Seventeen Magazine.

Yes, it is true. I, the Saucy Vixen, am a hoarder. Everything I have written since the 5th grade (1990), has been kept. It is saved and stored deep within the bowels of my MacBook. Nineteen years and six computers have gone by, and yet I still have it all.

In 11th grade (1995), I wrote a 10-page analysis of Seventeen Magazine. I came across it today and chuckled at the fact that I sound exactly the same then as I do now. (I've taken out the citations for ease of reading.)

When I read puns such as “road scholars," I want to cringe. When a girl asks if she can rub deodorant on her face so it won’t shine, I laugh out loud. I become even more amused when I see an article on how to look good, wearing your underwear on the outside of your clothing. And it’s all fine and dandy that they can find a bathing suit that minimizes your body flaws if you’re short, fat, busty, or have big thighs, but what if you have all of the above “flaws?” What then? Wear a tent?

All of the above questions simply lead up to the bigger, broader, eternal question that haunts Seventeen Magazine readers such as myself: Why do they publish this garbage? The answer is really quite simple. Somewhere in the vast expanse of Seventeen’s readership, there are actually people who want to know the exact definition of the word “shaving,” and why people who don’t shower for days smell “unpleasant."

So who exactly are these people who enjoy reading Seventeen? They are mostly urban or suburban girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Girls hitting puberty who need to read about the different types of feminine protection and need to have visuals of lists of the advantages and disadvantages of each.

From the fourteen year olds who wonder about their first periods, to the eighteen year olds who ask if it’s possible to get pregnant without having sex, they all have one thing in common: everyone is a consumer. It’s no surprise that the manufactures and large companies have taken advantage of this fact.