Handajani Suzie 2005

Globalizing Local Girls:
The Representation of Adolescents in
Indonesian Female Teen Magazines
by
Suzie Handajani
A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree

of Master of Arts undertaken at the University of Western Australia
2005
DECLARATION
I declare that this dissertation is entirely my own work and that it has not been submitted
for a degree or award at this or any other university. To my knowledge it does not contain
material previously published or written by another person where due reference has not
been made in the text.
Suzie Handajani
Submitted 28 February 2005
ii
ABSTRACT
The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze how Indonesian female teen magazines
represent Indonesian adolescents. Female teen magazines are an important source of
information on how gender is constructed in Indonesia. The thesis will contribute
modestly not only to knowledge in the immediate fields of gender relations and
adolescence in Indonesia but also to the wider body of literature on the relationships
among gender, capitalism and patriarchy and the role of print media in shaping these
relationships. Consequently, I place my discussion of how adolescents are presented in
Indonesian female teen magazines within a larger context of global-local interaction at
the national level.
This research places Indonesian female teen magazines within the wider genre of
women’s magazines. Most of the research on female magazines is focused on women
rather than female adolescents, but because gender relations in society cut across the
generations, this research is relevant to the study of magazines for female adolescents.
Theories about women’s magazines provide insight into women’s magazines as a forum
of expression that reflects gender and power relations in society.
Teen magazines exist due to the rising significance of Indonesian adolescents. Indonesian
adolescents emerged as a significant social group because of the course of national
history and the state’s national development. Adolescence in this thesis is not treated as a
iii
biological stage of human physical development, but as the result of changes in the
perception and treatment of young people by the society in which they appear.
In the analysis I use Merry White’s argument with regards to marketing strategies to
adolescents. I claim that Indonesian female teen magazines often have a conflicting
double agenda in representing adolescents. 1 Teen magazines have to make money for
publishers and advertisers in order to achieve their own financial security and, at the
same time, these magazines have to acknowledge local values in order to be accepted by
the society.
For marketing purpose, adolescents in teen magazines are represented as a modern social
group. Modernity in the magazines is associated with a globalized western popular
culture. My particular interest is to explore to what extent and in what ways western
influences (as the standard of modernity) are employed to construct representations of
female adolescents. I argue that the ways the magazines construct their own ideals of the
“west” are related to the ways they construct images of Indonesian female adolescents.
The magazines portray local adolescents emulating western performance and appearance.
However, Indonesian female adolescents are represented conservatively when the
magazines want to acknowledge and show respect to local values and Indonesian gender
ideology. This ideology sees female adolescents as innocent and naïve, and discourages
their potential sexuality as young females. Under the influence of this ideology the
1
Merry White, “The Marketing of Adolescence in Japan. Buying and Dreaming,” Women, Media and
Consumption in Japan. Lise Skov and Brian Moeran, eds. (Honolulu, Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press,
1995), p. 261.
iv
magazines, through the content and the images they structure, are “protecting” these
female adolescents from the “moral vice” of the west by announcing that western moral
influence is bad.
The result of this contradictory representation is a unique group of female adolescents
who live in a world of their own. They are supposed to emulate the appearance of
western pop idols, but at the same time uphold values of chastity and virginity. The
magazines therefore develop a unique adolescent identity but not an empowering one,
because this representation places adolescents within a selectively protective bubble. This
bubble shields adolescents from the real dangers in society that are related to their gender
and sexuality. However, this bubble is not at all protective with regards to a consumerism
that capitalizes on “modern” western body images.
v
CONTENTS
Declaration ii
Abstract iii
Contents vi
List of figures vii
Acknowledgements ix
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
• The background 1
• The research 6
• Thesis structure 8
Chapter 2: Female magazines: meanings and ideologies 10

• What are women’s magazines? 11
• The meanings of women’s magazines 19
• Women’s magazines as pop culture 33
Chapter 3: The social background of Indonesian adolescents 40

• From pemuda to remaja: from freedom fighters to adolescents 41
• Remaja and the legacy of the New Order 48
• The rise of Indonesian teen culture 55
• Indonesian teen culture: a reflection 61
• Where are the girls? 64
Chapter 4: The magazines 69

• Gadis 71
• Kawanku 75
• Aneka Yess! 77
• Summary of the magazines 80
• Jakarta as the centre of being 80
Chapter 5: Globalizing the bodies of Indonesian adolescents 82

• Transforming the look 87
Chapter 6: Shaping Attitudes and values 116

• Transferring the ideas through the language 117
• Shaping the attitude through gendered sexuality 132
Chapter 7: A World of their Own 145
Bibliography 153
vi
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 5.1: Comparison of covers of girls’ magazines and boys’ magazines (after page
88)
Figure 5.2: Citra White Lotion: turning white for male approval (after page 92)
Figure 5.3: Mustika Puteri Whitening Complex: white skin to match your outfit (after
page 93)
Figure 5.4: Pond’s Institute: white as symbol of modernity (after page 96)
Figure 5.5: Pond’s imagery of natural white skin (after page 97)
Figure 5.6: Contact lenses to match your personality (after page 103)
Figure 5.7: Showing off in “Letters to the Editor” (after page 106)
Figure 5.8: Beautiful readers trying to be like professional teen models (after page
107)
Figure 5.9: Ortopedi height enhancer: for models and police officers (after page 110)
Figure 5.10: Height enhancer from America: an effort to be tall and white (after page
111)
Figure 5.11: Revlon modelling contest: standardizing the look (after page 112)
Figure 5.12: The cheerful smiles on girls’ magazines versus the mature
sophisticated look on boys’ magazines (after page 115)
Figure 6.1: Let’s talk like a teenager 1 (after page 122)
Figure 6.2: Let’s talk like a teenager 2 (after page 122)
Figure 6.3: English advertisement for MTV radio DJ hunt (after page 128)
Figure 6.4: English advertisement for a local radio (after page 128)
vii
Figure 6.5: The blond nurse Lolli (after page 134)
Figure 6.6: Explaining the vagina (after page 135)
viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank God the Almighty for sending the following people to me:
Dr. Lyn Parker, my supervisor, who has been there since the very beginning of my study
at UWA. I would like to thank her for her kindness, patience and persistence in guiding
me when I was doing my Graduate Diploma and Master’s thesis. Thank you so much for
tolerating my mood swings and my emotional outburst.
Prof. Delys Bird, my supervisor for my Graduate Diploma in Women’s Studies. I would
like to thank her for giving me a wonderful start at UWA. She made me realize how
lucky I was to be part of a tough but excellent academic environment.
Dr. Judith Johnston, Dr. Steven Chinna and Dr. Jane Long, my lecturers when I was
doing my Graduate Diploma in Women’s Studies. I would like to thank them for making
me feel at ease with my new academic environment.
Rhonda Haskell from the International office who was always there and ready to help and
listen when things seemed too overwhelming for me to handle. I cannot thank you
enough for your continuing moral support during my stay in Perth.
ix
James Toher, who provided great assistance in the computer department. I would like to
thank him for his patience and kindness despite my pestering and ignorance about how
computers work.
My friends from the Scholars Centre at Reid Library. Thank you so much for your
kindness. Because of your kindness I have no other word but to call you my friends.
Staff and friends at Asian Studies. Thank you so much for the moral support and
friendship.
Families and friends both in Indonesia and Australia. I would like to thank them for their
moral support and for letting me go anywhere I wanted in order to pursue my personal
ambition.
Monica Anderson. I would like to thank her for editing my thesis meticulously.
My little angel Wanda Paramartha. I would like to thank her for being there for me and
for her sense of humour. I thought I was going to take care of her, but in difficult times it
was she who took care of my feelings and reminded me, in her own way, to keep going.
Finally I would like to thank Siswo Harsono for letting me go so far away to find myself
again.
x
Savage Garden - Affirmation ∗
(written, sang and produced by: Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones)
I believe the sun should never set upon an argument

