Seventeen (Japanese magazine)

Seventeen

Feb 2010
Categories	Fashion
Frequency	Monthly
Circulation	327,334 (2008)
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, and has featured its exclusive teenage models as ST-Mo (STモ - Seventeen Model). Seventeen is very popular among models (teenage models) because being featured on the magazine especially its certain page(s), not the cover, strongly helps them to get high-quality endorsement and collection contracts. Well known former Seventeen models (most of whom became famous because of their television appearances) include Rie Miyazawa, Hinano Yoshikawa, Keiko Kitagawa, Anna Tsuchiya, Nana Eikura, and Emi Suzuki.

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 silent 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,and Kaela Kimura.

Main article: Tokenism

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.

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 its radicality and aggressiveness, 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 three 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 its headlines, since around 2005.