking thats what i need to do to be prefect, thats what i need to, thats my goal im going to achieve it, but what she does not know that blonde girls fall into the stereotype known as "dumb and ditzy blondes.

i found this image on goggle images.
under girl stereotyping.

To this day the media are still playing a huge part in the dramatic changes of our teenage girls  to the choices they are making everyday because of the low self esteem and this is caused by being forced to look at super skinny unrealistic models posing to sell a product. All media are wanting is to sell their product and to get their name out there and girls do not have any idea of what prefect actually is and what they are meant to do, and they don't know how to act and they seem to all do the same thing and in the end they follow one another and have no individual personality in a case a form of sheeps.
How do we stop this ? how do you stop the media portraying woman as prefect and making average size woman uncomfortable, how do we stop girls from not wanting to be different and to want goals and inspire to be something that is not normal. To be honest we cant, we just have to try and stop ourselfs from believing where not good enough and believe that we don't have to listen to someone that gets paid as a job to tell teenagers what to buy.