I believe we place our happiness in other people’s hands
I believe that junk food tastes so good because it’s bad for you
I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do
I believe that beauty magazines promote low self esteem
I believe I’m loved when I’m completely by myself alone
I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned

I believe you can’t appreciate real love ‘til you’ve been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don’t know what you’ve got until you say goodbye
I believe you can’t control or choose your sexuality

I believe that trust is more important than monogamy
I believe your most attractive features are your heart and soul
I believe that family is worth more than money or gold
I believe the struggle for financial freedom is unfair

I believe the only ones who disagree are millionaires

I believe forgiveness is the key to your unhappiness

I believe that wedded bliss negates the need to be undressed
I believe that God does not endorse TV evangelists
I believe in love surviving death into eternity


∗
Date released: 9 November 1999
http://www.mp3lyrics.org/?artist=SAVAGE+GARDEN&song=AFFIRMATION
(date accessed 17 January 2005)
xi
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
The Background
This research on the representation of adolescents in Indonesian female teen magazines
was precipitated by my earlier thesis about children’s magazines in Indonesia. 1 That
research showed how the Indonesian state gender ideology, and social and cultural
background, played a dominant role in forming the magazine’s message on gender
ideology. The message instructed child readers how to be proper Indonesian girls and
boys and, later on, women and men. The depiction of gender roles in Bobo and in
Indonesian public discourse generally is clear-cut, and follows all the classic binary
oppositions of male-female, public-private, culture-nature, and dominant-submissive. 2
Employing this public discourse, children were inculcated as early as possible with the
1
Suzie Handajani, “Women’s Representation in Children’s Literature in Bobo Magazine,” Graduate
Diploma of Women’s Studies Thesis. at The University of Western Australia, 2002.
2
For representations of Indonesian women in the media, see, among others, the following texts: Suzy
Azeharie, “Representations of Women in Femina: An Indonesian Women’s Magazine,” Master of
Philosophy Thesis at Murdoch University, Western Australia, 1997; Suzanne Brenner, “On Public Intimacy
of the New Order: Images of Women in the Popular Indonesian Print Media,” Indonesia 67 (1999), 13-37;
Burhan Bungin, Imaji Media Massa. Konstruksi dan Makna Realitas Sosial Iklan Televisi dalam
Masyarakat Kapitalistik. [Images in the Mass Media. The Construction and Meanings of Social Reality on
Television in Capitalistic Society]. (Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Jendela, 2001); Barbara Hatley, Nation,
'Tradition' and Constructions of the Feminine in Modern Indonesian Literature’ in J. Schiller and B.
Martin-Schiller (ed) Imagining Indonesia: Cultural Politics and the Politics of Culture Center for
International Studies, University of Ohio, 1997a; Idi Subandy Ibrahim and Hanif Suranto, eds., Wanita dan
Media. Konstruksi Ideologi Gender dalam Ruang Publik Orde Baru [Women and the Media. Constructing
Gender Ideology in the New Order’s Public Space]. (Bandung, Indonesia: Remaja Rosdakarya, 1998);
“Perempuan dan Media” [Females and the Media] Jurnal Perempuan, No. 28 (2003); May Lan, Pers,
Negara dan Perempuan. Refleksi atas Praktik Jurnalisme Gender pada Masa Orde Baru [Press, State and
Females. Reflection on Gendered Practices of Journalism in the New Order]. (Yogyakarta, Indonesia:
Kalika, 2002); Pam Nilan, “Romance Magazines, television soap operas and young Indonesian Women.”
Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs. Volume 37, no. 1. Canberra: The Association for the
Publication of Indonesian and Malaysian Studies, Inc., 2003; Ashadi Siregar and Rondang Pasaribu and
Ismay Prihastuti, eds., Media dan Gender. Perspektif Gender atas Industri Suratkabar Indonesia [Media
and Gender. A Gendered Perspective in Indonesian Print Media]. (Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Lembaga
Penelitian Pendidikan Penerbitan Yogya (LP3Y) and Ford Foundation, 1999); and Priyo Soemandoyo,
Wacana Gender dan Layar Televisi. Studi Perempuan dalam Pemberitaan Televisi Swasta [Gender
Discourse and Television Screen. Analysis on Females on Private Television News]. (Yogyakarta,
Indonesia: LP3Y and Ford Foundation, 1999).
1
values, norms and ideals of gender roles in Indonesian culture as mediated by the
paternalistic state bureaucracy.
In this research I investigate whether Indonesian female teen magazines in the post-
Soeharto era take the same conservative approach in terms of gender representation. In
teen magazines, adolescent girls are introduced to a wider world outside their private
home space. In this public space female adolescents play an important role as potential
consumers. Market studies show that those who do not earn their own money make the
best consumers. As Susan Faludi writes:
Wells Rich Greene, which conducted one of the largest studies of women’s
fashion shopping habits in the early 1980s, found that the more confident and
independent women became, the less they like to shop; and the more they enjoyed
their work, the less they cared about their clothes. The agencies could find only
three groups of women who were loyal followers of fashion: the very young, the
very social and the very anxious. 3
My interest in female teen magazines was also sparked by interweaving facts that
presented themselves when I started this research. There has been a rapid development in
publishing in Indonesia since the end of Soeharto’s rule in 1998. Several factors
contributed to this. One of these was the fact that, after around three decades of tight
press control, most forms of censorship were lifted and freedom of the press was
introduced.
Right after the resignation of Soeharto in May 1998, the then president BJ Habibie
cancelled the permit for a press publication called SIUPP. 4 Muhammad Yunus Yosfiah,
chosen by Habibie to be his Minister of Information, made a significant change by
3
Susan Faludi, Backlash. The Undeclared War against Women (London: Chatto and Windus, 1992), p.
208.
4
“Bina Graha Cabut Pembatalan SIUPP” [Bina Graha to Cancel SIUPP] Kompas Online.Wednesday, 27
May 1998. http://www.seasite.niu.edu/indonesian/Reformasi/Chronicle/Kompas/May27/bina01.html
(date accessed 28 October 2004).
2
introducing a new type of press permit which was less complicated than SIUPP. 5 Yosfiah
had legislation passed in Parliament which stated that the banning of the press permit by
the state (a common practice during the New Order) was not legal any more. 6 The result
was the burgeoning of newspapers and tabloids, all capitalizing on the transitional
political situation to provide news material to the general public.
This new freedom of press has affected other media as well. The development of private
television stations in Indonesia has accelerated tremendously since the end of the New
Order. For thirty-six years from 1962, the mediascape in Indonesia was dominated by a
government-owned television station, TVRI. The second wave of the television era broke
TVRI’s domination, with the airing of five private television stations between 1989 and
1995. 7 The third wave was the shortest: in less than three years, from 2000 to 2001, there
were five additions to the list of private television stations in Indonesia. When I started
my research in 2003, there were eleven stations broadcasting nationally. This third wave
was followed very quickly by a fourth. This consisted of sixteen private local television
stations that broadcast regionally. The proliferation of private television stations
intensified the development of other forms of media, particularly entertainment
magazines and tabloids. 8 Celebrity magazines and tabloids feed off entertainment
information from television programs and, in return, the television stations get the
exposure that they require from the magazines to reach a wider audience. This suggests
interdependency among the media.
5
“Bina Graha Cabut Pembatalan SIUPP” [Bina Graha to Cancel SIUPP].
6
Max Wangkar, “Medan Penyiaran Siapa Mau Kuasa” [Who Wants to Rule the Press Field] Pantau
[Monitor] Year II no. 011 - March 2001. http://www.pantau.or.id/txt/11/06b.html
7
TVRI 1962, RCTI 1989, SCTV 1990, TPI 1991, Anteve 1993, Indosiar 1994, Metro TV 2000, TV7 2001,
2001, La-Tivi 2001, Global TV 2001, Trans TV 2001. For lists and links to profiles of television stations in
Indonesia see Wikipedia http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daftar_Stasiun_Televisi_Indonesia (date accessed 11
November 2004).
8
See Philip Kitley. Television, Nation, and Culture in Indonesia. Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for
International Studies, 2000.
3
Since 2000, depictions of youth culture have been dominating television programs
nationwide. 9 Imported television soap operas for teens from Taiwan and Japan became
big hits in Indonesia. After that initial success, programs about teenagers’ lives and other
teen-oriented programs grew in number. Teen soap operas and teen programs such as
Indonesian Idol have become extremely popular. This has created a new generation of
teen celebrities. 10 This new genre of television programs has also affected the print media
targeting adolescents. 11 Teen magazines and teen tabloids endlessly portray a large
number of national teen celebrities. Interestingly, most of the teen magazines are targeted
at teenage girls. 12 Presumably this is linked with market research into gendered buying
power that perceives that girls are more likely to engage in consumerism than boys.
Previously, research about gender in Indonesian media in general, and in female
magazines in particular, mainly focused on women. Research focusing on teen girls and
teen media is, however, limited because the spotlight on Indonesian female adolescents
has only occurred recently. Female teen magazines in Indonesia are an interesting and
important aspect of the media and popular culture in Indonesia. They are an important
source of information on how gender is constructed in Indonesia in the midst of
burgeoning media attention on women.
For many scholars, female teen magazines represent a meeting point for discussion on
how the media and pop culture are gendered. Growing up to become adults, adolescents
are more exposed to forces outside their homes than children because the construction of
9
For television programs see the links from Wikipedia.
http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daftar_Stasiun_Televisi_Indonesia (date accessed 11 November 2004).
10
For Indonesian teen celebrity profiles and their movie careers, see http://www.indonesiaselebriti.com/
(date accessed 25 November 2004).
11
In this thesis, the terms adolescents and teenagers will be used interchangeably.
12
See list of magazines from Indonesia. World Magazine Trends 2001/2002
http://www.magazineworld.org/assets/downloads/IndonesiaWMT01.pdf (date accessed 2 August 2004).
4
gender for these adolescents now extends from the privacy of their homes to the public
world. This world includes the school, the community, the media and other elements in
public space as well. Globalization permeates the public sphere these adolescents are now
entering.
Globalization has a serious impact on gender relations. The United Nations’ Beijing
Platform for Action, article number 33, warns about the spread of stereotypical gender
representations in the media resulting from rapid progress in communication and
technology:
In the past 20 years, the world has seen an explosion in the field of
communications. With advances in computer technology and satellite and cable
television, global access to information continues to increase and expand, creating
new opportunities for the participation of women in communication and the mass
media and for the dissemination of information about women. However, global
communication networks have been used to spread stereotyped and demeaning
images of women for narrow commercial and consumerist purposes. Until women
participate equally in both the technical and decision-making areas of
communication and the mass media, including the arts, they will continue to be
misrepresented and awareness of the reality of women’s lives will continue to be
lacking. The media have a great potential to promote the advancement of women
and the equality of women and men by portraying women and men in a non-
stereotypical, diverse and balanced manner, and by respecting the dignity and
worth of the human person. 13
Gender construction of the adolescents in public space, as introduced in the teen
magazine, is an intricate web of globalization, patriarchy and capitalism. Patriarchy tries
to inculcate gender ideology by preserving norms and values seen as the noble
inheritance of traditional society. As a result of the development of the mass-
communication and computer technology, patriarchy has become a globalized and a
widely institutionalized phenomenon. 14 In addition, capitalism has enhanced
13
The United Nations. Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform.plat1.htm (date accessed 11 November 2004)
14
See R. W Connell, “The State, Gender, and Sexual Politics”, Theory and Society 19.5 (1990), p. 514.
5
institutionalized gender ideology. Marxist feminists claim that global capitalism is taking
