Girl Power

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After a generation of books and cautionary tales about self-esteem, girls still diet more than they should. A 1995 survey of 1,955 students in Grades 9 to 12 conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 60% of the girls were trying to lose weight, compared with 24% of the boys. More cases of anorexia and bulimia are reported every year, and between 5% and 10% of females 14 and older suffer from such disorders, according to the nonprofit group Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention. "I don't think in local communities and in schools we're seeing any real flowering of girl power," says Joan Brumberg, author of The Body Project, which draws on diary entries from Victorian times to the present to argue that girls have increasingly defined themselves in terms of their looks. Although she believes that girls need their own cultural icons, Brumberg is worried that celebrities inevitably reinforce the notion that appearance is the only source of female power.

Nowhere is the battle to balance celebrity and right thinking more obvious than in the magazine industry. Among girls ages 12 to 19, Teen Research Unlimited found that 84% read magazines in 1997, so it's no wonder that the business of informing their lives, chronicling their troubles and defining their desires has become fiercely competitive. American Girl, Teen Beat and Tiger Beat have the younger age bracket sewn up. The median age of a Tiger Beat reader is 13, but girls as young as eight are snatching up the magazine. "Our readership is getting younger," says Louise Barile, editor of Tiger Beat. "It just goes back to girls' growing up faster. When they begin to get interested in boys, they graduate to other magazines."

Graduation holds an abundance of possibilities. Three new publications (TEEN PEOPLE, Jump and Twist) are challenging the established triumvirate (Seventeen, YM and Teen). Already, TEEN PEOPLE has 500,000 subscribers; each of Twist's five issues has sold 20% more copies than the previous one; and Jump boasts a circulation of 350,000. "We use girls with all body types and races to make the point of not shooting unrealistic images of beauty and thinness," says Christina Ferrari, managing editor of TEEN PEOPLE (a Time Inc. publication). The June/July issue features the 21 hottest people under 21 as well as an article about a 21-year-old stunt woman and a guide to the favored products of such stars as Drew Barrymore. For its part, Jump has focused on athletics and life-style. Says editor in chief Lori Berger: "We wanted to do a more sophisticated magazine for girls and not treat them like boy-crazy, fashion-crazed teens." One of the magazine's blurbs touts: THE FATS OF LIFE: ARE THOSE 10 LB IN YOUR HEAD OR ON YOUR HIPS?