Girls Magazine Shuns Glitz, Goes For Grit

Looking at most magazines designed for teenage girls can be downright depressing, say Evelyn DeLeon and Yong Hua He.

Forever depicting thin and glamorous girls - jauntily dressed, flawlessly coifed, in flirtatious poses - these magazines “make you feel sad, because you know you’re not like that,” said DeLeon, 14.

“And you know there are more important things to think about than whether your hair is silky or you know how to kiss,” added He, also 14, whose family lives in Boston.

The two girls were at work on Teen Voices, a quarterly publication intended to provide an alternative to the standard glitz. As editor in chief Alison Amoroso put it, the magazine is grounded in the realities of most young women’s lives and celebrates “their ideas and abilities instead of their looks, their clothes and their boyfriends.”

Housed in a cluttered, cozy, two-room office in the YMCA building in downtown Boston, Teen Voices is designed and written by teen-agers, with help from a few adults. Most of the girls come from low-income families and are not much involved in school or community activities.

Topics in recent issues have included teen-age motherhood, sexual assault, welfare reform and living with disabilities.

In one article about living with alcoholic parents, Eileen Agosto, a New York City teen-ager, writes that she “saw a drunken beast before me” and wondered “what became of the man my father used to be.”

In another issue, children of gay parents consider what makes a family. Gina Barry, 15, writes that her father left home before she was 2 years old and she “flipped out” when she learned that her mother was a lesbian. After five years of dealing with other people’s prejudices and her own jealousy, she said she is just starting to accept that her mother’s partner “is not trying to take my mother away from me.”

And in a bold attempt to discuss an uncomfortable experience for nearly every young woman, 17-year-old Damali Vidot describes her first trip to a gynecologist.

The magazine’s subscriber-contributors include “teen-age mothers, dropouts, victims of sexual or physical abuse, mentally ill, foster children, learning disabled, runaways and homeless” youths, as well a large number of middle-class, suburban readers, said Anastasia Goodstein, 24, a senior editor and a part-time Boston Globe employee. The publication also is distributed to youth clubs, clinics, school libraries, drug treatment centers and churches across the country.

Amoroso, 30, a former social worker, started the magazine in 1988. Originally a two-color tabloid serving only about 3,000 readers, today Teen Voices is a glossy magazine with full-color covers, with a readership of about 30,000 and a paid subscription of 4,000. Subcriptions are $20 a year, or $8 “for teens on a tight budget,” she said. About 25 percent of the magazine’s funding comes from grants and donations.

With an annual budget of $45,000, Teen Voices is likely to be sold in the next year, Amoroso said, unless she can raise roughly $300,000.

To honor teenage sensibilities, adult editors try not to edit much, encouraging the youth apprentices to shape the look and the content of the magazine. Submissions are invited from any interested girl.

If its fare strikes some adults as too serious and depressing, teenagers interviewed at the magazine office didn’t see it that way. DeLeon said simply: “It’s real.”

Most of the articles, which Amoroso admits vary in quality, are supplemented by statistics, recommended readings and resources to contact for help with problems.

The girls say a magazine is the perfect vehicle to express themselves because many of them were keeping diaries and writing poetry or prose long before they heard about Teen Voices.

Managing editor Shannon Berning, 23, vividly remembered the insecurity that overcame her when she reached puberty. “Suddenly I was a woman and that meant I had better be sure I was attractive to the men around me,” she recalled thinking.

But, Berning said, she had always enjoyed writing and was thrilled to find a magazine “that tried to validate the experience of teenagers as something other than the objects of the male gaze.”

She added: “Society needs to recognize how sophisticated girls really are. And if the teen-agers can talk to each other through a magazine, there’s a lot of hope in that.”