advantage of women’s position in the economy. In capitalism, modernity is introduced as
both empowering females and, at the same, subjecting them to subordinate positions as
female consumers vis-à-vis male producers. The media have the potential to spread
women’s empowerment. However, due to male domination in the media and
telecommunication business, the images and messages produced in the media are not free
from male ideology that embraces female subordination.
Similarly, the representation of adolescents in the media seems to oscillate between
modern globalization and traditional patriarchy. This has created a tension between old
and new understandings of gender relationships that is sometimes ignored but is at other
times addressed vehemently in Indonesian teen magazines. The thesis will contribute
modestly not only to the immediate field of adolescence in Indonesia, but also to the
wider body of literature on the relationships among gender, capitalism and patriarchy and
the role the print media plays in these relationships.
The Research
Based on the above understandings, my research will describe and analyze how female
teen magazines represent Indonesian adolescents. The magazines try to acknowledge
both the local gender ideology introduced by the state during the New Order and the
current wave of global pop culture. In the magazines, the state with its Islamic values that
focus on traditional femininity linked to homemaking and motherhood, comes up against
a style of media which introduces a very different representation of females.
6
My research is, therefore, based upon the following questions: How are local gender
ideologies integrated into the magazines’ content? What ideas of empowerment do these
magazines convey to female adolescents? Since magazines have to sell themselves as
well as their advertisers’ products, how do female teen magazines deploy gendered
marketing and induce gendered consumerism? What body images of girls are idealized in
the magazines? How do the magazines deal with sexuality in the face of tradition? What
kind of morals and values do the magazines introduce? Finally, how do the magazines
reconcile the idealized body images with ‘proper’ local values? With regards to the main
messages of globalization and modernity in the magazines, and in an effort to answer the
above questions, my particular interest is to explore to what extent, and how western
influences (as the standard of modernity) are employed to construct female adolescents. I
argue that the ways the magazines construct their own ideals of the “west” are related to
the ways they construct images of Indonesian female adolescents. The analysis, therefore,
investigates how relationships between western ideals of modernity and the local gender
ideology are established in the teen magazines.
My study looks at three magazines. They were chosen on the basis of popularity: Gadis,
Kawanku and Aneka Yess!. 15 In spite of competition from newcomers in the teen
magazine/teen tabloid business, these three magazines have stood the test of time having
consistently appeared as the top three Indonesian teen magazines by circulation. The
magazine samples were collected in two batches for practical reasons. The first batch was
collected from November 2002 to February 2003, and the second in October 2003.
Overall the total number of issues examined was approximately forty-five, covering a
period of five months.
15
According to A.C Nielsen Survey in Indonesia. World Magazine Trends 2001/2002
7
The research is about representation and the researcher’s interpretation of the magazines.
My views in this research, apart from being the result of three years of study in Australia,
are partly shaped by my origin, Indonesia, where I spent most of my time before I came
to study in Australia. Like most literary criticism, it does not consult the editors, authors
or readers of the magazines. The interpretation of the magazine content is meant to be
indicative rather than comprehensive. It aims to capture the general tendencies
concerning the spread of globalization and the localizing of the global effect in
Indonesian female teen magazines.
Thesis Structure
This thesis is divided into five main parts consisting of a discussion of previous research
about women’s magazines, an analysis of the social background of Indonesian
adolescents, the profiles of the teen magazines, an analysis of the representation of
adolescent appearance and performance in the magazines, and an analysis of adolescent
attitudes and values as constructed by the magazines.
Chapter 2 reviews the research on women’s magazines and explores findings by other
researchers in similar fields. The idea is to synthesize this research and arrive at an
agreement about what female magazines mean and how that implicates gender relations.
This section will prepare for the analysis by discerning the gender ideology underlying
women’s magazines in general before proceeding to the discussion of female teen
magazines in Indonesia in the analysis.
Chapter 3 is about the social background of Indonesian adolescents and about what it
means to be an adolescent in Indonesia. This chapter discusses the historical shifts in
8
society’s conception of, and perception of, Indonesian youth. It also discusses the
Indonesian terms for “adolescence” and the state’s attitudes towards adolescents. The
chapter views Indonesian adolescence as a social construction rather than as a biological
process associated with puberty, laying the foundation for the analysis of how teenage
girls are constructed in Indonesian female teen magazines.
Chapter 4 discusses the profiles of the three magazines chosen for study, Aneka Yess!,
Gadis and Kawanku. The profiles describe the mission of the magazines as the popular
media for young girls. Later on in the analysis, it will be made clear how these magazines
carry out their mission as stated in their editorial profiles.
Chapter 5 and 6 are the heart of the thesis. They contain the analysis of the gendered
messages in the magazines. In Chapter 5 the appearances and the performances of
adolescents in the magazines are discussed. The physical aspect is important because the
impact of globalization on teen magazines is material and visual before it is anything
else. In material and visual imaging of adolescents, the ‘west’ is looked upon as the
source of the ideal of female beauty. Chapter 6 looks at the attitudes, values and the
frame of mind of adolescents as constructed by the magazines. The magazines’
concentration on physical appearance signifies a welcome gesture towards modernity on
their part. However, values introduced to go along with the physical appearance do not
always incorporate contemporary ‘global’ messages. This is when the localities of gender
and identities are brought to the surface. As a result, the “west” is portrayed as both good
and evil in the magazines, and these complex social, cultural and political binaries are
frequently juxtaposed in the magazines. This thesis argues that in the magazines gender is
a site for contestation and the embodiment of contradictory influences.
9
Chapter 2
FEMALE MAGAZINES: MEANINGS AND IDEOLOGIES
Piers Robinson says that, “Theory is crucial to how we understand the social world”. 16 A
theoretical framework is important for three reasons. First, theory enables us to
systematize events or occurrences (or any object of research, for that matter) in order to
provide “structure”. Second, theory enables us to establish a “cause and effect”
relationship of events since the ordering of events in a systematic manner renders them
comprehensible and predictable, given similar circumstantial evidence. Third, theory
gives a starting point for analysis and, later on, for constructive criticism or further
development of a theory if a set of events does not fall neatly into a given structure, or if
a new element occurs. A new element or structure would lead to a previous theory being
contested or improved, or it could lead to the rise of a new theory. 17 However, Robinson
stresses the subjectivity of theory and the subjectivity of truth by saying that :
the current state of thinking is that science (natural as well as social) does not
explain the reality of the nature of things but rather that it artificially imposes
structure by way of theory upon ‘facts’ or data which in turn enables us to
understand the world. 18
In this chapter I examine theories about women’s magazines. The theories assist me in
defining women’s magazines as a set of language of instruction. These theories also
allow me to look at the magazines as social products that communicate more than just
female entertainment. They provide insight into women’s magazines as a forum of
expression that reflects gender and power relations in society.
16
Piers Robinson, The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention (London; New
York: Routledge, 2002), p. 19.
17
Robinson, p. 19.
18
Robinson, p. 19.
10
What are Women’s Magazines?
Although my research is on female teen magazines, it is necessary to position it within
the wider body of research on women’s magazines. This is due not only to the fact that
most of the research on female magazines is focused on women rather than on female
adolescents, but also to the fact that gender relations in society cut across generations.
This puts female adolescents in the same gender position as women, although in a
modified form due to the differences in age and generation. Therefore, I need to address
the findings from research on women’s magazines to investigate gender relations in girls’
magazines.
One of the reasons that researchers are interested in female magazines is their popularity.
Studies have shown that women’s magazines are much more popular among women than
men’s magazines are among men. 19 Although there are a number of media outlets
available to women, these media do not attract the attention of researchers the way
magazines do due to their specific nature:
women’s magazines stand out as all the more remarkable in being simultaneously
specialist and generalist: specialist in that they are for a single sex, women, yet
general in that most extend their content appeal across a wide spectrum of
feminine concerns. 20
Most researchers are concerned with the way the media shows a preference for, and
idolises certain types of female representation. This research has in common the finding
that the representation of women in the media, and in female magazines in particular, is
not empowering for women, and that this has not changed over time despite differences
in research period. Marjorie Ferguson, for example, conducted one of the major studies
19
Marjorie Ferguson, Forever Feminine. Women’s Magazine and the Cult of Femininity (London:
Heineman Educational Books, 1983), p. 2.
20
Ferguson, p. 2.
11
of modern women’s magazines for the period 1949 to 1980. 21 She was interested in the
popularity of the magazines with their consistent way of portraying femininity. She
studied women’s magazines across a thirty-year time period coming to the conclusion
that “Everything changes and nothing changes” with regards to the content. 22 The
magazines seemed to be modern in that they follow current trends in their presentations,
but the main messages remained the same.
The content of women’s magazines moves around in circles, it does not change over a
period of time despite changes in the façade, the outlook or the slogan. 23 One topic of
discussion is recycled from one issue to another so that magazines often present the same
theme over and over. Nevertheless, each issue always presents its topic as though it is
brand new, or a discovery of some sort, when it is actually the same content with
different wrappings. On the other hand, male media in general, and particularly male
magazines, are frequently perceived to deal with current affairs. There is a sense of
change, progress or development in these types of male periodicals.
In having a circular structure, women’s magazines could be said to be a reflection of a
housewife’s routine life in which women do things that have to be undone so they have to
start over again. In this respect women’s lives are cyclical, both biologically and socially.
They involve the female cycles of menstruation, pregnancy, labour, and lactation and
then it is back to menstruation again. The social reproduction work of women involves
21
Marjorie Ferguson, Forever Feminine. Women’s Magazine and the Cult of Femininity (London:
Heineman Educational Books, 1983), p. 4.
22
Ferguson, p. 190.
23
Ferguson, pp. 188-191.
12
endless house chores and childcare. 24 The magazines portray this aspect of femininity by
romanticizing domestic work. They may not romanticize menstruation, pregnancy and
lactation, but the magazines do laud the ability of women to cope with the female
biological process. Products such as tampons, maternity clothes and breast-feeding bras
introduced in the magazines testify to this.
Regular features in the magazines, such as how to keep up appearances, and articles on
grooming are also suggestive of the feminine cycle. Women are taught that they have to
do their make-up and treat their face, hair and body in a consistent manner with regular
frequency. Fashions and trends encourage a little change from time to time, but the main
routine remains the same. Following Judith Butler’s argument, it is this repetitive action
that makes females become women. 25 Cosmetics and fashion pages show that being a
female is not enough: a woman has to perform like one. Susan Bordo comments on how:
we are surrounded by homogenizing and normalizing images − images whose

