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

Sun In! I mentioned it to my hairdresser and steam started coming out of her ears...

I have absolutely loved this thread! Thank you for the nostalgia.

I had that J17 comb! In fact I’m sure it is still at my mum’s house. I also had the bright pink wide toothed comb without a handle from one of the first issues of Shout.

@Cantaloupeisland

So much nostalgia, I love this thread! I was never much of a girly girl but did read all these mags before getting into heavy metal at about 14 and moving on to Kerrang. Remember feeling very naughty reading Just 17 at around 13. I had many sun in/shaders and toners related hair disasters!

Thing is, no 17 year olds read J17! Age range was about 13-15 I think, after that you moved onto 19! 😂

@DrSbaitso

Sun In! I mentioned it to my hairdresser and steam started coming out of her ears...

I wrecked my hair with Sun In! My hairdresser was fuming at me too and I had to have it all cut short as it was snapping off!! It didn’t even give me beautiful sun kissed highlights, just bright orange hair

I remember Minx now and poly vernon in it. It was good. Glamour was good back in the day but I wouldn't touch it now even if I was 25

Not heard of Minx?
What year was that out?
I was a pre teen and a teenager from 1988 onwards, so I'm guessing that one must have passed me by and I'd moved onto More! or something lol

Ahhh I’ve loved seeing the combs!!

The one I remember was dark green and glittery, I think it was from Mizz. I wish I still had it!

Those Shaders and Toners dyes!
I'd forgotten all about them but we were obsessed. I always got the red ones and it never looked much different on my brown hair. Then I gave one to my friend Suzy who had beautiful white blonde hair and of course her hair went bright pink and stayed like that for weeks.
She cried, her mum was really angry and school made her wear a hairscarf until it finally washed out.
Happy Days.

Such a great thread, nominated for classics! Please everyone else do the same! Thanks @SmidgenofaPigeon for starting it

I went through (in order) - Bunty, Shout, Mizz, J17 and then More/Cosmo, and I still enjoy Red magazine to this day!

I used to read Bloss, Shout, Sugar, Just 17 (didn't they go to J17 for a while before fizzling out completely?!) And Mizz. I loved them!! My older sister used to buy More which I used to sneak and read and be all wide eyed at 😂
I think that although a lot of it was outdated crap now, it did have really good tips an advice on puberty and saying no to boys who tried to push you. No meeting up with strangers, be wary of older boys etc etc. So not all bad. In fact, I distinctly remember starting my period and being really nervous to tell my mum but I remembered resdingin Shout! That the best thing to do is tell her so she can help you out and support you. So I took a deep breath and told her haha.

I do also remember reading one of the ones aimed more towards older girls when I was about 12, not long before starting my period, with one of those myth buster pages about periods. And one of tge myths was "I shouldn't bathe or wash my hair on my period" and the advice was something like "no, it's more important to bathe regularly when on your period to make sure you stay clean and healthy. After all, it's not like the water is going to turn red, is it...." and I honestly didn't know if it was being sarcastic, like of course it will turn red, you're on your period, duh! Or of course it won't turn red, that doesn't happen.

For some reason, those 2 things stick out really clearly to me, even though they must be at least 23 years ago now!

I remember one of the mags in the early 2000s, it might've been Mizz, featuring two seperate stories about 14/15 year old girls getting together with much older men. One of the men was a neighbour in his 50s or 60s, the other was the 40-something dad of the girl's best friend. With the latter there was a quote along the lines of "At first I just thought of [girl's name] as my daughter's friend but after a while I really started to fancy her." Gross!

I actually once got a cute little cat massager with a teen magazine. I still have it and dd plays with it now 😆 very well made.
Besides some of the ' how to get away with wearing makeup to school' and 'how to kiss a boy articles' there are three others I've never forgotten

1. If you have a yeast infection dip a tampon into natural yoghurt and put it up your vagina ( can't imagine that would be encouraged now)
2. A graphic description of a grandfather molesting his granddaughter in the problem pages.very disturbing for a 12 year old to read
3. A story about a young teen who's mother told her she had been diagnosed with hiv at birth and that was the reason she had to have regular blood tests and must now start medication. The girl spent time in hospital for depression, did not talk about it to her friends and did not think about her future or plan for the future with her mates.

It was an anonymous story but I do actually think about this from time to time and hope she is okay. I'm sure this was in mizz magazine early noughties.

The magazines were very strict on encouraging girls to not have sex if unsure or under legal age so that was always good.

