Evaluation: Representation

In my magazine I tried to use stereotypical representation of teenagers to make it appealing to the young teenage target market.

For the casting I used people of a similar age to my target market so they could relate to them as closely as possible. With regards to the main character used throughout my magazine I wanted to represent her through the images as a stereotypical teenage girl. I did this through the costume she was wearing. By putting her in the costume of a casual hoodie, jeans and boots this is something that the target audience would be wearing. From my research I found that when the audience are reading the magazines they wanted to closely relate to the artists featured, so by putting her in a costume that the audience would wear they wouldn’t feel too far away from the artist as it is something that they would wear themselves so they feel that they could dress up like their favourite artist. 

With the double page spread image I wanted to represent ‘Lily-Emma’ as a stereotypical teenage girl but with a sort of rebellious side to her that would appeal to the reader. By locating her in what looks like a quiet park and nice area shows her age but as she is situated standing on top of the bench this shows that she is fun and not the safe girly girl shown by her character and costume.          

The language used throughout the magazine is written as it is directly speaking to the reader. On the contents page for example the use of ‘This week we’ve gathered together some extra special features to help you get through a cold February with some sweet sounding music!’ is written like the target audience would say it. Younger teenagers are more likely to be drawn in with exciting language such as ‘sweet sounding music’ and ‘extra special’ as they are stimulating for the audience and they want to carry on to read the articles. By addressing the audience as ‘you’ it is directly speaking to them, making it more personal and involved.

The language in the article changes slightly as it is written exactly how Lily-Emma is answering the questions. A typical sentence from the article is ‘I love performing it and it makes you feel sooo good inside!’ I used the over-exaggeration of the ‘o’ on ‘sooo’ to express her feeling towards the sentence, so it is like she is speaking it. It also represents her age and they way people talk, appealing to that particular audience.

In the X-factor magazine contents page they do not use as many exclamation marks or bold words to make things stand out. From my research I found that this doesn’t make it as appealing as there is nothing to make it stand out or exaggerate any of the sentences. This may be due to the fact X-factor magazine is aimed at a slightly older audience than my magazine, so they want to keep it more ordered and professional. Throughout my article and contents page I used lots of exclamation marks which make it more exciting and enthusiastic to read for my younger target audience.

An example of speaking directly to the audience in X-factor magazine is ‘We also chatted to the Westlife boys about their comeback’. This is something I tried to do in my magazine so the reader feels more involved like ‘We’ did this for ‘you’, as it is more personal for them.

I used the same conventional ways that NME did when showing Lily Allen, although I was representing a different type of person. I used the costume to represent the stereotypical teenage girl to appeal to the teenage audience. Following the same way that NME magazine did using the stereotypical goth-like look on Lily Allen to appeal directly to the bulk of their target market. I also tried to include the fact that Lily Allen looks quite effortless and people could easily copy her style. As stated before, the costume Lily Emma is wearing could be easily be brought by the target audience, who often look through magazine because they want to copy their style and look like their favourite pop star.