Why inspirational magazines are so important for adolescent girls
Every girl needs a good magazine when she is going through the awkward years of teenager hood.
Realistically, every girl/women/lady needs a magazine in every stage of her life, but in those years when you gain your consciousness about your body, mind and image in your teens, that’s when it is most important.
Growing up in Namibia, I consider myself fortunate that our neighbouring country South Africa had a group of strong females that published the monthly magazine Saltwater Girl (or lovingly called SWG).
SWG was positivity jammed into a hundred or so pages. It was a magazine that was also written by the youth, not only the journalists, with letters from its readers, art, photos, fashion picks, memories and guest writers in every issue.
Rather than portraying a lifestyle society at any present moment wanted the youth to aspire to, SWG listened to what the youth was saying and feeling and mirrored this in its pages.
SWG’s core concept was the life of the outdoors. A surf, swim and soke up the sun kinda vibe. Promoting a healthy lifestyle, but never once talking about diets, the perfect body or filling pages with celebrity photos.
Not even the cover was (in my memory) ever a celebrity photo. Instead, it was real girls doing real things. South African (natural-looking) models, surfers and girls living life to the fullest.
Relatable.
Learning from magazines
In 2013, without announcement, the magazine disappeared from the shelves. No more SWG.
It still feels like a bad break-up where you never got any explanation why things had to end.
Fortunately, my eldest sister was an avid SWG reader and collected and saved every issue she ever bought, which she then passed down to me.
I would have been pretty lost without them.
SWG taught me to look up to women who aim to change the world. It resonated with my desire to be outdoors, to live a life breathing fresh air and being wild.
And even in its advertisements throughout the mag it inspired me to “live the search” with Ripcurl and “live, love and believe” with Lizzy. Or rejoice at the creativity of a photograph with Roxy and Billabong.
Most importantly, SWG was a space to be myself. Always “keeping it real”, dreaming big and aiming to take life one wave at a time.
Leaving gaps, filling gaps
SWG has left a gap in the market. A gap of inspiring young women - the future of tomorrow - to live a healthy, authentic and outdoor-filled life. Not a life aspiring to live like a celebrity, following diets that will change how your natural self is meant to look or put on make-up excessively before you even know who you really are when you look at your reflection.
A gap that mirrors how teenage girls are feeling and what their life looks like – not a guidebook to who they should be.
A gap for all the saltwater girls. And maybe it is up to us to fill that gap - In the way we show up online, in the way we present ourselves to teenage girls and if we are writers – in the way we express ourselves and choose to influence.
Ideally, we’d come together and form another version of Saltwater Girl. To give all the young girls out there a platform where they feel represented, heard and understood.
