Appropriate magazine for my 12 year old daughter?

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Hopefully one of you parents out there can help me out. My daughter used to subscribe to Brio magazine, but it ceased publication earlier this year. While not Catholic, the content was Christ-centered and age appropriate and my daughter enjoyed reading. We are now searching for a suitable replacement, but can’t seem to find anything I would feel comfortable with her reading.

We purchased an issue of “Girls Life” magazine, hoping it would parallel the Boy Scout magazine of similar title for boys. Unfortunately it was filled with what I refer to as “starter sex” articles and other morally questionable topics couched in terms meant to portray them as “normal” issues in a pre-teen or teenage girls life.

A search of the internet found TrueGirl magazine, a Catholic “tween” magazine that looked perfect. We subscribed, but the publication appears to be sporadic and my daughter is disappointed.

Surfing the web for alternatives seems to come up dry. There seems to be lots of trashy teen mags out there designed to showcase intellectually and spiritually shallow, hyper-sexed playthings and celebrity news.

Anyone have any suggestions for a quality magazine for a 12 year old girl? I’m not particularly concerned if it’s religious or Catholic. I just want her to be able to pick up and enjoy a magazine without being exposed to questionable morals and bad behavior celebrated as “cool.”
 
Relevant Magazine is a Christian magazine geared more towards teens and 20 somethings but its quality in the fact that it has alot of music reviews relevantmagazine.com/

They do mention sex but in a “fornication is bad and it almost ruined my life but sex in marriage is good and holy”

Again, they are christian, but they more or less are fair to Catholocism. They publish bi-monthly and have a current issue on their site so people can see what its all about. This issue was mostly about bands, so as many high-quality articles as ususal. But look at the “sloth” article in this issue. its very poiniant and good.

It may be too old for her as yet, but its still good to look into.
 
tcm22 said:
Anyone have any suggestions for a quality magazine for a 12 year old girl? I’m not particularly concerned if it’s religious or Catholic. I just want her to be able to pick up and enjoy a magazine without being exposed to questionable morals and bad behavior celebrated as “cool.”
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When I was that age, I used to enjoy Reader’s Digest magazine. There is also a Catholic version, called Catholic Digest.

It’s got clean humour and good, topical news stories about big happy families coping with the dirty dishes, and positive stories about people turning their lives around after addiction and prison, and stuff like that - it’s not graphic at all; it’s just along the lines of “look at these courageous people putting aside all that bad stuff, how can we help them” kind of a thing, and ordinary people telling the adventure of their daily lives in a way that is very readable.

It doesn’t glamourize sin at all; in fact, in a way, it “glamourizes” normality, and makes normality a thing to be desired, like that line in The Devil Wears Prada - “Everyone wants to be us,” except that “us” in this case is intact families that work hard, stay sober, and take good care of their children. 🙂
 
jmcrae said:
When I was that age, I used to enjoy Reader’s Digest magazine. There is also a Catholic version, called Catholic Digest.

It’s got clean humour and good, topical news stories about big happy families coping with the dirty dishes, and positive stories about people turning their lives around after addiction and prison, and stuff like that - it’s not graphic at all; it’s just along the lines of “look at these courageous people putting aside all that bad stuff, how can we help them” kind of a thing, and ordinary people telling the adventure of their daily lives in a way that is very readable.

It doesn’t glamourize sin at all; in fact, in a way, it “glamourizes” normality, and makes normality a thing to be desired, like that line in The Devil Wears Prada - “Everyone wants to be us,” except that “us” in this case is intact families that work hard, stay sober, and take good care of their children. 🙂
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I enjoyed my grandfather’s RD’s from the 1980’s

RD has changed vastly. I do not read it anymore.
 
purplesunshine said:
I enjoyed my grandfather’s RD’s from the 1980’s

RD has changed vastly. I do not read it anymore.
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Even the Catholic version? My husband takes the regular version, and I’m not seeing anything wrong with it, from what little I’ve seen. :confused:
 
How about Campus Life Magazine? It’s Protestant, but lots of good articles for teens, and I do not think the magazine is anti-Catholic in any way, since it’s associated with Christianity Today (the adult version), which we subscribe to, and I’ve never seen anti-Catholic stuff in CT–quite the opposite. My husband and I used to love Campus Life while we were growing up, and he kept his back issues well into his 40s before finally donating them to a church. Here’s the best link I can find: christianitytoday.com/iyf/

My personal recommendation is Synchronized Skating Magazine (especially since they just published one of my stories:) )!. But I guess not everyone will be interested! Here’s a link: synchronizedskatingmag.com/
 
Why do you view sex as something dirty ? If you accept evolution as true, then you should know that to attract a mate, one should be alittle provocative in there dress. This maganize is simply helping a perfectly natural evolutionary process of the mating of two organisms. Its preparing her future mating with numerous mates , its a simple survival mechanism build in all of us.

Dont you believe in Evolution?
 
jmcrae said:
When I was that age, I used to enjoy Reader’s Digest magazine. There is also a Catholic version, called Catholic Digest.

