The teen fangirl magazine Tiger Beat is going through some major changes. Last year a group of 17 investors - including notables like TV host Nick Cannon and basketball star Kevin Durant - bought Tiger Beat for roughly $2 million. Since then the magazine has a new look, a new website, and updated their content to better reflect today’s generation of girls. Ilana Nash studies adolescence through Western Michigan University’s Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. She says the magazine provides a safe haven for young girls.
Tiger Beat’s Beginnings
Tiger Beat started in the mid-1960s. It covered pop music of the day. Nash says at first it was interviews with musicians from bands like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
But by the late 1960s, Nash says the magazine fed romantic fantasies of male pop stars to straight, female teens. The articles had intimate details about the lives of pop icons - their families, their favorite colors, and even their struggles.
“There was a story in a 1969 issue of Tiger Beat about how Peter Tork [of the Monkees] is a tortured soul who has problems and we should feel sympathy for him, caring for him in a kind of motherly, sympathetic girlfriend way. And the example of trouble that they gave was poor, confused Peter was beating his girlfriend - but we need to have sympathy and understanding for that because he’s young and he’s confused. And when I read that, my hair stood on end,” says Nash.
Nash says fortunately by the time she started reading Tiger Beat in the late 70s, the editors had gotten rid of these more toxic messages. There was also more coverage of female pop stars. But Nash says the focus was much the same:
“Here are your idols favorite foods so you can imagine you’re cooking them. Here’s a picture of your idol making his bed just like you have to do in the morning. And by the way, isn’t it fun to see a boy in his bedroom.”
Nash says there was always a little undertone of sex.
Tiger Beat As A Safe Haven For Girls
Nash says girls often have a hard time expressing romantic desires without becoming a target:
“The ‘good girl’ is supposed to not have an externalized desire or interest. She’s supposed to passively wait for someone to choose her. And if a girl goes out and says, ‘Hi, I’m in public and I’m crazy about this guy and I want him,’ what gets said about her? She’s either a little bit nutty or a little bit slutty. And if you go out and say hi I have sexual interests now, quite frankly there are going to be a lot of creepy old men that take you up on that in a horrifying way.”
Nash says it’s nice to have magazines like Tiger Beat that caters to that desire in a completely safe way:
“The idea in the magazines is that the boy you like is a safe, wholesome character who is not going to grab your butt or try to undress you or do anything that actual males do to teenage girls when they’re interested in them.”
Changes At The Magazine
The new Tiger Beat has a bigger web presence - and Nash says that’s vital to the magazine’s existence.
“Now you can follow your favorite star on Twitter and see what they say with their own fingertips. You don’t need a mediator anymore to have that kind of immediate access to your star,” she says.
Nash says the over-sexualized fantasy pages of things like how to cook you idols favorite meals are likely gone too. There’s more lifestyle content, like what girls should wear to prom. There are even a few articles that discuss hard-hitting topics of the day - like LGBT rights and activists like MalalaYousafzai.
Why There Isn’t A Tiger Beat For Boys
Nash says for girls, there is a “fetishized in-between space” as a girl grows into a woman. She says popular culture seems to take an interest in this. Nash says a good example is all of those “ugly duckling” movies where a girl has a makeover and becomes beautiful. But popular culture isn’t as interested in the changes boys go through. Nash says boys don’t need a teen magazine to idolize the female form because they have Playboy. In pop culture, boys just suddenly become men.
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