[Truncated abstract] The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze how Indonesian female teen magazines represent Indonesian adolescents. Female teen magazines are an important source of information on how gender is constructed in Indonesia. The thesis will contribute modestly not only to knowledge in the immediate fields of gender relations and adolescence in Indonesia but also to the wider body of literature on the relationships among gender, capitalism and patriarchy and the role of print media in shaping these relationships. Consequently, I place my discussion of how adolescents are presented in Indonesian female teen magazines within a larger context of global-local interaction at the national level. This research places Indonesian female teen magazines within the wider genre of women’s magazines. Most of the research on female magazines is focused on women rather than female adolescents, but because gender relations in society cut across the generations, this research is relevant to the study of magazines for female adolescents. Theories about women’s magazines provide insight into women’s magazines as a forum of expression that reflects gender and power relations in society. Teen magazines exist due to the rising significance of Indonesian adolescents. Indonesian adolescents emerged as a significant social group because of the course of national history and the state’s national development. Adolescence in this thesis is not treated as a biological stage of human physical development, but as the result of changes in the perception and treatment of young people by the society in which they appear. In the analysis I use Merry White’s argument with regards to marketing strategies to adolescents. I claim that Indonesian female teen magazines often have a conflicting double agenda in representing adolescents.¹Teen magazines have to make money for publishers and advertisers in order to achieve their own financial security and, at the same time, these magazines have to acknowledge local values in order to be accepted by the society. For marketing purpose, adolescents in teen magazines are represented as a modern social group. Modernity in the magazines is associated with a globalized western popular culture. My particular interest is to explore to what extent and in what ways western influences (as the standard of modernity) are employed to construct representations of female adolescents. I argue that the ways the magazines construct their own ideals of the “west” are related to the ways they construct images of Indonesian female adolescents. The magazines portray local adolescents emulating western performance and appearance