‘I’m 15 and Desperate for Sex’: ‘Doing’ and ‘Undoing’ Desire in Letters to a Teenage Magazine

Abstract

In a social climate that largely problematizes young women’s sexuality, voices of sexual desire and pleasure may struggle to be heard. Teenage magazines, in actively marketing young women’s (hetero)sexuality, offer ‘permission’ to talk about sex through their problem pages. This article examines letters written to the advice pages of an Australasian teen magazine in which writers articulated or alluded to sexual desire. Using a feminist, poststructuralist analytical approach, the article looks at the ways in which sexual desire is constructed by writers and by agony aunts, how sexual subjectivities are constituted in the text, and the identification of cultural resources drawn on in these constructions. Analyses suggest that attempts to ‘do’ desire in young women’s letters were often undermined or ‘undone’ in the agony aunt’s responses, particularly desire for someone of the same gender. The article argues that erasure of desire is deeply ironic, given the magazine’s sexual content, and misses an important opportunity to encourage talk about desire.