Early Noughties teen mag ridiculousness

[SmidgenofaPigeon]

Does anyone remember the little nuggets if totally ridiculous advice they’d give you in teen magazines?

I used to be an avid reader of Shout! magazine. The main goal of these magazines seemed to be being popular and having boys notice you obviously, and were filled with totally mad tips on how to achieve these things and not be a ‘geek’ who wasn’t interested. Which is totally inappropriate advice these days, happily.

I remember one was ‘if you are invited to a party, arrive late and leave early! You are a social butterfly who has had to squeeze the party in between other engagements’

Happily I HAD been invited to a party in my local pub function room that very weekend! I spent a long time applying glitter hair mascara to my fringe to make it clump together attractively (why) and I think I even had on one of those fetching skirt with trousers combos with a vest top from Tammy girl. I got my dad to drive round the block a bit so I could try to be late, but it didn’t take very long and I think I turned up at ten minutes after the start time. I had a few dances to All Saints and Steps and drank a couple of cans of Coke and an hour before it was due to finish, I did a big show of having to rush off.

Now, we lived in a very small town. There was NO WAY any other parties were happening on the same night. But desperately trying to stick to my social butterfly narrative I said goodbye and off I went.

I sat round the corner in the bus shelter until it was time to get picked up. While everyone else was having a nice time at the party

What a knob! When I got to school on the Monday everyone was saying it was rude to leave the party early and I felt like such an idiot.

Can anyone remember any more of the ridiculous things they used to spout in these magazines? I’d love to get my hands one now as I think it would be hilarious

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!

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!

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 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!

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

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.

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 😭😂

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!!

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'

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

@BlowDryRat

I used to buy Shout! religiously. I remember being very sad that we didn't have a Tammy Girl in our town. All the Cathy letters seemed to be from 16yos asking if they should have sex with their boyfriend. One that stuck out was a reader whose boyfriend had told her it was harmful for him to get an erection and not have sex What a chancer!

I did follow the makeup tips. White eyeliner on the lower eyelid was a great look...

I read one where the girls boyfriend has told her clingfilm was the same a a condom 😂🙈

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

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.

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!!

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.

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.

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 😢

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.

@CatkinToadflax

I think it was Shout that used to recommend going round the shops on Saturday afternoon with a large gang of mates and spending hours trying on clothes in various clothing shops that you had no intention whatsoever of buying. Tremendously entertaining for a gang of giggling 13 year olds but less brilliant for everyone else, who probably did actually want to buy something, stuck in a giant queue for the changing rooms!

Ahh come on that's what Saturdays with your pals were for!

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 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.

@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!!

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.

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

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