By Juliana Pearson (February 3, 2002)

Clear your mind and imagine the following: Seventeen Magazine meets Ivy League prep. It seems like an improbable combination, doesn’t it? Apparently, this is not the case, as I found out last Friday when they (by "they" I mean, of course, Annemarie Iverson, editor in chief at Seventeen) attempted to brainwash me.

That afternoon, a March edition of the illustrious publication appeared on my kitchen table. I assumed that aliens must have landed because I had not cracked open a copy of Seventeen since a minor identity crisis in the eighth grade. I found out later that one of my mother’s coworkers had gone to college with actress Jennifer Garner, featured on the cover. Apparently, the cover story had not been too captivating because she gave it to Mom so I could peruse the mag’s "Top 100 Prom Dresses." As a budding writer-sociologist, I was curious about what Seventeen was selling to its audience (I’d guess that the age of the average reader is approximately 12 years old considering that all the girls I knew who read Seventeen in middle school have abandoned it for Cosmo). 

I opened up to a fashion "article" (really a series with photographs with captions describing the model and where to buy the clothes the model is wearing) entitled "The New Preppies." The following pages were filled with pictures of clothing the folks at Seventeen "dared Brittany [Spears] to try." These outfits were not your "Abercrombie and Fitch Swim Team" tee shirts. They were the genuine article. They were Jackie Kennedy’s clothes, the clothes my homemaker-grandmother admired in the 1950’s. They were attractive. They were frightening.

The women wore pearls, long tennis skirts and loafers. The male models were fond of white trousers and navy blazers with plaid ties. Everybody was smiling. Captions read "Pricilla attempts to serve in a strapless dress" and "Lindsey falls down laughing during croquet." I smelled a parody in the making. The article was amusing until I glanced again at the picture Pricilla, who was still managing to keep he upper half inside her lacy pink frock as she leaped into the air, tennis racquet in hand. In the background, a man in khaki shorts, polo and white baseball cap manicured the grassy court. He was black. Pricilla was white, and so were all of her Hyannis Port cronies. So, the message was "if we’re going to return to the fifties, then let’s return to the fifties. Who’s ready for the back of the bus?" Ironically, the same issue of Seventeen featured an article about how much racial tensions affect teens. Hmm, I wonder why they do?

On the next page, I received "The Lowdown on Preppy," instructing me to "dust off [my] top siders and headbands" because "clean cut is cool." The first picture featured, rather appropriately, Jackie K and family. Great, I thought, another group of young adolescents will find themselves fascinated with the grace and charm of Cape Code, described by Seventeen as "the quintessential preppy heaven." Like so many before me, I’d found myself enthralled by Camelot grace and charm during said identity crisis at thirteen. I bought myself a copy of Make Gentle the Life of this World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy by his son Maxwell Taylor Kennedy. Luckily, I actually read the featured excerpts from RFK’s journal. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that as many of today’s middle schoolers glide from Brittany Spears to "genuine prep" to the next craze, they won’t pause to absorb ideals.

The next celebrity featured was director Spike Jonze (Director, "Being John Malkovich"). Apparently, he "has made the nerd-preppy thing cool. He wears khaki pants and collared shirt, and exudes prep-school nonchalance even when he’s attending the MTV Video Music Awards." I don’t know much about Jonze but considering an Internet article (www.indiewire.com) explained that "Jonze is known for his private persona, more press-shy and awkward than what's often required of a star," he was most likely not trying to exude anything, except maybe his true self.

Perhaps my favorite photo of all in Seventeen was one the staff had resurrected from a 1975 issue of the magazine, in which a young girl played tennis in socks that were the exact shade of yellow as her sweater. Her caption read "Whether they’re stomping the divots at a polo match or volleying on the courts, prepsters do sometimes break a sweat--but only in Tretorns and tennis whites, of course." I’m in no mood to find out what Tretorns are exactly. However, if we do end up traveling back to their heyday, don’t look for me on Hyannis Port. You’ll find me at Woodstock.