by Georgia Luckhurst

When I heard about the launch of the new Miss Vogue magazine in the UK, I was instantly both excited and nervous.  For a magazine lover like myself, a British version of Teen Vogue is long overdue.  However, there were worries – was Miss Vogue going to perpetuate those endless, unattainable body expectations girls face on a daily basis?  Was the magazine going to be full of “bikini-body” diet plans and the usual depressing dose of heteronormative language?  Or was it going to use its potential as a publication to finally talk to teenagers honestly about being themselves, no matter what weight, race, gender or sexuality they are?

Maybe surprisingly, Miss Vogue isn’t a failure in my eyes.  In fact, it contained some pretty awesome features – an article by the amazing Rookie editor, feminist style blogger Tavi Gevinson, as well as a truthful and comforting discussion conducted by a group of British teenagers about the pressures of growing up as a girl today.  Some parts of the magazine were honestly perfect, and I loved their description of Meadham Kirchhoff’s fashion as “feisty [and] feminist,” especially considering how the majority of magazines with a teenage target audience wouldn’t dare use the F word in a positive way.

My problem with Miss Vogue isn’t in its subject matter, or even what messages it conveys in its writing: my problem is the fact that, as usual, a magazine like this had the opportunity to show a variety of girls–curvy girls and skinny girls and girls of every ethnicity and sexuality alike–and they didn’t.  As usual, a magazine had the opportunity to represent the real world and make girls feel beautiful the way they are naturally, like everyone deserves to feel, and yet they didn’t.  The positivity of the writing completely contradicted the fact that every single fashion shoot consisted of conventionally attractive (thin, mostly white) models – gorgeous girls, undoubtedly, but only one type of girl.  There are so many sizes and shapes out there, so why do magazines like Miss Vogue only showcase one type of human?

On asking some of my friends about what they thought about the influence of magazines on teenage girls, I heard some interesting opinions. A couple of friends agreed with me. My friend Lydia said that “teen magazines make girls aspire to be celebrities, not athletes,” and our friend Sasha agreed, saying that such mags “are influencing society’s version of perfect, and I think they need to take into account how much they influence teenagers’ lives.”

My friend, Jessie, disagreed: “I think that it’s more the responsibility of the parents to instil self confidence in their child than to have to alter the media.”

Either way, reading Miss Vogue, I couldn’t help but feel that there is so much still to achieve – I just hope they listen to the voices they’re supposed to be talking to.