It’s got clean humour and good, topical news stories about big happy families coping with the dirty dishes, and positive stories about people turning their lives around after addiction and prison, and stuff like that - it’s not graphic at all; it’s just along the lines of “look at these courageous people putting aside all that bad stuff, how can we help them” kind of a thing, and ordinary people telling the adventure of their daily lives in a way that is very readable.

It doesn’t glamourize sin at all; in fact, in a way, it “glamourizes” normality, and makes normality a thing to be desired, like that line in The Devil Wears Prada - “Everyone wants to be us,” except that “us” in this case is intact families that work hard, stay sober, and take good care of their children. 🙂
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Funny I used to loooovvvve Reader’s Digest at 10-14. Loved the jokes and anecdotes and quizzes.

I get it sometimes still now. Usually pretty good articles, jokes recipes etc.
 
Update: Just took my daughter to Borders to see what is on the racks. We found a magazine called Bleech that looks designed to appeal to young teenage girls – filled with fashion pics, makeup tips, and light celebrity news. It had the typical advice column were a 15 year old wrote in to ask what she should do since her boyfriend is pressing her for sex. I expected the response to be something along the lines of “do what you think is right, just make sure you’re protected.” Fortunately the response was along the lines of “respect yourself save yourself for the future.” More importantly, that was the only sexual reference anywhere in the entire magazine. I can live with that one, since the thrust of the entire magazine is teen “lifestyle” without the hypersexuality in most of the girls magazines.

She also grabbed a teen entertainment mag that had all the lastest froth from Hollywood and Disney Channel “stars” which looked pretty benign. I suspect she’ll get bored with that one before too long.

After we pulled the magazines off the shelf we went back to the coffee shop to look through them. Halfway through my coffee it struck me that I must have been quite a sight: A 44 year old man sitting in a coffee shop reading teeny bopper magazines cover to cover. 🙂
 
tcm22 said:
… Halfway through my coffee it struck me that I must have been quite a sight: A 44 year old man sitting in a coffee shop reading teeny bopper magazines cover to cover. 🙂
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:rotfl:

I just have to say that while reading your update, I thought how lucky this young girl is to have a mom so dedicated to making sure she still has the opportunity to flip through a girly magazine, but at the same time, making sure it’s still appropriate for her. …then I see you’re her father! That’s so awesome!!! 👍
 
tcm22 said:
heh…guess I didn’t make a proper intro!
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I think it’s better that you didn’t! 😃 And I apologize for my assumption.

I seriously think what you did was the coolest thing ever. I love the visual I have in my head, too!! LOL! Your daughter will always remember these types of things, trust me. Maybe the bigger picture here is that you’re doing so much more than just helping her find cutesy little magazines. Not to sound overly deep or corny, but you’re really helping to shape the woman she will become, the mother, the wife… [SIGN]Well Done![/SIGN]
 
Mary_Gail_36 said:
Funny I used to loooovvvve Reader’s Digest at 10-14. Loved the jokes and anecdotes and quizzes.

I get it sometimes still now. Usually pretty good articles, jokes recipes etc.
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I just want to caution everyone that in recent years, Readers’ Digest seems to have taken a “lean to the left.”

My husband and I have received a gift subscription to RD for two decades, so I have read the magazine for a long time.

It’s subtle, but you can definitely see a trend towards more articles that appeal to liberal-thinking people and espouse their points-of-view.

The celebrity articles are often about people who hold strong liberal political viewpoints and who do a lot of damage to Christian morals by their activism.

The jokes are especially discouraging, as some of them use objectionable humor that you would not comfortably repeat in front of your pastor.

And frankly, I think the writing is not as good. I’ve read articles that contain grammatical errors that a high school English teacher would mark down on term papers.

I would be cautious about endorsing RD as a great read for teenagers.
 
My daughter really liked the American Girl magazine, put out by the makers of the dolls that younger girls seem to love. When she outgrew the magazine, she was sad that there was not an equal magazine for the “next” step. It is a much more innocent magazine than others aimed at that age group. Stories of real girls, not celebrities or wannabees. Their books are also very good, particularly the one that covers grooming and relationships with friends. Sorry, but the name slips my mind just now.
 
Cat said:
I just want to caution everyone that in recent years, Readers’ Digest seems to have taken a “lean to the left.”

My husband and I have received a gift subscription to RD for two decades, so I have read the magazine for a long time.

It’s subtle, but you can definitely see a trend towards more articles that appeal to liberal-thinking people and espouse their points-of-view.

The celebrity articles are often about people who hold strong liberal political viewpoints and who do a lot of damage to Christian morals by their activism.

The jokes are especially discouraging, as some of them use objectionable humor that you would not comfortably repeat in front of your pastor.

And frankly, I think the writing is not as good. I’ve read articles that contain grammatical errors that a high school English teacher would mark down on term papers.

I would be cautious about endorsing RD as a great read for teenagers.
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I agree with this!

I used to love RD, but then I came upon something:

The magazine recycles old jokes - like themilitary jokes

The magazine has some pretty shocking advice it gives to questioners - such as when a Christian boy asked if taking God’s Name in vain is wrong, to whiche the answerer (I forget her name) said “Nah, it’s okay, just don’t do it around your mom!”
 
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