Seventeen - Not That Many Pages Worth Reading

Someone ordered "Seventeen" magazine to be delivered to my home. It was sent in Princess Ones name. I contacted her asking if she ordered it, she said she didn't. I asked all the girls if they ordered it and no one had. 

I would think if someone ordered it for my girls, they would have ordered it in one of the younger girls names. I never received a bill for the magazine and it has continued to come for six months. 

I started reading it as I didn't want to expose the younger girls to something I wasn't sure I agreed with so I wanted to read it before letting them read it.

There hasn't been one copy of the magazine that I have been comfortable letting the girls read in full. 

I have been out of the "teen" magazine loop for many years but I was quite disturbed by some of the articles they feature. 
 
I have loved a few of the smaller articles they have where they focus on girls who have gone after their dreams and done well building businesses. 

They have so many advertisements and I started ripping out the few articles I liked and throwing the rest away. I burn all the papers and bills that I have as we don't have paper recycling in our town so that means, I burn most of the magazine. 

I laugh about this as I am "censoring" what my girls read and "burning" what I don't agree with which is kinda funny.

I do find it interesting what the magazine seems to find "amazing" in women. Last month they had an article about an illegal immigrant family that delivered one of their children in the U.S. That means that the child is a citizen and the sister and parents are illegal. 

The article played on the readers emotions that this family could be ripped apart and the girl would be left alone in the U.S. I felt it was "brainwashing" the readers who are at an influential age. It told them how they could "help" fix the situation.

I was frustrated that they didn't take a look at how the family could have legally entered the U.S. or how the girl was free to join her family in their country of origin until they could come to our country legally. The options they gave were "ripping the family apart" and how people could help them stay by doing "these things" then listed how they could help the family. 

There are so many needy people in the U.S. and world yet they focus on a family that seems to have a nice home as they took pictures of them there. The parents are employed obviously, but not paying taxes if they are illegally here as the article stated. I was frustrated that they focused on the need to "help" these people who are actually criminals in the eyes of our government. There are so many ways to help those who are doing their best in life and have had some bit of hard luck, I would rather see them focus on helping those who are doing all they can and may need help. 
 
Here is a post of one such person and situation. She lost her five children and fiance in a smoldering fire while she was working at Burger King. She had no car and had to ride her bike home to find her entire family had died due to smoke and the detector she had didn't go off until the fire men broke the door down which fueled the fire into flames but by then, they had all died of smoke inhalation due to the smoldering smoke. The detector was the same one I had and pictured in one of my blog posts and that is how they found the manufacturer of the alarm as hers was destroyed beyond recognition other than the red "test" button.

How about writing an article on ways they can help bring about legislation to force builders to put Photoelectric / Ionic smoke detectors in new buildings. Last week, I talked to the woman who originally called me about this as my sister found my original smoke detectors (I gave them to her after having mine replaced) and I told the woman I would send them to her as they have a "room" of these detectors so they can use them to show how they don't work as needed for court or legislators. She told me of two families that lost children in college dorms due to non-working detectors.

I think the woman who lost her five children and fiance would be a wonderful person to interview and then they could post a "how to help" square on her article. How many lives could be changed or saved with that type of article? Getting the youth thinking of ways they can make a difference on a large scale for the good of humanity and maybe their own life at college in the process.

I then read another article about an amazing girl who "attended her mom's wedding." basically all she did was to go to her lesbian mom's wedding. I am happy that they are happy but how did this girl do something amazing? 
 
There are so many amazing people in this world doing amazing things and they highlight things to write about that promote their agendas in their feature articles. 

I ended up with less than ten pages of things I wanted my girls to read out of more than 120 pages. 

I discuss many of the articles and why I don't like them with my girls. I am sad for those girls reading the magazine without some insights as to how they are being brainwashed. I am not sure they see it for what it is and think they take the articles at face value rather than seeing the agenda behind the articles. 
 
My favorite article was an interview with Kelly Clarkson commenting on how she didn't really date in high school. I loved how real she is, they included a picture of her looking like any other teen, not all made up in the article as well. 

There was an ad for fingernail polish that had a cute manicure on it that I ripped out to try on Princess Five on her next manicure. There was an article about a girl who started her own teen bra line and I ripped out a college road trip page as it had a good suggestion that I thought Princess Four could do at her college, not that I liked all the suggestions on that page but they can also think for themselves. 

I leave the articles I think would be good for the girls to read on the table where we eat so when they have a minute, they can look through them. We then discuss them at dinner. 

In all, there wasn't much good reading in the lot. On the bright side, I have some paper to start my next fire!