content is far from arbitrary, but is instead suffused with the dominance of
gendered, racial, class and other cultural iconography. 26
Joanne Hollows is another writer who has pointed out that other media such as television
also reflect this feminine cycle when catering to their female audience:
just as the classic realist text relates to the goal-oriented nature of men’s work, so
there is a unique fit between the structure of soap opera and women’s work in the
home. Soap opera emphasizes repetition, lack of progress or end and connection
to others, all of which characterise women’s work at home. 27
24
I am following Firestone’s argument that females’ biological condition is used as an excuse for her social
oppression. See Shulamith Firestone, “The Dialectic of Sex,” The Second Wave. A Reader in Feminist
Theory, Linda Nicholson, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 19-26.
25
“The rules that govern intelligible identity, i.e., that enable and restrict the intelligible assertion of an “I,”
rules that are partially structured along matrices of gender hierarcy and compulsory heterosexuality, operate
through repetition.” See Judith Butler Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London;
New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 145.
26
See Susan Bordo, The Unbearable Weight. Feminism Western Culture and the Body (Berkeley:
University of California Press, c1993), p. 250.
27
Joanne Hollows, Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture (Manchester; New York: Manchester
University Press, 2000), p. 96.
13
Magazines have always been associated with female culture. 28 This is because of the
unique nature of female magazines that deals endlessly with femininity and because of
the way females are attached to them. Even though television is the most widely accessed
type of media, magazines hold a special place in women’s realm. In other forms of
media, the female section is only allocated specific slots, like the women’s corner in
newspapers or women’s programs on television such as soap operas. Unlike other media,
women’s magazines devote their whole media totally to women (or appear to).
Within general media such as newspapers or television, once a column or a program is
targeted specifically at women, it is trivialized. 29 It is seen as a smaller, insignificant
segment within a bigger and dominant medium. The term “chick flick”, for example, may
derive its condescending connotation from the level of predictability of the content of the
movie or the fact that they just deal mostly with “relationships” and romance. The male
genre (often dubbed the “dick flick”), like action and crime movies is equally predictable,
but males can still boast of male power and male victory in the movies, unlike female
romance movies wherein females often surrender themselves to men. This implies that in
the public sphere the feminine genre is subordinated to the male and a deviation from the
mainstream. Stivens says that one of the old feminist criticisms is that the mainstream is
male stream. 30 Even women’s magazines are produced under this male stream, either by
male producers or female producers who espouse male ideology.
28
Ferguson, p. 2 and Wolf, Beauty Myth p.70.
29
Gaye Tuchman, “Introduction: The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media” in Hearth and
Home. Images of Women in the Mass Media Gay Tuchman, Arlene Kaplan Daniels, James Benet, eds.,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 8.
30
Maila Stivens, “Pemikiran tentang Gender, “Civil Society” dan Negara di Indonesia” [‘Thinking of
Gender, Civil Society and the State in Indonesia’] in Wanita dan Media. Konstruksi Ideologi Gender dalam
Ruang Publik Orde Baru [Women and the Media. Constructing Gender Ideology in the New Order’s Public
Space] Ibrahim, Idi Subandy and Hanif Suranto, eds. (Bandung, Indonesia : Remaja Rosdakarya, 1998), p.
3.
14
For women in their own private circle, the female magazines are all they have where
what they do is taken seriously - or at least they think so. For many women, reading
magazines is a way to “connect” and reach out to a wider group of women. 31 The
magazines address females’ need to be understood and even glorified by their peers.
They hold a special niche in the female world because they seem to cater to women’s
need to celebrate their femininity. 32
Female magazines are one medium that addresses females and female paraphernalia
(fashion, household, relationships) as significant and not marginalized. Female
magazines put females at the centre of attention and for a moment suspend the idea that
women are marginalized in a male-dominated world. Wolf says that:
Women are deeply affected by what their magazines tell them (or what they
believe they tell them) because they are all most women have as a window on
their own mass sensibility. 33
Female magazines build a sense of bonding among the female gender. The content is
mostly presented in a friendly tone, like the tone of a peer. 34 This usually involves the
colloquial use of language and slang. The language is sometimes written as it is spoken,
with grammar inconsistencies, gaps between speeches and so on. This method is an effort
to unite females from different class backgrounds, giving them a sense of shared
identity. 35 It is a way of invoking a sense of equality because, according to Kress,
“speech is closer to solidarity, writing is closer to power.” 36 This sort of intimacy is what
31
Wolf, The Beauty Myth p. 70.
32
See Faludi, Backlash.
33
Wolf, p. 70.
34
Ros Ballaster, et al. Women’s Worlds: Ideology, Femininity, and Women’s Magazines (London:
Macmillan, 1991), p. 9.
35
Ballaster, p. 9.
36
Gunther Kress, Communication and Culture: an Introduction (Kensington, NSW: New South Wales
15
is needed to bring the readers together in one big group, able to share in a common
female culture.
Current affairs magazines such as Time and Newsweek, are often seen as male magazines,
in contrast with female magazines which are considered to be full of “chit chat”. Time
and Newsweek are regarded as adopting a male point of view. In these magazines, the
formal and standard language used implies the seriousness of the “male issues” under
review and evokes images of men discussing issues of world importance. I collected
some popular men’s magazines like Ralph and FHM and observed that they do not use
formal language. However, I think their informality is to emphasize leisure rather than
male bonding. Male magazines focusing on sex, cars, sports or photography must be
cyclical like female magazines to a certain degree, given the limited scope of the topic.
However, magazines affect males differently because other media in society are
predominantly presented from males’ point of view.
Male special interest magazines are just a small fraction of the whole media. Although
male magazines such as Ralph could qualify as light entertainment equal to female
magazines, men have other serious media to turn to such as television and newspapers.
The mass media are “men’s” media in the sense that they are controlled and constructed
by an ideology that is predominantly male. 37 A large portion of the media is not
specifically identified as male media but most adopt the male gaze and male point of
view. This male point of view is then expanded to represent both genders which shows
male domination in public discourse.
37
Idi Subandi Ibrahim and Hanif Suranto eds., Wanita dan Media. Konstruksi Ideologi Gender dalam
Ruang Publik Orde Baru [Women and the Media. Constructing Gender Ideology in the New Order’s Public
Space] (Bandung, Indonesia: Remaja Rosdakarya, 1998), p. xi-lxii.
16
The male gaze to a certain extent helps create female magazines to become showcases of
attractive women who serve as examples to female readers. The term “male gaze”, coined
by Laura Mulvey, is used to denote the way males look at and perceive things. It is also
used by film critics to suggest male voyeurism and fetishism in making movies that put
women as the object of attention. 38 The term has now been extended outside movies to
include media coverage generally. Female magazines are not free from the male gaze.
The idea that women should “look pretty” under all conditions, for example, is a male
ideology. 39 Suggestions on how to stay beautiful in the magazines are actually
suggestions for how to entertain the male gaze itself.
According to Ferguson, femininity is always under construction while masculinity is
not. 40 Masculinity is seen as perfect, while femininity is always in progress. Male
magazines do not dwell forever on teaching men about their masculinity. They come in
more varieties. 41 Information provided in periodicals for males improves and nourishes
their quality as human beings as a whole and not just as males per se. Women’s
magazines, on the other hand, are mostly about their femininity. Ferguson argues that:
There is no men’s periodical press in the same generic sense that there is for
women. Men’s magazines are aimed at particular groups of males and cater for
parts of man’s life - his business, hobby or sporting interest - not for the totality of
his masculinity, nor his male role as such. This difference in audience approaches
seems to rest on an implicit assumption shared between editors and publishers
that a female sex which is at best unconfident, and at worst incompetent, ‘needs’
or ‘wants’ to be instructed, rehearsed or brought up to date on the arts and skills
of femininity, while a more powerful and confident male sex already ‘knows’
everything there is to know about the business of being masculine. 42
38
See David Chandler. Laura Mulvey on Film Spectatorship.
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze09.html (date accessed 28 September 2004).
39
Massoni, Kelley. “Modelling Work. Occupational Messages in Seventeen Magazine” Gender and
Society. Vol. 18. no. 1 (2004), 47-65.
40
Ferguson, p. 2.
41
Ferguson, p. 2 and Wolf, Beauty Myth p. 2.
42
Marjorie Ferguson, p. 2.
17
Ferguson implies from the above quote that masculinity is perceived as already perfect.
Femininity on the other hand is not. Being a proper female is based upon correct practice
or performance of femininity, and the male gaze is the judge of this performance. Female
magazines are treated as a special genre for a special gender: female, which is a deviant
gender that is “not male”. 43 Through their magazines, women can improve and nourish
their quality as women. Feminine nature and female qualities are expressed through
articles that appeal to emotional reaction than to the technicalities of events. This is
exemplified by articles of “triumph over tragedy” where female victims survived their
calamities, or melancholy articles that aim to stir emotion and seek compassion. 44
Most male magazines tend to specialize in one area such as politics, finance, economics,
science or computers. Female magazines do not specialize in any single form of interest,
hobby or profession. When they do specialize, it is still within the female zone, branching
out to an even more specialist femininity: for instance, now there are bridal, cooking,
hair, make-up and haute couture magazines. They are miscellaneous, but still within a
massive collage of femininity. There is one magazine that caters to women’s need to
understand financial management: Women’s Money Magazine. As its byline states:
Women's Money Magazine is Australia's only publication created specifically to

