This study examined differences of how females and males were represented in three top teen magazines. Depiction of female and male bodies in the magazines was explored by the cropping of the photographs. The images were examined to determine if emphasis was placed on the face or the body. The researcher used the Body Index Scale coding instrument. A simple random sample of 1200 images in the three top teen magazines was analyzed. The study did not show any statistical significance on hypotheses one, which stated that photographic images of females will be cropped lower on the body than images of males. However, there were significant findings on how images were cropped in relation to story type. The significance of this study was showing how images of females and males are cropped differently in teen magazines. This finding could affect the way adolescent girls think and feel about their appearance.

[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

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Robert W. Meeds / Recent research on magazine advertisements, for the most part, has examined race in terms of representation and gender in terms of stereotypical social roles and objectification. Very few content analyses have been done regarding the depictions of women in terms of specific body types portrayed in the advertising content of women's and teen magazines. In addition, very few, if any, studies have examined women's and teen's magazine advertisements for the presence of gender and racial stereotypes, overt sexuality, and depictions of a body ideal. This content analysis of six mainstream women's magazines explores the existence of all those variables and puts them in context with one another, examining the implications for what these advertisements say about our society. Specifically, this study focuses on the portrayals of women in women's and teen magazines, where previous studies have examined portrayals of women in general magazines or men's magazines, but no focus has been put on teen magazines or specifically women's magazines. Major findings include the obvious suggestions of specific body ideals for women and teens of different racial backgrounds, perpetuation of social role expectations and social stereotypes, and lack of sexual imagery prevalence in women's and teen magazines.