Early Noughties teen mag ridiculousness

It was Zoey Fools Around, but there was one called Jake Finds Out. I remember being a bit envious of Claire, because she had a kind of landing on her roof area called a Widow's Walk. I wanted one!

About Catch magazine:

I always just assumed an office job would be exciting and grown up from reading this magazine. No-one was ever a health professional working shifts or like you said, a graduate in any profession.

The ‘real life jobs’ features I can remember covered:

1. A girl who worked for Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh. Was she doing anything exciting? No. “Dealing with the post” and having nights out with colleagues. I get that some people choose that type of career but couldn’t they have told us about other jobs in banking?

1. A girl who was a dental nurse. Not a dentist, or studying to be a dentist, or anything.

1. A model. Those magazines were obsessed with telling you how to become a model. Not a ‘top’ model but the type of model who did fashion spreads in Jackie. They would often have features where people who wanted to model were assessed by industry professionals. I remember one such feature very clearly...

...one girl had done a ‘modelling course’ (they were quite prevalent in the 80s and were usually taught by a chancer showing you how to pluck your eyebrows and drink hot water with lemon etc. My sister did one and said it was a right rip off) and wanted to model professionally. The industry professionals were pretty cruel for a teen magazine. One bloke said, “No, I don’t think so, her features are too thick and heavy for modelling”.

Of a different girl, he said, “her thighs could do with some improvement but if she sorts those out she’d be ok for shows”.

Strong stuff for a magazine read by insecure teenagers!

Fools, not Tools!

@Cheeseandlobster I remember chenille jumpers! My sister and I had some friends round once, about 1998ish; one wearing a chenille jumper.
My mum was like "that's a nice jumper."

" thanks. It's chenille! "

Male friend: "is it? Mine's just called Fred!"

Diary of a Crush though...

I do remember loving my free sample of vanilla kisses Impulse with Sugar, and free silver flip flops and Diary of A Crush from J17. My older sister for the Mizz addition with the free Zoey Tools Around book, which she lent to me. I ended up reading the whole series in the end! IIRC, there were about 20 books in it.

Oh my god yes! Malcolm/Cassius. He had that ‘Athena poster’ look going on. He was my ideal man when I was about 14.

I remember being heartbroken at the pictures of sliced up lipstick and smashed up eye shadow, it seemed such a waste when I couldn’t afford it.

Very much this. It was lazy journalism actually: every single beauty feature would have the same chopped up lipstick and bashed eyeshadow.

And every magazine, every summer, would have a feature called, “pack it in”, telling you how to pack your suitcase. With many sarongs, as I recall. And ubiquitous Body Shop ‘hair salad’.

And the £30 hair accessories from Johnny Loves Rosie. That would have taken me about a year to save up for.

This too. Even when I was in my twenties, earning a decent salary and reading Minx (RIP) I would have balked at paying £30 for a hair flower or £25 for a hair chopstick or whatever. I can’t imagine how teen magazine fashion editors ever thought it would be a realistic aspiration for girls of 16 and under. I assume that the magazine was being paid to feature the stuff.

Wasn't malcolm also called cassius? And didn't he present a programme with Denise v outen for a bit?

Interesting people thinking j17 et al pushed them into sex. For me, I held on to the sex when you love them thing, which led me to staying with a pretty dull boyfriend cos I'd decided (after 6 weeks) that I loved him, so I could justify having sex with him. I'd have enjoyed those years much more if I'd played the field more.

I remember the frosted pink lip gloss on the front of one issue of shout. I'm the make-up tips page there was a girl called Antonia who was a reader. Apparently if you had skin as fab as Antonia's all you needed was a smudge of frosted ink lip gloss and you were good to go. TOP TIP you could also increase your chances of being noticed by a boy if you smeared a bit on your eyelids. I looked like a fucking heroine addict. I wanted to be Antonia.

Yes! Everything posted here is so true. I always just assumed an office job would be exciting and grown up from reading this magazine. No-one was ever a health professional working shifts or like you said, a graduate in any profession.

I think the magazine was aimed at early twenties but in reality it was probably read by 15 - 16 year olds. I know I was definitely that age when I read it.

The velour dresses were so true. The fashion spreads were so predictable. Velour dresses for Christmas, chenile jumpers for the new year, then spring florals, bikinis in the summer and I forget what autumn was.

Despite all this I lapped it all up and I was sad when it disappeared

We watched totp last night.
"Look ds, this was the kind of stuff we were listening to/ wearing in the 90s."
Tween ds:"oh. Well done."

Off topic but we recently watched a 1990s episode of TOTP. DD was interested in some of the awful 90s fashion that has made a come back, and DS (11) loved the fact that a song about teenage mutant ninja turtles was number one. I had erased this from memory but now he keeps finding it on youtube and singing along (but spelling turtle wrong!) and it's become an ear worm!

Yes! Always the reference to Steve from accounts. Sometimes he was sexy, sometimes he was dull as fuck and you wouldn’t want to get stuck with him at a party.

I remember being heartbroken at the pictures of sliced up lipstick and smashed up eye shadow, it seemed such a waste when I couldn’t afford it. And the £30 hair accessories from Johnny Loves Rosie. That would have taken me about a year to save up for.