empower women to better understand and manage their financial future. Each
issue features topical and relevant articles under the following broad headings:
family and relationships; Superannuation; Credit and Debt; Investment; Tax;
Spending it (travel & lifestyle); Property; Shares; and Insurance. 45
At first glance, the magazine seems to divert from the path of common female magazines
in that it does not dwell on issues of femininity. Nevertheless, the topics of family and
43
Ros Ballaster et. al, Women’s Worlds. Identity, Femininity and the Woman’s Magazine (London:
Macmillan, 1991), pp. 10-11.
44
Ferguson, p. 2 and Wolf, Beauty Myth p. 50.
45
“Women’s Money”, Australia’s Magazine Superstore
http://www.isubscribe.com.au/title_info.cfm?affid=25&prodID=4111 (date accessed 29 September 2004).
18
relationships places it into the category of women’s magazine. Other (male) money and
finance magazines do not state that family and relationship are important in their
profiles. 46 Only female magazines agonize so much over relationships. Females are
meant to take care of others, including making sure that a relationship runs smoothly.
Females, having been under construction ever since they were born, are in a way
“stunted” in their development as a person in public space, because they are taught how
to be females rather than to be individuals. Female magazines are complicit in this
process. As Angela McRobbie argues:
their [females’] immersion in what seems to be an overwhelmingly conservative,

