Seventeen is a general service magazine for young women emphasizing fashion, beauty and lifestyle information, including health, food, careers, relationships, sports and entertainment.
The perky authority on all things girl since 1944, Seventeen magazine still provides advice and encouragement to masses of young misses. Although the primary focus is fashion and famous folk, this teen zine is not mere eye candy. Mixed among the cutting-edge styles (and multitudinous ads) you'll find short but plentiful articles. Topics range in import: fluff stuff like "What Will You Wear Back to School?" and "The Ultimate Ponytail Guide" is balanced by heavier fodder, such as "No One Believes I Was Raped" and pieces on having a gay sibling and the dangers of binge drinking. Skewed largely toward a Caucasian teen audience, the magazine's coverage of beauty and relationship conundrums does offer nods to young women of color. The tone is resolutely positive, and amid all the talk of must-have hairdos and hottie alerts, the message is girl power in its most nonthreatening guise. --Brangien Davis

Customer Rating:
Summary: maybe ok for 17 and up, but not for young teens
Comment: Much of the content is inappropriate for young and mid teens. Just look at the cover stories - this month has one on "hot abs" and "the perfect kiss". Not terrible, but not really appropriate for the younger teens who often read it. Too much emphasis on fashion, make-up, and materialism.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Seventeen magazine
Comment: Great magazine for teens! It's got a lot of good advise on what make-up to buy. Also, it has great healthy recipes, easy for teens to make. My daughter made a great veggie wrap. It was delicious.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: For Fashion
Comment: There's a lot of coupons and news for free stuff like lipstick and clothes in this magazine.

Cute fashion taste.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: What supposedly innocent, teen girl ought to know about French Kissing, Getting Wet Down There, Sex Advice & Defeatism Ideology?
Comment: Seventeen magazine looks harmless, right? Each cover features seemingly innocuous, young women-starlets in excessive makeup and unhealthy and insecure obsession with appearance, right? WRONG!!!! Beneath Seventeen's brittle veneer of frivolous, teen idols lies a gritty underbelly of wrong-headed advice which misleads impressionable, female teens into a world of lasciviousness, hardness, and disrespectability. Seventeen's pages contain ANYTHING BUT the old proverb of "sugar and spice and everything nice!!!!"

The foundation of my shock at the content of Seventeen lies exclusively at the departments and scathingly questionable articles the editors of Seventeen include. I base my implication against Seventeen on its Dec. 07/Dec. 08 issue and specifically a few, choice articles therein, which are so beyond the pale, no teenage girl ought to be getting indoctrinated by the social engineers at Seventeen.

In the discomforting sex Q & A, misleading "advice" is skewed by lib politics of so-called "experts" who are dispensing it. One of the experts of said, infamous article is Laura Berman; this tart was recently on the O'Reilly Factor unabashedly espousing a plan to force taxpayers to pay for condoms for college-kids!!!! One of the damaging pieces of "advice" manufactured by Berman relates to--SURPRISE, SURPRISE!--when to have sex. Berman gives "advice" to young girls who are barely 18, who write in with panging questions relating to all-important issues of when to put out--which presumably trump all other considerations in a girl's life, considerations like family, friends, education, careers, character-building, etc.. One girl wrote asking about the difference between determining if she's orgasming or merely feeling infatuated by some guy, pertaining to when to put out.

The affront was committed by Berman's response which described the difference between orgasm (getting wet "down there") and mere infatuation (stalking/doodling heart drawings around pictures of your guy). Berman wrote that teen girls should put out when they're comfortable. That morally relativistic answer's so hazardous for a few reasons. Its subjectivity leaves everything open to interpretation: girls may only think they're comfortable with putting out at only 14/15/16, but because of the decision-making process being hampered at that age, live to regret it once they've done so. Afterwards, they may feel slu*ty, impacting all personal relationships from then on!!!!

Berman refuses to give spiritually/psychologically healthy advice, such as to wait for marriage or at least true love. Certainly, teen girls ought to focus on more important matters in their formative years than when to lose virginity. Oh, I don't know...things like schoolwork, community service, getting into good colleges, building true friendships, having pajama parties, and writing in their diaries or something.

This section of Seventeen is also gross because it subverts parental rights relating to parents teaching their kids about sex and when to have it. Seventeen provides a way for rebellious teens to directly circumvent parental influence in making decisions about sex. What non-lib parent would want their underage, teenage daughter to put out when she's "comfortable" as defined by her judgment alone????

My next dissatisfaction skewers the frivolous section giving teen girls tips on how to kiss better! The overarching, obsessed focus with sexualizing teenage girls in our culture is out of control!!!! What in the hell ever happened to filling the heads of girls with more innocent, 50s-values components, things like going on a tightly chaperoned date, knitting or sowing, reading or other intellectual activities, and making pretty dresses?

This section on tips for kissing is infested with more lewdness than parents would be comfortable with in regards to advice for teen girls. Some pieces of advice include using YOUR TONGUE by flirtatiously sliding it into a guy's mouth during an open kiss. Not content with this lust, Seventeen's writers also advise girls to practice French kissing by practicing on your hand. Seriously! This lame cliché for geeks is apparently endorsed by Seventeen's editors as they advise teen girls to make a fist and practice kissing the outline formed by the crook of the pointer finger and thumb, since this apparently is a good stand-in for lips!!!!

Topping off the plan to convert impressionable teens to the Dark Side of Liberalism is ideological writing by Alice Walker, extolling rejection towards the Terror War and Iraq!!!! Feminist Walker insinuates the US military kills Iraqis, yet then shrewdly pretends to care for said soldiers by urging her impressionable, teen audience to will that they return home as soon as possible!!!! This has always been the underhanded tactic of intellectually dishonest libs: curse the US military, but then still reserve pretense for their well-being.

I'll address the parents now. I ORDER you to do everything to prohibit buying Seventeen for your teen daughter because of the social engineering tract this ideological, culturally decayed magazine is on. As a parent, you love your teen daughter and want her to have a productive life where she'll be respected, right? She can't do this when Seventeen's editors indoctrinate her to have sex at her own discretion before marriage, practice French kissing, and oppose the War on Terror.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Seventeen is Amazing!
Comment: This magazine is still amazing! I started reading a couple years ago when I was about 13 and I loved this magazine. I suscribe to Seventeen and CosmoGirl! and Seventeen is the magazine I would definitely recommend. The issues have sections about fashion, which help readers find clothes that help flatter their body type WITHOUT showing everything. There are also more serious sections, like the Health section that gives readers advice on how to eat right. There is also section that helps readers learn about sex. Yes, sex. But before cautious parents say no to this magazine, you should know the truth. These articles give readers stories about other readers' experiences, information about birth control, the truth about std's, and answers readers' questions. Now, this may sound like Seventeen is encouraging sexual activities, but I am 16 and I think that this magazine is answering questions that may be difficult for readers to ask an adult. In this last issue, there was an article talking about different viewpoints of the war in Iraq, which is to get readers thinking about more than just fashion and makeup. They have pretty good celebrities on the cover as well. The February issue, I believe, had Vanessa Hudgens on the cover. While some parents may disprove of Vanessa, the interview with her actually made me understand what she went through. I think this is a fantastic magazine. I plan on suscribing to it until I'm 30! :)

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