“Going Green”

Abstract

In general, sociologists neglect the ways that mass media operate to construct the worldview of adolescents. Although cultural studies tend to celebrate youth culture as expressing resistance to the dominant order, this article draws on textual analysis to explore how the progressive impetus of popular social movements is redefined in adolescent magazines to create mythologies of consumption. Using content and textual analysis of Seventeen magazine published between 1951 and 1991, the author explores the emergence and transformation of environmental discourse as a case in point. This analysis shows that although the current format, which presents readers with endless facts and information about environmental degradation, gives this medium the appearance of a potentially politicizing discourse, it may in fact provide a basis for the “depoliticized speech” described by Barthes.