I swear those magazines turned me gay! My older cousins used to get them in the 80s and pass them to me, or read out articles but as I had zero interest in boys I just found it all a bit strange and bought Rolling Stone instead... my favourite agony aunt story tho was a girl who had had a bit of a kiss and cuddle with here boyfriend ( and a bit more but hadn’t done the deed) and had found a lump in her leg. She was worried that she’d maybe got pregnant and the baby had slipped down her leg. Not making this up!! The nice agony aunt gently explained that that’s not how it all worked... hid we laughed at that one...

I started with Shout magazine aged 10 in 1995 and moved on to Mizz, Bliss and Sugar when I was around 13 (Sugar was my favourite). Also went through a big Smash Hits stage aged 12ish.

I dabbled in J-17 and More, but by the time I was 15 I was a goth and preferred to spend my money on Kerrang than teen magazines (although I was very happy to read my friends' copies)!

‘I love that these same questions would come up really frequently. In back to back issues. Almost like the people writing in didn't read the magazine. Or they were just made up by the mag - how many teenagers use "whom" correctly?!’

I know someone who wrote for a classic girl
Mag back in the 80s and yes, she did write a lot of the ‘readers’ letters but said they tried to think of stuff that teens would find helpful or on a subject that they did get letters in about...

@FrickinA

I swear those magazines turned me gay! My older cousins used to get them in the 80s and pass them to me, or read out articles but as I had zero interest in boys I just found it all a bit strange and bought Rolling Stone instead... my favourite agony aunt story tho was a girl who had had a bit of a kiss and cuddle with here boyfriend ( and a bit more but hadn’t done the deed) and had found a lump in her leg. She was worried that she’d maybe got pregnant and the baby had slipped down her leg. Not making this up!! The nice agony aunt gently explained that that’s not how it all worked... hid we laughed at that one...

Glorious!

I started off with girl talk, moved to shout then miss. Then sugar before buying more.

These magazines taught me the facts of life but also added to my insecurities that I wasn't cool enough. I felt every other girl in country was kitted out in Tammy Girl and doused in body shop spray. I was wearing stuff from charity shops and saved up my money for spice girl impulse.

I remember the smashed up make up. My sister decided she was going to write a fashion article, she smashed up make up, of course it was mine 🙄

We were on a school trip in 1996, reading More magazine and giggling over Position of the Fortnight, after GCSEs, playing Alannis Morisette on our Walkmans (just to ramp up the nostalgia)...

... our very straight-laced French teacher overheard us giggling about Position of the Fortnight and said she thought it was a wonderful feature. We stared at her agog.

She thought that Position of the Fortnight was about Work Experience for teenagers.

I remember Mizz. I'm fairly sure I still have a free alice band from it in the dressing up box in my parents' loft. The type with all the plastic teeth. I still remember the feeling of it scraping my forehead as I put it on!

I also remember DM being very cross when I drew round my face in the mirror with lipstick to see what shape it was (things like oval, heart, circle, triangle etc.), which would tell me where the best places were to put blusher. It took a lot of Windolene to get it off.

When I was younger, I often used to get an animal-themed one. I remember a photo story about somebody who was looking after a friend's hamster and it escaped. She set a trap for it with a little ladder leading up to a bucket with food and bedding in the bottom. We were on holiday the following week, so I never found out whether she re-captured it!

I had the entire series of those books about Zoey and her friends.

Zoey and Ben (the blind one) were brother and sister.
Claire and Nina were sisters.
Then there was Jake and Lucas (not related).
Zoey was going out with Jake.
Lucas was going out with Claire.
There was a car accident where Jake’s brother died and the books start with Lucas being sent away as he was driving. Zoey says goodbye and they have a “moment”.
Then Lucas comes back and him and Zoey get it on behind Jake’s back. It transpires that it was actually Claire that was driving the car but Lucas took the blame. There was a whole lot of drama!

I loved those Zoey books. I remember they had faux handwritten pages and I changed the way I wrote my ‘s’ and ‘r’ to match Zoey’s as she was my favourite.

This thread has made me so nostalgic for the late 90s.

Morning, everyone. We've had several nominations for this thread to be moved into Classics so we're going to shift it over there now.

I learned how to do blow jobs reading More. At 17 I had an older boyfriend twat who couldn't believe I had never done it before and had only read about it (when we then moved in together he banned mags from the house because he didn't want me looking at famous men with no tops on ). When I met DH, he couldn't believe his luck! (Had never had a bj by 42, can you imagine!?)

@OneMorePieceofCheese that made me giggle. Did you enlighten her?!