Woke girls: from The Girl’s Realm to Teen Vogue

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe article places the girls’ magazine Teen Vogue within the broader history of girls print culture, by reading it in relation to the Victorian girls’ magazine Girl’s Realm. These two periodicals represent two moments in the history of print culture, the rise of magazines in the late 19th century, bookended by what appears to the end of print culture in the early 21st century. During these moments, both magazines make and remake the ideal girl through the redefinition and contestation of narrow models of girlhood that reimagine the implied girl reader as invested with political agency. Both of these magazines reimagine the female reader as engaged with the social and cultural politics of their respective eras. The political legacies of these two magazines open up new possibilities for scholars of girls’ media studies to rethink the historical trajectories of feminist girls’ cultures and the relevance of the girls’ periodical press in defining politically activist girl readers.