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

Dancing to Steps, that is awful. Bad karaoke at its very worst.

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...

What was the one which had ‘Sex position of the month’ or similar? Was it More magazine? It was too old for us but I remember on a Girls Guides trip one of the girls snuck one in in her bag and we stayed up all night pouring over it and trying to work out what it all meant!

One piece of sage advice I remember from that particular tome- ‘Use conditioner in your public hair, to keep your man lingering there’

I used to love readung these mags. I wasn't a ten until the naughties but remember reading Tammy girl then sugar/just 17 and later cosmo.

I wonder if they still make mags like that now?

I think it was probably in Hi or Jackie there were always letters in the made up problems section about girls feeling left out because they were 14 and hadnt started their period yet. All their friends had and what could they do.
I remember at the time thinking why you would want to start your period and in all my teen years I never had a convo with my friends about periods!!

That's hilarious!
I sent in an "embarrassing story", think I got £50 for it. That used to be my favourite page!

I vividly remember buying Just 17 at the local newsagent and being terrified the man behind the counter would tell my mum I wasn’t even that young, I was about 15 and at that time I was regularly getting sold booze in the offy!

@WhereDoMyBluebirdsFly

Was More the one with 'sex position of the week' where it would have a drawing of a couple locked in some improbable karma sutra style embrace, usually doing handstands or upside down?

This brought back a very cringe worthy memory... For some reason, I decided to cut out these pictures and make a sex manual with detailed description of various positions using pages ripped out of my maths book. It got confiscated by my head of year (in a maths lesson!) and shown around the staffroom as an example of the kind of filth the pupils were absorbing

I remember company. And there was another one which stopped so I switched to Cosmo. Felt very grown up getting my copies every Thursday evening on the way back from school/college at the corner shop.
If I felt super sophisticated I’d go and purchase them from Morrison’s in town on Saturday mornings with a bar of galaxy caramel and a glittery eyeshadow from boots on the way home

70s and 80s in my case. 'Jackie', 'Oh Boy', 'My Guy', a few others. I don't remember specific tips, but there was a lot about pop stars and swooning over the latest one. In the earlier ones, the most popular ones were Donny Osmond and David Cassidy; a little later, Michael Jackson. Then there were all the confessional ones. In 'Jackie', they tended to be about messing up relationships - e.g. 'My Jealousy Killed His Love!' In the more recent ones, they tended to be more melodramatic. One was about how the narrator, out of jealousy, encouraged her friend's excessive dieting and 'made' her anorexic. The friend ended up in hospital, weighing five stone, and in danger of death. Another narrator, also out of jealousy, took advantage of the temporary lack of a qualified English teacher in an obviously failing school to feed her friend wrong information when revising. As a result, the friend just misses her grades for Cambridge, seen as her only chance of escaping her impoverished neighbourhood, and ends up taking her own life! Even at the time, this seemed extreme and unlikely to me, especially as someone who just missed grades for Oxbridge would presumably still have what's now called an insurance offer, and the chance of a successful university career. In yet another story, the girl hides the train ticket of the handsome young man in her railway carriage, so that he will have to spend time with her when waiting for the next train. As a result, he is too late to get to the bedside of his dying mother! Victorian moral tales had nothing on some of these stories!

A story in one of the earlier magazines - I think 'Tammy' - provided my friend and me with a catch-phrase we used for years. It was about a girl whose friend turns out to be a pop star's sister, and included the line: 'You don't mean to say that this gorgeous chunk of male is your brother!' We found this hysterically funny, and forever after, would talk about 'gorgeous chunks of male'.

I remember all the cringey photo stories although some of the more cheapy ones had cartoonish ones rather than photos. I think there was one called the Valley Girls.

I'm glad someone mentioned "My Guy". That was the one that sprang to my mind first but I couldn't remember the title.
The photo stories were great and opened up a whole new world to me. I went to a private girls' school and the people in My Guy all seemed to go to comps (which seemed very exotic and scary to me) and hang around on street corners snogging each other. All in stonewashed denim and with big hair.

