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for teenage girls
Where the advice comes from just the cutest boys
By Lisa Schneider
As magazines go, this is a gnat stepping out onto the dance floor of the tutued waltzing elephants that are the nation's leading teen magazines, from Seventeen to Teen magazine, YM and Teen People, all big titles from major publishers who are deadly serious about defending their market shares.
We bow to this magazine in part because of its name, which as magazine names go is one to die for.
It is called BoyCrazy!
We also bow because of its unique editorial approach, indeed a refreshing notion in a field of publishing where the formulas are as hard-packed as the surface of the Daytona 500 raceway.
This is not to say BoyCrazy! invented this approach; nothing ever gets truly invented in magazines. Nor is it to say this approach is not used to some degree by the established teen titles.
BoyCrazy!, which launched in September with a circulation of 200,000, gives teenage girls advice on makeup, clothes, fashion and, of course, boys, in the grand tradition of teen titles.
But here the advice comes not from older women editors writing from cubicles nestled in the office canyons of New York, attempting to sound younger than their years.
The advice in BoyCrazy! comes from boys.
Handsome boys, at that, young dreamboats, 363 of them from all around the U.S. and Canada, ages 12 to 22 and writing to mostly suburban girls ages 12 to 17.
Indeed, the necessary credentials for a BoyCrazy! writer are being a good, sensitive boy, being cute and being in the right mall at the right time.
One needs to be in the right mall at the right time in order to be picked to join BoyCrazy!'s panel of boy writers.
Recent BoyCrazy! articles include "Great Expectations: Fantasy versus Reality," "On High Maintenance Girls," "Being Single--It's No Big Deal," and "When Guys Like to Take it Slow." The writers are Anthony, #25, John, #35, Kevill, #68, and Caleb, #60 respectively.
BoyCrazy!'s fashion section features clothes and accessories, as well as quotes such as, "Tall shoes are the coolest.--Drew #9," and "A girl wearing pink shows innocence and sort of a shy quality that makes her intriguing.--John #35."
The whole idea behind the magazine, says managing editor Gabrielle Lasting, is to allow girls to get advice from the people whose opinions seem to matter most.
"We wanted to give boys more of a voice, and we also wanted to provide girls with more of a resource for information about the opposite sex," she says.
"I'm just the facilitator. The boys are the experts."
The idea for the magazine emerged from an idea parent Decipher, a Virginia game company, cooked up that failed to go anywhere.
"Decipher has traditionally created games that were targeted at males," says Lasting, so it only made sense for the company to attempt to expand its market by creating products for teenage girls too.
"President Cindy Thornburg wanted to come up with a brand that was geared towards teen girls. She was looking at the newsstands, asking herself, what do girls really want? She realized it was boys."
After scouring malls across the U.S. and Canada for 363 eligible, quotidian heartthrobs, Decipher, Inc. came out with its first set of BoyCrazy! products in January 2000: a BoyCrazy! web site and trading cards, which feature everyday boys and their bios.
But the cards were not selling. So what was the company to do with all the cards and the collection of cute boys it had assembled?
A magazine seemed a logical choice.
"The magazine was the next step in the evolution of the brand," says Lasting.
While magazines such as YM and Teen magazine give sisterly advice on dating and clothes, the fashion and beauty editor of BoyCrazy!, Stephanie Kirby, says, "We have something completely different to offer girls. We have boys telling girls the problems they face. Basically, we're cutting out the middleman."
Or rather, they're cutting out the middle woman.
With categories that include "Boy of the Year," "What Boys Think About Girls," "Crushing," "Romance," and "Boys, Boys, Boys," the magazine that supposedly targets girls feels overwhelmingly filled with testosterone.
The few editorial tidbits not written by boys include a quiz entitled "Are You Boy Crazy?" which is put together by the book's staff, and a couple of Mortifying Moments that are submitted by readers.
Lasting admits that BoyCrazy! needs to get in touch with its feminine side.
"I think the greatest challenge for the magazine will be giving girls an equal voice," says Lasting. "We want to send girls the message that it's ultimately up to them to decide what's important for them."
BoyCrazy! has a long way to go before it can be considered real competition for the accomplished books in the crowded teen category. The publication is still in a semi-test stage as it is still giving away free ad space to advertisers.
Moreover, at 200,000 and a bimonthly frequency it truly is a gnat dodging the heels of the established titles, such as Seventeen, with its 2.4 million circulation, and Teen weighing in with Teen: 2.1 million.
February 26, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Lisa Schneider is a New York writer and a contributor to Media Life.
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