Early Noughties teen mag ridiculousness

Zoe Finds Out! I remember that! They lived on an island and she had an affair behind her blind boyfriend’s back. In fact, I think the guy she had an affair with (Lucas?) caused the accident which blinded the boyfriend??!

I think Zoe was going out with Jake, but kissed Lucas. Ben(?) was blind and was Zoe's brother. He had an alarm clock that you could tap and it would speak out the time. Amazing.
I think Zoe wrote sayings she liked on post-it notes and put them up in her bedroom. I did this for a while too.

I remember the Sabrina’s Secrets mag that always came with free makeup.

One week it came with a purple eyeshadow that I had an allergic reaction to and my eye swelled shut. My mum was at work at the time and the swelling had gone my the time she got home.

I kept it my closest kept secret and anytime a fancied a day off school I would apply a liberal amount, wait for the horrid swelling to really get going and then appear downstairs looking very sorry for myself. I was gutted when ur ran out!!

I remember reading in one an article that started 'we can't all be the perfect size 10'
Which was strange to read because I was a size ten and my mum kept telling me I was overweight.

This thread is brilliant

I loved all these magazines and think I learnt a lot, their sex and relationship advice probably wasn't bad but all the body image stuff was crap.

I do remember getting blackheads aged about 11 and seeing a face mask recommend, I was convinced it would work and so disappointed when it didn't. I remember they warned that not to remove it with too hot water (you'll get blotchy!) Nor too cool (dry skin guaranteed!) And being so confused how you were meant to get this stuff right. How depressing

@Macaronirabbit yes to peppermint foot lotion/scrub! I can almost smell it!

Is it just me, I'm feeling sorry for some of the boys at the time who were probably confused by girls who tried out some of the behaviours suggested to 'catch their crush'

Oh I have just googled just 17 and they had a cover headline "in between the sheets with Philip Schofield" in his broom cupboard days!!

Ahh the nostalgia! I loved Bliss, Shout, J17 and Mizz. Who remembers the Spooky pages of Mizz with the cut out spells? Oh and I'll never forget my Mum cutting out the Mizz double page spread sex special cause she thought it was inappropriate so I had to read my friends' copy 😭😂

I remember I was still primary school age, and someone in my Mizz magazine wrote in to the agony aunt asking what masturbation was. Obviously they didn't really explain what it was at all, so off I went to ask my Mum about it. Wasn't allowed to read Mizz again for a while.

Eek Labobo you can imagine some pervy uncle writing that all hopeful. Yuck yuck yuck.

I remember a summer annual from 1970s that said to get confident with boys practise on men you don't fancy - bat your eyelids at the postman, flirt with your uncle and sit on his knee!

Did anybody else get the free ‘oracle’, I think it was with More magazine? Me and my best friend lived our lives by the oracle for weeks.
Loved Shout, Mizz, J17 and Bliss too. Looking back I can’t believe how sexual More was!

I do think there were different ‘tiers’ at different ages.

Shout and Mizz - 10-12ish
Sugar, J17 - 13-15ish
At about 15 everyone just seemed to be reading the ones aimed at adults, company, glamour, Cosmo, more etc.

I specifically wasn’t allowed to read sugar as my mum had been told by a friend that it gave tips on how to give a blow job. I remember being pretty at this, as I always thought the advice given was alway very sensible ‘don’t have sex until you’re ready, when you do use contraception’ type advice. Perhaps they’d cleaned up their act by the time I was reading them (2000ish) as from other posts on here it seems sex tips did feature! (Not talking about Cosmo and more which were definitely aimed at adults but read by teenagers, but the specific teen magazines). I remember kissing tips, and getting boys to fancy you tips, but no actual sex tips.

Hilariously I have family members who are German and they brought over some German teen magazines and yes, full frontal nudity in them all!! My mums didn’t seem to have any issue with this, but the alleged blow job tips made sugar wholly unsuitable!

Wasn't there a magazine late 70's/eighties called Oh Boy!? My ex next door neighbour who is now a 60 year old was hunk of the week when he was in his late teens. Hilarious picture of him posing topless trying to look desirable!

Might have already been mentioned, apologies if so.
Jackie magazine had a free gift. An amazing belt. It was a paper tape measure to show off your 22" waist. First part in one issue was a clear, flat plastic tube that you fed the first half of the paper tape measure into, then the next week was the 2nd half of the paper tape measure. The buckle bit showed off the tiny inches of your waist. Voila! A boy enticing wrinkled wonky tape measure belt. Awesome!

It was More that had position of the fortnight because it was a fortnightly magazine.

I used to love all of them.
I used to get annoyed by the make up tips though.
‘Blonde hair, fair skin and blue eyes? These colours for you.’
‘Dark hair and dark eyes? You’ll want this’

But I’ve got very pale skin, very dark hair and blue eyes. No tips for me. (Or indeed any girls who weren’t white).

I have extremely straight hair too and no amount of defusers and mouse was going to change that.

Thankyou so much to whoever mentioned the Just 17 male models. I had completely forgotten about them. My favourite was Malcolm. I've just Googled him, it has taken me right back to the posters I had in my bedroom. If it hadn't been for this thread I would never have thought about Malcolm again.

I used to work on some of these magazines in the 80s and 90s. It was such good fun and the stories weren’t made up! My first job was sorting the huge amount of mail we got in and eventually I ended up writing features and going on photo shoots. I’ve met so many of the male models. They seemed very immature to me as I was in my twenties by then. Used to get loads of free make up and records too!

Yes! So many memories reading this thread. Bliss, Sugar, J17 for me in the 90s. I read them religiously. I thought they would teach me what I needed to know about being a girl. Sometimes More but that definitely felt more adult.

And get on Instagram, 90steenmagazineaechiveuk shares these!

No idea where SHE got her sex advice in the 1950s....

My mum who was a teenager in the 1950s once told me she learned about sex through her parents' 'Readers' Digest' magazines.

There used to be a pen pal section in My Guy. A friend of a bloke I worked with sent his photo in with a short message, for a joke. My co-worker got home from holiday and couldn't get his front door open because of 550 letters on his doormat.

He brought some of them in to work to show us. The vulnerability of young girls! Imagine what a predator could have done with the names and addresses of 550 young girls. (shudder). Luckily he was a good guy.

He still got the occasional letter a couple of years later.

I remember there was one magazine (I think 'More' ?) that had 'Position of the week' I'm not sure I fully understood it! Even now I'm not sure I'd benefit

Male models not make