What do teenage girls really want in a magazine? According to Glossy, an online zine launched last week from Happy Puppy creators Attitude Networks, the answer is makeup, fashion, boys, and models, models, models. But the girls' zine community already online is concerned that the entrance of traditional teen fare, à la Seventeen or YM, could undermine the alternative girls' content that's thrived thus far online.
"It's disappointing to see something so damaging coming in," explains Rebecca Odes, whose girl zine gURL already draws 30,000 teens a month. "Traditional fashion magazines like Glossy are saying, 'This is what girls want: makeup and fashion and boys.' What we are trying to show with gURL is that girls want other things - but it was never possible to find them anywhere else before the Web."
Attitude Networks, which owns Happy Puppy and Games Domain, the top two online gaming sites, hopes that it can grab a piece of the large advertising pie that caters to teen fashion magazines. Its new site, created in conjunction with Ford Models, features a slew of "Glossy girls" - teenage models who "live a charmed existence" and whom the readers are encourage to "get in with." Features include dating tips like "Two Hard-N-Fast Rules for Dealing with a Cheat," book reviews (Cindy Crawford's Basic Face), fashion trends such as fake eyeglasses, and profiles of numerous teenage Ford models.
"Modeling is something all female teens are interested in," says spokeswoman Bridget Massey of Attitude Networks, who explains that models are often teens' role models. "We've partnered with [Ford] so we can have access to the glamorous world of modeling and an inside look at fashion trends."
According to a recent Jupiter study, more than 3 million teenage girls are now online. Currently, however, few large commercial sites cater specifically to them. Instead, commercial teen sites tend to be coed, such as Teen-Net or react.com.
The burgeoning world of self-published women's zines, however, is already drawing large crowds of teenagers. These zines, including gURL, Bust, and Foxy, try to blast traditional women's magazine fare to offer body-positive imagery and criticism of the unrealistic ideals upheld by the fashion industry.
The Web, as self-publishing medium extraordinaire, has allowed independent sites to succeed in pushing alternative messages - to the point where even Seventeen has run features on them. The zine creators worry that Glossy's upcoming media blitz will drown out the new voices that have populated the Web thus far.
Glossy, though, isn't apologizing for its sugary fare. Editor in chief Sarah Goldsmith says teenage girls like models and makeup, and it's simply the old chicken and egg question of whether girls demand the content, or the content creates the audience.
"Everyone picks a positioning voice. Our tone is boys and makeup and fashion, but that's not to say that we won't cover tougher issues," says Goldsmith. She's using the liberal teen mag Sassy as her model, and seeks to promote positive body types and tougher issues as time passes. "I did think we were going to be taken to task for [our focus on models] ... but after two months of our site being up, we think people will realize we're more than that."
Meanwhile, Attitude Networks is planning an official Glossy launch in August that will include TV commercials, radio ads, and mall appearances. It's signing up big sponsorships, and will have celebrities like Alicia Silverstone lined up for future features. And with magazines like Elle, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan already establishing their Web sites, it's likely that other fashion magazines will be moving online quickly too.
"It's like the inevitable happening. Some company with a lot of money is coming in and following the traditional conservative girl media path," explains Esther Drill of gURL. "It's like taking a step backward."
