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

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!

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.

@Botherfreedays

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'

Not just you. I was thinking of the "spray Impulse on his bag" and couldn't help feeling that the poor lad would get the rip taken out of him by his mates.

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!

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."

@Iamthewombat

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.

@Bbq1 this is for you too!

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

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.

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 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.

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 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.

@Seeyawouldntwannabeya

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 😢

And Claire whose main character feature was wanting to be a weather girl! They went on and on about this quite niche interest... did it ever go anywhere? I think she was the snooty antagonist, perhaps? I never got into those books, they lacked any fun silliness and made me feel like I was missing something.

Diary of a Crush though...

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!"

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!

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!

This thread is amazing! So many happy memories of my 90s teen years. My mum used to buy Just 17 for me every Wednesday while I was school, and I remember hurrying home so that I could read my horoscope

I remember most of the fashion being totally unobtainable as we didn’t have a Topshop, Miss Selfridge or H&M in our town, so I had to make do with BHS which wasn’t quite the same. And I definitely couldn’t relate to the obsession with holiday romances. How was I ever going to meet a “lush lad” tramping round Anglesey in the rain with my parents and annoying brothers in tow? Any potential love interest would have scared off by my dad’s socks and Jesus sandals combo anyway.

@HappyFourTeeth. Malcolm/ Cassius. This is such a blast from the past

publicdescription.com/2015/12/07/malcolm-jeffries-perfect-timing/amp/

This is a brilliant thread!

I’m sorry I haven’t RTFT, only to page 5 but I remember reading Just 17 when I was 15/16 and Jane Goldman was working there. The editorials in the first couple of pages (?) always had a bit of a gossipy mention of her going out with Jonathan Ross (she was 17 I think, he was waaaaay older at 27...and just starting his TV career)

The whole thing seemed so amazingly glamorous and so bloody LONDON. Here was I, a year or 2 younger than Jane Goldman, living in a poxy village and getting the bus to school everyday, Saturday job in WHSmiths.

Gave me a bit of a wanderlust I think....

Yes, the obsession with holiday romances! Had me convinced I was going to have a romantic tryst whilst on holiday in Butlin’s with my mum and nan

I was a devotee of Mizz, Bliss, Sugar and Shout magazines, and dabbled in J17 and Cosmo Girl. There was another one, as well, that didn't last long but was cheaper than the others. I can't remember its name, but I can still picture the title's sans serif font!

I loved the Spooky pages in Mizz, which were full of obviously invented, contrived encounters with 'the paranormal'. And Bliss did something similar - it was about ouija boards and my mum banned me from reading it for ages because of that!

@Mrsfrumble

This thread is amazing! So many happy memories of my 90s teen years. My mum used to buy Just 17 for me every Wednesday while I was school, and I remember hurrying home so that I could read my horoscope

I remember most of the fashion being totally unobtainable as we didn’t have a Topshop, Miss Selfridge or H&M in our town, so I had to make do with BHS which wasn’t quite the same. And I definitely couldn’t relate to the obsession with holiday romances. How was I ever going to meet a “lush lad” tramping round Anglesey in the rain with my parents and annoying brothers in tow? Any potential love interest would have scared off by my dad’s socks and Jesus sandals combo anyway.

The fashions were very London, really. Not much use if you lived elsewhere and spendthrift dosh. I remember loving the look of Johnny Loves Rosie hair accessories and grinding my teeth in frustration at their prices.

Cling film condom? Yes. I recall that one. Had to have been made up. Of course this was before internet trolling became a thing, so I guess trolls just trolled problem pages back then!

@demelza82

There is a great Instagram account called 90steenmagazinearchiveuk that I really recommend for those that are nostalgic

I’ve just followed this account, it’s AMAZING! Thanks

had no dosh*

@Snookie00

Old Malc/Cass has aged pretty well 😋

Me too 😂

I think following might be significantly increased from this thread.

Thanks op great thread 😍😍