I had to sneak My Guy into the house as I didn't want my Mum finding out I was reading it. I sneaked Jackie in too - there was a girl in my school who used to appear from time to time in photo stories or as a model in articles.
I never dared bring Just 17 in as my Mum had already told me it was "disgusting" but we shared it around at school so I got to read it anyway.

I think it was sugar or girl talk

They were shit, but I do remember them being very firm on not having sex before you were 16, or if you weren't sure you wanted to.

@MammaSchwifty

Yes, my mum found my stack of More mags and was absolutely horrified, though she needn't have been. Like PP I didn't become sexually active for some years after I has built that stash. But being armed with aaaaaall that sex knowledge was quite useful really when the time came.

My granny picked up one of my copies of Mizz with a "sealed section" in the middle (where you had to rip a bit off the edge of the page before you could open it to read it) which was all about sex. She was absolutely scandalised!

i remember more hahaha it was absolutely filthy
i remember being about 12 with my mates reading all the sex bits in the offie cos my mum would’ve had kittens if id have bought that 😂

Oooh does anyone remember cosmoGirl! That one was obsessed with sex, even more than More I think.

Oh god yes - I was a teen in the 80's and bought every magazine going. It was always about how to get boys to notice you, how to get him to kiss you, you should practise kissing on a mirror etc 🤮.

And all the BO stuff, we were obsessed! I have a 15 year old teen now and she isn't obsessed with BO. I think it was all a ploy to get us to fork out for gallons of Charlie and Impulse

But I loved them all. I always turned to the problem pages first. Also loved Smash Hits and Look in. I'd love to sit and look at them now and show dd to get her reaction

Oh god I remember these.

For all their cringy stuff, they were refreshingly honest in a reasonably age appropriate way. So much easier to understand and relate to that the awkward sanitised version you git from embarrassed parents.

It was actually kinda nice to read about cringeworthy first time moments whee ethe couples ended up laughing and using 6 condoms due to disasters etc

So much more positive and appropriate ti read about than that ice cube trick and what you get now where u have to basically be a porn star in the bedroom.

@AVictoryProduct

Rinse your hair with cold water to make it shine Wear a pop of colour close to your face Your eyebrows are sisters, not twins Cucumber on eyes Oatmeal on face Live yoghurt on your vulva for thrush Which jeans to wear for your body type Which swimming costume/bikini to wear for your body type Hair styles to suit your face shape Men always notice your hands Your hair is your crowing glory

What a load of shite.

to be fair, the tip about cold water and yogurt for thrush are pretty accurate. Same as using cool button your hairdryer after you dry your hair to prevent frizz/static. Cucumber on eyes: just need cool under your eyes to prevent puffiness

@MidSummersNightmare

I was a teenager in the 90s. One particular article I remember was about how to look good when sunbathing on the beach. Their top tip was to dig a recess in the sand to put your bum and thighs in so the fat doesn’t get squashed out to the sides and therefore you look thinner.

Oooh! Brilliant idea. We could expand on it - next time I go to the beach, I'll dig a me-shaped hole and ask my husband to cover my flabby, middle-aged body in sand and then uncover me in the the shape of a lithe, slender-limbed super-model.

oh the magazines i loved them -i think More was my favourite i thought it was very grown up

never did try position of the week back then

@EdinaMonsoon

I was already in my 20's in the 90s but the 80's versions of these teen magazines were just as bad.

Early 80's it was "My Guy" & "Jackie" and mid-80s "Just 17". They were all appallingly aimed at convincing teen girls all that mattered in life was pursuing & keeping a boyfriend. They also featured step by step make-up tutorials that can only be described as "explosion in a paint factory". I know it was the 80s but seriously!!

As an indie-kid Smiths fan, the NME was my teen bible

God, I loved Just 17.

Sitting with my mates at lunch break, dissecting every article. Bliss.

NME was intimidatingly cool - I was more of a Smash Hits girl.

70s and 80s in my case. 'Jackie', 'Oh Boy', 'My Guy',

There were Pink, Mates, Blue Jeans, Fab 208 too. And Diana - anyone remember that?

@BlowDryRat That really made me laugh If that was passed round our staffroom, it would cause great hilarity