Where Have All the Teen Magazines Gone?
The Waves: Gender, Relationships, Feminism
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 903 Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2021
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate staff writers Rebecca Onion and Heather Schwedel dive into girls’ and women’s magazines. Many outlets like Sassy and CosmoGirl have been shuttered or moved to online-only editions. With the recent resurrection of teen magazine icon Atoosa Rubenstein in the media, Rebecca and Heather talk about what made these types of magazines pop and how problematic they were for their audience—especially the young girls. Then they dig into the lasting impact these relics have in the digital age.
Recommendations:
Rebecca: The 2016 PBS show Victoria and Nicola Griffith’s book Ammonite.
Heather: Listening to music, especially if you usually listen to podcasts.
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas.
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:03.6 | This is the waves. |
| 0:05.5 | This is the waves. |
| 0:06.6 | This is the waves. |
| 0:07.7 | This is the waves. |
| 0:08.4 | This is the waves. |
| 0:10.1 | This is the waves. |
| 0:10.1 | Welcome to the Waves, Slate's podcast about gender, feminism, and a brave new world where teenage |
| 0:22.4 | girls read the same things as everybody else. Every episode, you've got a new pair of women |
| 0:28.1 | to talk about the things we can't get off our minds. Today, you've got me, Rebecca Onion, |
| 0:32.3 | a staff writer for Slate. And me, Heather Schwedal, a staff writer for Slate. What has happened to specialty teen and |
| 0:40.0 | women's publications and should we care? In the year 2000, when I graduated college, there were |
| 0:46.2 | seven major teen magazines in print. Now there are none, and the teen magazines that still exist |
| 0:51.9 | are limping along online. |
| 0:56.0 | On the women's side, things aren't much better. |
| 0:59.6 | Glamour stopped publishing the print edition in 2019, |
| 1:04.7 | and Mary Claire's print issue we found out a few days ago as we were preparing this episode, |
| 1:07.2 | is also being discontinued. |
| 1:13.9 | What are the reading populations that once turned to these publications, reading for fun, now? |
| 1:18.2 | And where in contemporary media can we find their legacy? |
| 1:24.9 | Now, this is a topic very close to my heart because I started out in media at a teen magazine called YM. |
| 1:31.9 | And I wasn't completely happy there, but it was also a teen magazine Sassie, |
... |
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