Revisiting the June '97 Issue of Seventeen Magazine
Revisiting the June '97 Issue of Seventeen Magazine
Do I really miss magazines or is it just rose-tinted glasses?
Autumn always makes me feel nostalgic. Memories of hayrides, plastic Jack O’Lantern candy buckets and cute Halloween costumes ruined by the turtleneck my mom made me wear underneath. These days, I welcome fall with open arms as a reprieve from the oppressive heat and sunshine guilt.
However, it wasn’t always this way. For many years September brought wishful thinking of the new me I would become at the start of the school year, guided by an artfully curated selection of Lisa Frank folders and fruit scented pencil toppers. It would be quickly crushed by the reality that my snazzy new stuff wouldn’t turn me into a new person. Coupled with dark days and months upon months of school left, I longed for the halcyon days of summer.
To this day, reflecting on my happiest times will zip me right back to Camp Thunderbird.
I’m in the shallow end of the pool, eyes stinging from chlorine, dunking Splash n’ Color Skipper into the water and watching her glittery braid turn purple in the sun. FWEET! The lifeguard is calling adult swim. I idolize this lifeguard who, like the girls from Sweet Valley High, is a twin. Both twins have long blonde hair and names bestowed by a hippie mom, Gypsy and Stormy. Great names. I borrowed them for my Barbies sometimes. Banished from the pool so the adults could swim laps, I made my way to the snack stand for Fun Dip and settled in with sticky hands to peruse my beloved magazines. The pages turned damp, then wrinkled and stuck together as they dried under the blazing sun. How do I explain the utter tactile bliss of flipping through crispy, wrinkled magazine pages? And the sound! This is the only form of ASMR I will willingly submit to.
A Glossy Girl is Born
My induction into the cult of magazines began alongside my discovery of my first celebrity crush.
I was ten years old. I went for an older man… a twelve year old drummer with brown eyes and the voice of a Chipmunk. It was Zac Hanson, the youngest brother of eponymous pop group Hanson. I was obsessed as only a pre-teen girl in love with a boy band can be, consuming every ounce of content I could find on the brothers. I treasured my copy of Middle of Nowhere, studying the lyrics from the cassette insert. I repeatedly watched a VHS copy of Tulsa, Tokyo and the Middle of Nowhere, the documentary of their rise to fame. However, it wasn’t enough. I needed more Hanson.
Enter my mom, a fount of maternal wisdom. A fellow magazine devotee, she still relishes the opportunity to pick up a stack of back issues from the thrift store though she’s long run out of places to stash them.
“You know, they sell music magazines,” my mom casually mentioned one summer day in 1997. I’m sorry, what? We were off to the promised land.
Paper and coffee. Barnes & Noble has smelled the same for 30 years and probably for its entire existence. Through the aisles of my childhood, I walked past The Baby Sitter’s Club, American Girl, and Goosebumps. It felt like a rite of passage. The magazine section was in the back and it took up the entire wall. Adults quietly leafed through periodicals, sunken into the chairs scattered around the display.
There the were. With their dizzying collages and bubbly fonts, the fluorescent covers of Bop and Tiger Beat were impossible to miss. Reverently, I opened the shiny pages. Interviews! Pin up posters, the photos creased into fourths, ready to be gently pried from their staples and taped to a bedroom wall. I couldn’t get enough. These were my entry drugs into the world of magazines.
Magazines were my friends and constant companions. With their Calgon scented pages and skincare samples stuck to advertisements, they offered a multi-sensory experience and fantasy of who I could become if I just bought the right products. I suspected then and I’m sure now that these teen magazines were problematic, with their very prescriptive ideal of teenage girlhood. Yet, I still enjoyed the alternate life I got to explore in the pages of my favorite magazines.
🎵When did it end… all the enjoyment… 🎵
My love of magazines continued into my adult years. A beach trip was not complete without snagging a copy of Elle, Allure, Cosmo, or Vogue from the newsstands. Now with my own money, I could treat myself to a massive stack. What I love is the ability to jump in, read an article, and jump back out. Something to flip through when I’m nervous at a doctor’s appointment or to chat with my hair stylist about as she does my highlights, folding foil into my hair like origami.
For a quarter of a century, magazines have been the physical link between the uncertain and stressful present and those carefree, joyful days of my childhood summers. As Beanie Babies and Tamagotchis disappeared from the shelves, I could rely on magazines for that rush of comforting nostalgia.
In the last few years, while I wasn’t paying attention, the Big Women’s Print Magazine Industrial Complex has pretty much died off. Scouring the news racks of a Miami Publix for something to read poolside last fall, I chalked it up to a fluke that there was nothing but $15 copies of outdated home decor magazines. When my mom ended up in the hospital this March, she requested a magazine. Off to Walmart I went, only to discover the same predicament. I settled on a special edition Oprah magazine and a copy of Southern Living with special articles about porch decor, even though my mom lives in an apartment. A nervous flyer, I spent 20 minutes this spring hunting for a decent magazine at the airport to flip through while I tried to ignore my racing heartbeat. They only had heavy publications. News magazines and National Geographic issues with dense articles. My beloved fashion mags have gone the way of the buffalo, or at least the way of requiring a special trip to the bookstore and emptying my wallet.
You don’t know what you got ‘till it’s gone.
The Experiment
Reflecting on this, I began to wonder if I was remembering magazines through rose tinted glasses. There was but one way to find out. I needed to get my hands on one.
Ebay to the rescue. Sidenote, if you are sitting on a stack of 90’s teen magazines, you might have a tiny goldmine. I bought the cheapest one I could find circa summer 1997, the time period that forever lives in my memory as the best of my life.
