Seventeen

Emi Takei
Categories	Fashion
Frequency	Monthly
Publisher	Shueisha
First issue	1967
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Website	http://www.s-woman.net/st/

Seventeen(セブンティーン) is a monthly Japanese fashion magazine for female teenagers published by Shueisha.

Launched in 1967 as a weekly magazine based on the original American Seventeen, the magazine changed the name to SEVENTEEN in 1987, and to Seventeen in 2008.

Since the late 1990s, Seventeen has been the highest-selling teenage fashion magazine in Japan.^[1], and has featured its exclusive teenage models as ST-Mo (STモ - Seventeen Model).^[2] Well known former Seventeen models include Rie Miyazawa, Hinano Yoshikawa, Keiko Kitagawa, Anna Tsuchiya, Nana Eikura, and Emi Suzuki.

Since the 2000s, just like other popular teenage fashion magazines, some models are from foreign countries mainly in the Eurasian continent, such as the Republic of Sakha, Taiwan, and especially the People's Republic of China.^[2] In most cases, they were discovered in some local auditioning-contests they participated in, or in their local places.^[3] The former Seventeen model Yuka Narumi, a $million-earning model, once disclosed her personal history as she was scouted at the orphanage she grew up in, which was located in an inland area of People's Republic of China, when she was 11 or 12 and then immigrated to "some place I didn't know, where every guy looked rich and spoke in some language I didn't know" (i.e. Japan).^[4][3]

These ex-foreigner models increase in number year by year and most of them, especially those from People's Republic of China, have extremely-thin shapes like 5 ft 12 in and 80 - 95 lbs.^[2]

[edit] Controversy

In the late 1990s, some people (likely in some NPOs) criticised several young female magazines, including Seventeen, for "forcing their readers to have unhealthy lifestyles".

Seventeen had kept silence about it, but in the early 2000s, Seventeen eventually started to feature some "fat" female models.

Since then, there are always some "fat models" among Seventeen models, however, its percentage is still minority. Besides, almost all of the "fat models" are actually not fat; at least under the BMI theory. Notable current or former "fat models" include Keiko Kitagawa, Kaela Kimura, and Emi Takei.

During from 2005 to 2007, Seventeen, ignoring the concept of affirmative action, fired all the "mixed-race" models, in this case, of Eurasian ancestry, who had modeled for the magazine and usually been considered to be overweight models. It was described as the "moggy zero movement" (or the "lard purge", "lard-free") by critical third parties, critics and some journals such as Weekly Gendai (June 4, 2007). After this, the sales of the magazine significantly began to surge.^[2]

Weekly Gendai pointed out that Seventeen's "radicality" has escalated since around 2005, because of the strong influence of the now-defunct lifestyle magazine Burst. Burst, having originally been an indie accessory magazine created by Nishijin stylists from Higashiyama, Kyoto and known for it's radicality and aggressivity, featured many female models and most of the female models who were featured by the magazine became millionaires. Soon after the discontinuance of the magazine, Seventeen hired at least 3 former Burst editors as prominent staffs. On the editorial of Weekly Gendai (June 4, 2007), Tetsuya Miyazaki described Seventeen as the "flaming pastel-colored magazine being taken over by the ghost of Burst", and he pointed out that many "characteristic phrases" of Burst have appeared in Seventeen, especially as it's headlines, since around 2005.

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.bgd70.net/seventeen/ (Japanese)
2. ^ ^{a b c d} Hatena Dictionary(Japanese)
3. ^ ^{a b} Zakzak
4. ^ Tatoo BST May-July, 2009 B0026RB8VU (P.44-45)