[.ca] Girl Talk: Adolescent Magazines and Their Readers (ISBN 0802044158)

finally:
Finally, instead of speculating about the effects of media on teenage girls, someone asked the girls themselves! This book examines the features, advertising, and "advertorials" of magazines aimed at teenage girls AND interviews teenage girls (both magazine readers and non-magazine readers). So, in addition to anazlying content (something that is important and interesting but has been done), Currie speaks to girls to find out how they read the magazines, why they read the magazines, and what they get out of them. The results are surprising. In addition to the interviews and content analysis, Currie also provides information about social research methods that I, someone outside of the sociology field, found very interesting. One complaint about the book is that she used several of the same quotes in more than one section of the book. This repetition made me wonder if the author actually intended for someone to sit down and read the book cover to cover.