My treasure arrived in a study square mailer. I peeled back the cardboard flap with reverence. I shook it out from the box as if emptying the prize from a box of Cracker Jacks. There was a lot riding on this magazine. Would it transport me to the summer of 1997 to relieve those sun soaked, carefree days? Would my body image issues all make sense, something I could trace directly back to this stack of paper in my hand?
The first thing I notice is how floppy and soft the magazine is. Presumably it’s been sitting under a pile of its magazine brethren for nearly 3 decades. The word Seventeen is splashed across the cover in gold letters against a glossy white background. The cover story is about finding the next big model. Five beautiful young women smile back at me, their teeth shiny white, eyebrows thin and arched. I hold it up to my nose, disappointed that the only memory the smell evokes is changing the toner cartridge at work.
With a gentle rustle, I turn the first page.
There it is, the transition. Not unlike entering the wardrobe and going to Narnia. There is a clear distinction between my real world and the fantasy world in these pages. And here, I am in control. I turn the page only when I am ready and if I have come to a natural stopping point, I just sit it down.
I wait for the magic to hit. I’ve prepared to write all about how great magazines are compared to my phone. Get off my lawn, kids. That was basically supposed to be the gist of this essay.
The magic is going to come after this advertisement for CoverGirl lipstick. Or Frizz Ease. I see the seeds of my earliest brand loyalties.
Gillette razors.
Tampax.
I tell myself this is different. I mean shit, I spent like $30 to have this magazine shipped to me so I need it to deliver me a concentrated dose of the good ‘ol days. Some may call this the Sunken Cost Fallacy or something.
I try to write about it for this post. I type “I can linger over the artful designs or flip right past them. I don’t have to wait through unskippable ads and the lines of what is an advertisement are more clearly defined (though still blurred).”
Only it’s a complete lie.
A Future Fueled by Nostalgia
The magazine is not a portal, it’s simply a time capsule. One heavy with advertisements aimed at selling 12 year old me shit I didn’t need. An eight page fashion spread called “Cheap Thrills” is a not-so-subtle advertisement for discount retailers with thin models smiling coyly in Target board shorts and eating Herr’s potato chips in carpenter jeans from Kmart. In the back, advertisements for fat camps. Make-up tutorials come with handy guides on what products you need to buy to achieve an icy, aqua eye or mint hued nails.
This is what I missed so much?
Not only do I find myself uninspired, I can’t even entirely blame this type of magazine for body issues. There is frankly some decent content. An article on changing to a vegetarian diet, theater club, body image, a beautiful photo essay of regular high school kids. Possibly my favorite part is the analog trolls who mailed in letters to bitch about the prom hairstyles in the previous issue and were published.
Having re-read a magazine from my own personal golden age, I don’t think I actually miss magazines the way I thought I did. Opening Seventeen, I thought I’d reconnect with all the things that made physical magazines cool. Instead, nothing remains except that faint whiff of nostalgia. Which has its own merit, in fairness.
Social psychologist Verbon Cheung put it succinctly in an interview with Washington Post:
Reminiscing reinforces our sense of self-continuity, strengthening the narrative we tell about our lives, which is important for our mental well-being. This may be because of what our nostalgic memories tend to be about: ourselves at the center of a story with other people we love. (Sima, 2024)
What I miss is hanging out with my grandma eating Cheez-Its and trashing red carpet looks in the National Enquirer on school nights well after I should have been asleep. The comforting, mind numbing distraction of a dumb article about The Hottest Color for Spring! while I’m waiting anxiously in the waiting room for health news. I miss the well worn copy of Cosmopolitan that would spark conversations at the salon over the roar of hairdryers.
Magazines serve as a tangible link between the child that I was with the woman I’ve become. Maybe I am no longer a little girl weaving friendship bracelets and choreographing dances to the Spice Girls anymore. But I am still content as ever with a fashion mag in my hand. Only now, I have to drive all the way to Barnes and Noble to buy those that remain. I guess I’ve come full circle.
Cheung points out in the Washington Post that “Nostalgia activates the same ‘memory highway that takes us backward in time as the one that ‘could project into the future’ (Sima, 2024). This is a concept I can get behind. A nostalgia fueled future.
When it comes to magazines, a perfect example of a nostalgia powered future is seen in the work of photographer Elizabeth Renstrom. Restrom took her memories of teen magazines into the future with an AI generated issue of Yummy.
When asked if she thought magazines were dead, Renstrom replied:
I don’t know if they’re ever going to die. I heard someone say the other day that they subscribe to so many amazing writers on Substack and wish they could all be available in one place—I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s a magazine.’ (Seyej, 2024)
Maybe this is just a big zombified version of the wrinkled Seventeen of my youth.
So what’s my finding in the end, when blissful memories confront reality? Like my own past, the magazine was not as bad as I remember on my most pessimistic days nor as wonderful as the rose colored glasses made it seem. Sometimes, the past is just the past.
I’m ready for what is next.
Sources
Sima, R. (2024, January 2). Feeling nostalgia is good for our present and future well-being. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/12/28/nostalgia-mental-wellbeing/
Sayej, N. (2024, January 9). Review: Elizabeth Renstrom’s “Yummy” Is A.I.’s Take On Old-School Teen Tabloids. Observer. https://observer.com/2024/01/elizabeth-renstroms-yummy-is-a-i-s-take-on-old-school-teen-tabloids/
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This is wild. I remember that magazine! Those advertisements. I’m such a nostalgia highway 🛣️ girl. Loved this read!
This is a trip down memory lane and a reality check on nostalgia all in one great piece of writing.
I miss the smell of the perfume samples in the magazines though. I think I mostly miss the innocence in thinking one of those magazines articles could change my life.