This is not your mother speaking: Teenage girls, teen girl magazines, and social change in Australia and the United States, circa 1966-1996

This thesis studies the relationship between teen girl magazines and their readers, spanning four decades, in the USA and Australia. Until the mid-1960s, teen girl magazines prescribed traditional modes of femininity and social participation. From the mid-1960s, pressure from teenage girls to reflect their changing world view and issues that impacted them triggered a change in these magazines and in the relationship between them and their teen girl readers. By examining the relationship between teen girls and their magazines and the tensions within disparate stakeholder groups (parents and advertisers), this thesis challenges understandings of girlhood in the late twentieth century.