Ragazze moderne

Abstract

The article is focused on Italian female teen magazines, and analyzes how some of these magazines represent adolescent girls, also trying to understand how young Italian readers make sense of them. The methodology is based on a frame analysis of a sampling of five Italian teen magazines (July 2008 to January 2009) followed by a series of fifteen focus group sessions with girls aged twelve to sixteen. Results show how the content of these magazines enters deeply into the “soul” of their teenaged readers, even if they merely skim them casually. Furthermore, the findings suggest that these magazines must be considered serious cultural objects since they are read more by those girls who have other – even high – forms of cultural consumption than by girls with poor cultural consumption.