I'm 24 but I read the Famous Five series over and over when I was a kid. The character George was a godsend to a child of the same name with three older brothers who'd also worked out "it's so STUPID being a girl!". As the epic tomboy that she was I was very unsurprised just now to do a tumblr search on her out of curiosity to find all the posts tagged George Kirrin were ones asking if in 2018 she would be considered a transman....
So I thought it would be interesting to peruse the mostly now hilarious gendered vintage annuals I was given to read as a child in my Dad's house which included stuff from the 60s, 70s and 80s (guess my parents were of the 'well if it was good enough for me it'll be good enough for them' kind of ilk) like girls comic Annuals such as Tammy, Princess Tina, Misty, Mandy, Girls Crystal, Princess, Diana, Judy... etc. I don't have any kids of my own and don't really know what magazines 6-15 year olds read these days so I can't easily compare. What I did find was that although all of these annuals absolutely had pleeeeeenty of outdated sexist and racist stereotypes to be found in them (they were for the most part comics written by middle class white men), they also had exposed me to a really varied range of female characters from businesswomen, slave girls, astronauts, detectives, historical figures, sportswomen, cowgirls, maids to princesses... and of course always schoolgirls working together to overcome some sort of challenge or falling out with each other only to realise they were being silly and all the storylines you'd expect to find. A lot of these annuals included photos of important women from history like scientists and photos of women from all around the world in traditional dress . Misty was 2000AD-ish scifi aimed at girls without the rapey twilight aspect... www.newstatesman.com/2016/09/dark-forgotten-world-british-girls-comics-about-be-resurrected
What are your memories of such comics? did you find them vapid, sexist, offensive?
The only contemporary 'girls' magazine i remember reading as a preteen and early teen was 'Girl Talk'. What I remember the most from that was the endless 'embarrassing' situations people would submit and the quizzes to discover endless manner of inane things about yourself and your future. It was useful for questions I was too scared to ask about periods and kissing, I'm pretty sure.
So I search for contemporary UK teen magazines and I can't really find any pre/teen girl gendered ones other than 'Shout' and 'Seventeen' which seem to be about hair, makeup and celebrities judging from the covers. Apparently KS5 girls (16-18) read the most magazines out of UK young people so I suppose this includes Elle, Cosmo, Vogue.
Conclusions? Only questions! As mothers what do you find your kids read? How does it compare with what you were reading as a girl? Now we no longer have so many gendered magazines do we live in a less gendered world? Contemporary YA fiction from my experience seems to be pretty strong and has nothing like the gender roles of yore but this is novels. The Reading Agency stats find that England's teens and preteens read the least out of many other countries with 44% of british teens NOT reading for pleasure or outside of school and only 26% of 10 year olds 'liking' reading. That means these teens in theory rely on television and internet for pleasure and I believe it's these teens that are more likely to buy into gender stereotypes than it is book readers.
thoughts?