「性教育」としてのティーン雑誌

1980年代の『ポップティーン』における性特集の分析

抄録

    We clarify how the emancipatory orientation of sexuality discourse in women’s magazines shifted in response to the momentum of women’s lib. Conventional media studies have highlighted that such sexuality discourse became more active after the 1970s under the influence of social movements such as women’s lib and sexual liberation in Europe and the United States. This study examines this situation from the perspective of the sexualization of women that developed mainly in the mass media during the 1980s, when women’s magazines were booming, and the reader-driven fashion boom that permeated the entire country brought women to the forefront as consumers. At the same time, the appearance of ordinary women in the mass media expanded the gaze that consumed women as sexual symbols. This sexual signification was internalized by the women’s lib orientation toward equal romantic relationships with men. This trend was observed not only in general women’s magazines but also in teen magazines, and especially in the first half of the 1980s, radical sex features in these magazines became a social problem because of their negative influence on youth through their function as "sex manuals" for young people. This study analyzes an article in the teen magazine "Pop Teen," which was called into question by the Diet in 1984 for its extreme sex features. The magazine’s sex features initially had a "sex education" aspect and later shifted to a structure that provided specific contraceptive knowledge in line with the reality of sex in everyday life. We highlight that the seemingly radical sex features in teen magazines literally functioned as manuals, especially for young women in the 1980s, when women were confronted with equal relationships with men that included sex. The findings shed light on the sexuality discourse of teenage sexuality, an area that has been particularly taboo since modernization.