and traditionally female kind of culture is not simply a matter of choice. The girls
have been directed towards this from early childhood. 47
As a comparison, McRobbie further remarks that:
Sociologists looking at male youth groupings normally expect, for example, to

find certain clearly visible features such as orientation towards football,
motorbikes, fishing - even vandalism, or violence. But with girls there existed no
such focus. 48
This acknowledgement that females’ activities are generic and never specific brings with
it a message that males are meant to have a career or a profession. They are constructed
to be universal power holders. Females, on the other hand, are not meant to specialize in
anything other than being females.
The Meanings of Women’s Magazines
Magazines are perceived as a “language” that “speaks” to a group of female readers and I
aim to explore what it “says” to them. This is where semiotics, the art of decoding signs
46
“Money and Finance Magazine” Australia’s Magazine Superstore
http://www.isubscribe.com.au/title_info.cfm?affid=25&prodID=4111 (date accessed 29 September 2004).
47
Angela McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p. 50.
48
McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture , p. 45.
19
and signals, is helpful in deciphering the language and intention in the magazines.
According to Saussure, the relation of a word with a thing, or a concept that the word
represents, is arbitrary. 49 A signifier does not define itself naturally, but both the signifier
and the signified are constructed by the society. 50 It is arbitrary but not randomly
given. 51 There is a cultural reason why a society needs a special word for a special
concept. It is because the object or the concept is deemed significant. Therefore, what is
conceptualized and what is not conceptualized are both important, because they say a lot
about dominant perceptions in a society.
Barthes claims that there are two levels of meaning for words. 52 The first level is
denotative. At this level the meaning of a word is standardized, and the relation between
a word and its meaning is relatively stable, thus making it possible to be listed in a
dictionary. The second level of meaning (which is semiotics) is connotative and
symbolic. It is more difficult to grasp because of its highly contextual nature. Not only is
the connotative and symbolic meaning unstable, but also the codes or signs used at this
level of meaning are not limited to words. A picture, an image, a colour, a custom, a
ceremony, a facial expression, an arrangement of objects or almost anything has a
meaning, and it is presented or communicated with a purpose, either consciously or
unconsciously. 53 Turner explains that semiotics allows signs to operate like language:
Semiotics allows us to examine the cultural specificity of representations and their

