I was tempted to buy this...and I'm 18! (Sugar)

Name: RiotGrrly

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Product:	Sugar
Date:	13/10/01 (286 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Advice, Freebies

Disadvantages: Language

I started reading Sugar when it first came out some five/six years ago. I stopped buying it becuase I went through a "mature" stage but now my whole life is pretty much back at the stage where I want tacky pink freebies and I'm bored of trying to direct my man...no, never mind, go check out the opinions on More!

Taking the broad spectrum of magazines pre-Sugar, what was on offer to females went from Bunty to Cosmo. Magazines such as Shout catered for little girls wanting to be teenagers...but what about teenagers who wanted to be more grown up? Sugar magazine filled, in my opinion, a niche market. It was glossy, like "grown up" women's magazines. The content deals with issues that parents rarely touch and schools try and teach you but it ends up being quite frankly embarassing. My boyfriend's mum is a school nurse and the idea of her saying the word "condom"...no. Just, no.

Sugar has all the usual "girlie" stuff in: make up tips, hair styles, fashion pages and posters. At a time when having "the look" is all important, Sugar always comes out top with advice on how to dress if you're tall/small/skinny/chubby. It also gives advice on being healthy. I can understand why this may concern some parents but trust me on this: Cosmo may tell you to run twenty miles a week, not eat fish and wholemeal bread on the same day and meditate every night, Sugar is the basics: more fruit and veg, less crisps, play at the playground with your mates to get fit. If only the USA had Sugar... The language makes me cringe a little and even my younger sister laughs: lush lads, anyone? But the magazine isn't for me, who am I to criticise?

Where girls magazines come under fire - and I remember seeing this on the news - is the way they deal with sex, drugs and other sensitive issues. That is, exposing children to this sort of thing too soon. How soon is too soon? The playground is one big sex ed. fo
rum! If talking to parents is too embarassing and school is downright impossible, this is the first port of call for many young girls, and a damn good one it is too!

Every now and then, Sugar runs "body specials" which are (sometimes) sealed sections in the magazine. It deals with puberty and how to cope, periods and how to cope and also what boys experience during puberty. It really is everything you ever wanted to know and were too embarassed to ask. They also run features on drugs and eating disorders, using real life stories to illustrate their point and always giving out help line numbers. Sex, I think, is the biggie but again this is dealt with in an appropriate manner: the problem pages, real or not, are the first place we all turn to in a magazine (you don't? Liar). Sensible advice from people who don't look like your auntie.

I can relate to people who criticise these magazines. I bought Sugar for my sister once and tore out the pages on chlamydia, but that was error on my part. Other magazines, such as Just Seventeen have had to alter their format (now a glossy called J17) in order to compete with Sugar, which says a lot about the Sugar formula and its popularity. I'd recommend it to girls around the 14/15 to seventeen age group, and punk chicks with a fetish for all things pink and plastic.

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