It must be true – I read it in Seventeen magazine: US popular culture and sexual messages in an era of abstinence-only education

As discourse in sexual education classes across the USA in 1996 began to change, media outlets became important sources of education for teenage girls. Unaffected directly by government policy, one of the most popular teenage girls' magazines, Seventeen, provided a plethora of information on sex. Several scholars have examined teenage magazines' sexual discourse, yet few have assessed the accuracy of sexual health information during a time period when the US Federal Government instituted an abstinence-only curriculum policy for public schools. In addition, there is a gap in the literature regarding magazines' attitudes about teenage abstinence, or lack thereof, especially in a time when politics had taken a very conservative stance on the issue. This paper examines Seventeen magazine between 1996 and 1998 to explore the magazine's attitude towards teen sex and abstinence and to analyse the accuracy of sexual health messages surrounding topics such as abortion, contraception and STDs.