meanings by using one set of methods and terms across the full range of practices:
gestures, dress, writing, speech, photography, film, television and so on. Central
[to the idea of semiotics] here is the idea of the sign. 54
49
Stuart Hall “ The Work of Representation” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying
Practices Stuart Hall ed. (London: Sage, 1997), pp. 30-39.
50
Hall “The Work of Representation”, pp. 31-33.
51
Ballaster, p. 26.
52
See Roland Barthes, Mythologies translated from the French by Annette Lavers (London: Paladin
Grafton,1973), pp. 119-131.
53
Hall,”The Work of Representation”, pp. 15-74.
54
Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies. An Introduction (London: New York, 1996) p. 16.
20
The idea is that people are able to communicate with things other than words and the
meaning can be denotative, connotative, symbolic or ideological, or all of them
simultaneously, for instance in cases of double entendre, puns or propaganda. Strinati
argues that, “Communicative activity is always something to be explained; it is never
able to be an explanatory force in its own right.” 55 Even the most straightforward
sentence may be open to several interpretations. The ability to understand what is
expected from, and what is intended by, certain types of messages is crucial in
deciphering semiotic codes. It will also help in understanding the attitudes that underlie
certain messages.
In semiotics, historical and cultural background have to be taken into account since they
contribute to the present meaning. The meanings become fluid, not only because of the
time lapse, but also because of differences in viewing perspective. Two interpretations
can be opposite to each other, since different interpretations are made from different
angles and each might be using a different approach. When there is more than one
interpretation, the task of semiotics is to ask which is the preferred meaning. 56 Therefore
the process of decoding has to be put in the appropriate historical and socio-cultural
context to define who has the power to determine meanings and interpretations.
Ballaster et al contend that magazines are, “a medium for the sale of commodities…and
itself a commodity.” 57 This brings us to the ways female magazines construct femininity
through commodities, and to how representations can be read as a set of instructions to
55
Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (London; New York: Routledge,
1995), p. 144.
56
See Stuart Hall “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’”, in Representation: Cultural Representations and
Signifying Practices Stuart Hall, ed. (London: Sage, 1997), pp. 223-77.
57
Ballaster, p. 2.
21
women. Readers first of all have to consume images before anything else in the
magazines. Wolf, stressing the importance of representation, comments that:
A third wave of power feminism must base itself on the premise that, at the end of
the twentieth century − at least in the First World − populations are not
controlled mainly by laws and militias, but by images and attitudes. 58
Signs presented in a magazine, both verbal and visual, collaborate to form an intensive
message. Even the smallest details of representation contain some sort of intent or
meaning which is what representation is all about: to influence and to persuade. What we
have are images presented to us which are being adjusted to suit a certain purpose.
Eventually these images try to persuade readers how they should “invent the self”. 59
Even though the readers may not follow what the magazines try to persuade them to do,
the magazines at least provide a sense of standard which people can follow or rebel
against.
Images in female magazines can be inspiring or degrading. It depends on the cultural
background of both the communicators and the recipients to determine the meaning and
decide where they stand with regards to those images. Bearing in mind that images and
attitudes are often made to seem natural or like a fixed convention, it is understandable
that the influence of these images can be subtle but powerful. This puts the recipients or
the audience at a disadvantage, since mass media have the particular effect of inciting a
sense of being outnumbered and cornered should a reader hold a different opinion. This is
the power of images put across by mass media: they claim to represent the public’s
opinion, while the truth is that at some stage there is no public opinion: the media has to
form one for them. The relationship between the media and the society is circular. As
58
Wolf, Fire with Fire, p. 323.
59
Angela McRobbie, Postmodernism and Popular Culture (London; New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 72.
22
Graeme Turner states, the media do not “merely “reflect” social reality; they increasingly
help to make it.” 60 In the case of adolescents, there are other authoritative sources outside
the media-audience circle, such as parents, academic institutions or religious instructions
to guide teenagers. However, peer pressure is an important factor in adolescent self-
image. 61 Teen magazines act as a form of peer pressure by communicating what other
adolescents supposedly do and then represent them as the trendsetters.
Some images make consistent appearances in the magazines. As a result of their
frequency and extended exposure, these images become stereotypes. These stereotypes
are important:
It is thought that media perpetuate sex role stereotypes because they reflect
dominant social values and also because male media producers are influenced by
these stereotypes. 62
As part of the society, magazines reveal gender ideology at work and react to how
females are idealized in that society by producing these stereotypes. Barthes calls this the
tendency to turn what is historical into something natural, which is done to maintain
dominance and the status quo. The persistence of similar images over a period of time
63
can make something seem natural. Faludi comments on the power of media and
journalism, and she mentions about “the power of repetition [if] said enough times,
anything can be made to seem true.” 64
What is expected of this consistent power of repetition, is that female readers will be
constructed to become consumers for the magazines and their advertisers by creating the
60
Turner, p. 171.
61
For reference on adolescents, see Louise J. Kaplan, Adolescence. The Farewell to Childhood. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1984.
62
Strinati, pp. 35-6.
63
Barthes, p. 140.
64
Faludi, p. 104.
23
need in the readers to purchase whatever they do not possess in an effort to become as
“natural and ideal” as the repeated images. Garvey maintains that:
The advertising-supported magazine as an institution has buttressed the interests