I remember all these magazines from my teenage years in the 90s. I used to laugh at some of the weird problem page letters. I recall one letter from a girl asking if it were true that pouring coke into your vagina after sex meant you couldn't get.pregnant? Had to have been made up, of course!

Also, remember religiously believing all the things that those quizzes and flowcharts said about you?! I remember one Bliss feature - 'What he says vs what he MEANS' and one example was 'You turn up at a party and he's there. He says: "Ugh, I didn't know you were coming' - He means "I'm really glad you're here!"

I held out hope that my crush liked me for quite a while based on one similar incident, aged 11

I just loved a free giftie!

Do remember some of the problems.. one of which was a girl whose friend told her she had been aducted by aliens and wasn't sure if she had been lying or not..somehow it got printed. Can't remember the advice

In fact I was Googling "a ruddy big pig" this morning because I remember them constantly going on about whenever Rick Astley was mentioned. I loved the humour in it.

But do you remember the variant on ‘a ruddy big pig came down our street’ that somebody (not me) contributed to the Black Type letters page? I do.

A ruddy big pig came down our street
Closely followed by Bronski Beat
Hey, they said, have you seen our sow?
Yes, they replied, he’s in The Communards now.

@LulaMay17 loved that one! Especially the giant, purple make up box. Hugely impractical and it hardly stored anything because you wouldn't take the insert out!!

I loved teen magazines - started off buying Shout and Mizz, graduating to Bliss, Sugar and J17 (this was the 90s). I also loved Smash Hits, Live and Kicking, etc. I remember once you got into mags like Bliss, Shout was considered very babyish. My mum went mad when I first bought Bliss home as I was 11 and it had a 'secret sealed section' about sex. Like others have said they were the only way to see or own pics of celebrities so I would diligently cut out the posters of Leo, David Duchovny, etc. It cracks me up remembering the beauty tips and advice on how to 'bag a lush lad'. I remember J17 trying to make the word 'popsy' a thing instead of 'crush'. And yes, it was all about being a sussed and sassy chickstrel on the prowl for gorge lads with your mates while eyerolling about your 'rents, who were soooo cringeworthy and a total 'mare. I remember lots of safe sex advice and 'wait til you're ready', but nothing about relationship red flags or what an abusive relationship was. I remember a Bliss real life story once being 'I cried rape' about a girl whose mum found out she'd had sex, so she lied and said it was rape so she wouldn't get in trouble...

Also I think these mags were responsible for 16-year-old me convinced that my week in a holiday cottage in Wales with my parents and sister was going to be the week I had a holiday romance with a lush lad who I got chatting with down at the beach. I regret to inform you all I did not chat to a single boy all week.

No-one ever seems to remember Catch but it used to have a nightclub section at the back where they would photograph and interview various clubbers. The questions always were "What are you Drinking?" Where the answer would often be Tia Maria and coke, and "Do you have your eye on anyone?". It all looked impossibly glamourous to 15 year old me. Does anyone else remember this?

At last! Somebody who remembers Catch. I was starting to think that I dreamt it. I think it first came out in 1989.

It was rubbish,, of course. Grown up Jackie. I think it was actually published by the same company that did Jackie, Blue Jeans etc. It was bound as if it were a fashion magazine but it had the usual nonsense in it. Boyfriends and office jobs, no acknowledgement that any young woman might, you know, go to university or do a job that wasn’t just a means of funding nights out.

I remember one particular article: smart girls v scruffy girls. It must have taken ten minutes to write and looked very like a Jackie feature from the early eighties. Smart girls ate tuna and cucumber sandwiches on brown bread for lunch, scruffy girls ate McDonalds and wore jeans and trainers etc etc.

The Christmas fashion features were funny. Ten variants on a black velour party dress: one with feathered shoulders, one with fringes etc etc. Back in the day when people bought a party dress for the festive season. It would always be full of tips about how to get off with Dteve from accounts (always ‘accounts’. Why? Could no other department supply eligible men? Why didn’t they call it finance like the rest of the world?) at the office party.

I would like to read it again: I bet the back issues are real museum pieces because we like in a very different world now.

I absolutely loved Smash Hits. I was very into music. In fact I was Googling "a ruddy big pig" this morning because I remember them constantly going on about whenever Rick Astley was mentioned. I loved the humour in it.

I wasn't particularly interested in the girls mags as I wasn't at all girly, never wore make up, short, fat (I thought at the time) and lived in jeans and t-shirts (not much has changed except I am actually fat now!) and no boys were ever interested in me.

I did get Just 17 sometimes, just to have something to read and to try and fit in. I do remember Malcolm the model. And Nick Fisher, the agony uncle.

Ooh the "Zoe Finds Out" books! There was Aisha (?) and Christopher? And Nina ... I believe Zoe was the cool one though ... I so wanted to live on that island and catch the ferry to school 😢

Probably a bit more 80's 90's

But loved

Girl
Dreamer
Patches
Blue Jeans and just seventeen

There used to be photo strip supplement with Blue Jeans.... always featuring how 'Sarah' with the Demi wave would meet 'Sean' from 6th form with the flick at the school Disco.... dressed in double denim they'd kiss at the end and he'd drop her off in his Talbot Samba.