of advertisers and the commercial discourse as a whole, and constructed the
reader − especially the female reader − as a consumer...Advertisers also depended
on stories to create a climate in which their ads would persuade readers to become
buyers. 65
Therefore, the content of the magazines is designed to support the advertisements and
vice versa. Editorial and advertisements often do not have clearly defined boundaries
because they are both promoting a certain lifestyle and reinforcing each other.
Consequently, the repetitive images in the whole content of the magazines will construct
the ideas embedded in them as natural and ideal.
Visual effects and advertisements are some of the elements of communication in
magazines which are packed with hidden meanings. This does not mean that semiotics,
signs or representation in this research deal mostly with advertisements and images in a
commercial sense. The analysis below is more directed towards the presentation of the
content of the magazine as a set of propaganda or messages, where every word and
illustration is constructed so as to help build up a whole image.
The burgeoning of female magazines as a business indicates that female magazines are
profitable. So we can argue that female magazines exist first of all to make money. Their
special demographic and specific content − they only cater to one gender and address one
broad topic (i.e. femininity) − mean that females are treated as an undifferentiated cohort
in the magazines. Homogeneity is convenient for publishers as it attracts a larger number
65
Ellen Gruber Garvey, The Adman in the Parlor. Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture,
1880s to 1910 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 4.
24
of consumers with the least effort made to comprehend their individual demands when
compared with a heterogeneous demographic. 66 Although the reasons behind
stereotypical female representations in the media are far more complicated than this, this
partly answers the question of why females are characterized so consistently in
magazines as being all the same: to maintain the homogeneity of consumers. The
existence of female magazines as a large genre in itself is evidence that it has proved
itself as an efficient medium for reaching out to a large female audience.
Although stakeholders in production and marketing are there to fulfil demands, it is not
always only a matter of fulfilling them, marketing is about creating demands as well. 67
To give an example, one brand of shampoo may have an extensive range with different
types of products as if to fulfil specialized hair needs (such as different shampoos for
women, men, and teenagers). This may seem to contradict the homogeneous market
theory. However, the extensive range is more a marketing initiative to sell more
specialized products than a serious recognition of different types of consumers. People in
production and marketing would like to be in charge of controlling these demands rather
than succumb to a floating heterogeneous market which would be less efficient than
initiating the creation of demands. 68
Apart from financial profit, female magazines are powerful tools of ideology. According
to Gaye Tuchman, media in general tend to privilege males and “symbolically annihilate
women” by trivializing women’s roles in the media. 69 Alternatively, female magazines
66
White, p. 261.
67
See Celia Lury, Consumer Culture (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2001).
68
See Lury.
69
Gaye Tuchman “Introduction: The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media” in Hearth and
Home. Images of Women in the Mass Media Gaye Tuchman, Arlene Kaplan Daniels and James Benet ed.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 8.
25
are a space in which females are allowed to predominate in images and representation
since it is a domain separated from males. However, the predomination of females’
images in their own magazines does not mean freedom from male-dominated ideology.
After World War II, women’s magazines in the US endorsed images of housewifeliness
and motherhood. 70 The representation of women as workers in these magazines was
swiftly removed as a symbolic gesture to make the public space and employment
opportunities available to the men who came back from the war. After the surge of
feminist awareness in the 1970s with feminist publications such as Rib Cage, came the
backlash against feminism. Together with male-focussed magazines and other media,
female magazines helped to construct this backlash. 71 The magazines played a role in
building females’ opposition to professional work by constantly presenting successful
career women as unsuccessful females in terms of marriage and motherhood. Faludi
described how feminism became “the F word”, shunned by women, and how
representations in the popular magazines led them to feel that they had to choose between
career and home, whereas men were never made to choose. 72 In turn, these popular
magazines divert females’ attention to the comfort of their own homes and eventually
bring the women’s attention to their bodies and appearance.
Wolf acknowledges the influence of magazines in women’s lives. She sees this influence
as the dissemination of ideals of beauty and aesthetics. 73 Wolf mentions that one of the
most efficient ways to spread the “beauty myth” is through female magazines. 74 This
70
See Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York, N.Y.,: Dell, [1984], c 1983).
71
Faludi, pp. 137-8.
72
Faludi, pp. 99-139.
73
See Wolf, Beauty Myth.
74
See Wolf, Beauty Myth.
26
leads to the acknowledgement of (though not necessarily agreement on) dominant
perceptions and expectations of women in society as presented in the magazines’ content.
The result is that standards of beauty hailed by female magazines turn females against
one another. Men may appreciate the outcome but only women understand the struggle to
achieve men’s appreciation. 75 It is an ideological effort to promote competition among
females since the existence of female beauty is limited in time and space. 76 It is
constricted in time since beauty is often associated with youth and youth does not last
very long and the space females occupy tend to be an isolated privatised sphere. Men’s
lives, by contrast, are not psychologically constricted in time and space.
The influence of the magazines is, therefore, to a certain extent the result of detailed
premeditations on the whole content by the publishers. Thus, magazines allow women to
share a common knowledge of beauty in an effort to isolate them and keep them occupied
with problems of femininity. McRobbie claims that, “[there is] a concerted effort ... to
win and shape the consent of the readers to a particular set of values.” 77 Although the
readers may feel that they are following advice in the magazines voluntarily, the advice is
designed to benefit the magazines. Magazines are a medium of communication, but they
are not neutral. Kress says that communication is about “a sharing of meaning” or “a
mutual meaning making.” 78 As communication always involves power, to develop a
sense of what it means to be a female, females have to negotiate with dominant male
ideology represented by the magazines. Female magazines as a means of communication,
75
Susan Bordo explains how women’s anxiety about their appearance is reinforced and supported by the
idea that their ability to “catch a man” relies mainly on their looks and their bodies, in Unbearable Weight.
p. 47.
76
See Rachael Oakes-Ash, Anything She Can Do I Can Do Better. The Truth about Female Competition.
Sydney: Random House, 2003.
77
Angela McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p. 68.
78
Kress, p. 5.
27
“can have the effect of becoming devices of control, or means of instruction”.79 They can
be seen as a subtle form of indoctrination on gender ideology due to the privileging of
some images over others. 80
The female culture presented in the magazine (not surprisingly) has a lot to do with
bodies. Fashion, makeovers and accessories make up most of the content. Janet Lee
writes that, “The less power people feel they can exert over their environment, the more
they attempt to do so over their own bodies”,81 hence their obsession with appearance
and bodily performance. This is not to say that females are hopeless in a male world, but
that females are at a disadvantage because of their gender in a strongly patriarchal
society. According to Brumberg this whole female obsession with their own bodies is a
reaction to social pressure, so “the external control is replaced with internal control”. 82
Female magazines avert women’s attention to their body, that is, they move the focus
from outside to inside, so that they will not be a potential threat to male power. The
magazines also divert women’s attention from external things in public space −
considered as male space − to their internal well-being, or private space, so that the
public space is secure from potential invasion. Wolf says that “men do not underestimate
women’s power.” 83 Since there are universal attempts at female subordination, then there
must be a universal fear of females taking over males’ domination. 84 This universal fear
79
Kress, p. 5.
80
Ros Ballaster et al, Women’s World. Ideology, Femininity and the Woman’s Magazine (London:
Macmillan, 1991), p. 3.
81
Janet Lee, “From the Inside: An Interview with Three Women Fashion Designers” in Zoot Suits and
Second-hand Dresses. An Anthology of Fashion and Music Angela McRobbie, ed. (Boston: Unwin Hyman,
c1988), p. 215.
82
Joan Jacobs Brumberg, The Body Project. An Intimate History of American Girls (New York: Random
House, 1997), p. 197.
83
Wolf, Fire with Fire. p. 14.
84
28
results in a patriarchal ideology being applied in all aspects of life. We can argue that the
female magazine phenomenon is just a small fraction of all the necessary “precautions”
taken within an intricate web of patriarchy.
Postmodernity has revealed and acknowledged the importance of multiple voices and
different subject positions that may suggest that universal patriarchy is an overrated
assumption. However, with the rise of globalization, and given the nexus between power
and communication, it is possible that local patriarchy has become global due to images
in the media that publicize male domination as inevitable. 85 According to Numazaki:
Another hallmark of modernity is the sharp distinction between the public and the
private. The public domain is a realm in which all citizens engage in open
discourse and deliberation regarding the political affairs that affect every citizen.
The private domain, by contrast, is a realm in which men and women engage in
personal affairs that do not concern other citizens….Conventional understanding
holds that the public:private dichotomy is apparently gender neutral. 86
Although Numazaki’s article is about sexual harassment, what I want to put forward from
the quote is that there is a conventional understanding to put women at the same level as
men whether in public or private space, without designating a specific space for a specific
gender. However, the sharp distinction between the private and public spheres maintains
that the public is a male domain and the private is a female domain. This separation is
manifested in the magazines as well as an ongoing effort to keep females in private
space.
85
See article no. 33 in The United Nations. Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform.plat1.htm (date accessed 11 November 2004).
86
Ichiro Numazaki, “(De-)Sexualizing Gender Relationships: Sexual Harassment as Modern and as a
Critique of Modernity” Gender and Modernity. Perspectives from Asia and the Pacific. Hayami Yoko,
Tanabe Akio and Tokita-Tanabe Yumiko, eds., (Kyoto, Japan; Melbourne: Kyoto University Press and
Trans Pacific Press, 2003), p. 221.
29
Responding to the ideological separation evident in society, the magazines bring the
public space home in an effort to entertain women and to fulfil and update them on the
activities outside their home space. 87 However, the number of “working women” is
rising and, as a result, it might be that their obsession with femininity may not be as
intense as the messages in the magazines would seem to indicate. This suggests that the
magazines deal with an idealized version of femaleness rather than with reality. 88 This
ideology of separate spheres keeps males secure from any invasion by the unwanted sex
in their virtual territory. 89 Why should males need to feel secure? It is because males
often interpret females’ “invasion” of public space as an effort to threaten and seize male
power. As Wolf puts it, gender equality is easier for men to deal with in terms of getting
males more involved in the female private sphere, rather then getting females into the
public sphere and sharing males’ massive domination in “legislative and economic
power”. 90
According to Strinati, a “magazine must struggle to hide its commodity status ” to look as
if it is sincerely entertaining and sharing womanhood and not trivializing femininity. 91 It
is not only the commodity status that magazines try to camouflage, however. Gender
ideology is another thing that is being delicately negotiated. Representation thus becomes
a contesting site used by the magazines to uphold male-dominated ideology on one hand,
but giving a sense of empowerment to females on the other. To achieve this balance,
magazines usually promulgate the combined image of either passive femininity or
87
Lori Anne Loeb, Consuming Angels. Advertising and Victorian Women (New York; Oxford: Oxford
88
Gaye Tuchman, “Introduction: The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media”, in Hearth
and Home. Images of Women in the Mass Media Gaye Tuchman, Arlene Kaplan Daniels and James Benet
ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 8, 17-24.
89
90
91
Strinati, p. 211.
30
seemingly assertive “girl power”. 92 The oscillation of portrayals of passive or seemingly-
active females is therefore central to female magazines.
Hopkins argues that “sexism is not only old fashioned, [but also] it’s bad for business”. 93
An anti-sexism attitude is adopted by whoever wants to win female approval in the
media. She goes on to argue that, “the culture industries have accepted feminism as a
fresh strategy for stimulating consumption.” 94 For instance, a lot of entertainment media
began creating powerful female characters to balance a male dominated cast. McRobbie
gives the example of Cosmopolitan magazine, saying that this magazine inspires women
to be more assertive about themselves. This assertiveness includes being sexually
assertive which, according to McRobbie, involves the ability to express preferences in
sexual intimacy to achieve pleasure. 95 However, there is a catch. Only certain kinds of
females can achieve this kind of sexual pleasure. Using Wolf’s argument, magazines like
Cosmopolitan privilege slim, white young heterosexual females. If a woman fails one of
these category tests she has no right to be sexually assertive. Wolf claims that:
In the crossover of imagery in the 1980s, the conventions of high class

pornographic photography, such as Playboy’s began to be used generally to sell
products to women. This made the beauty thinking that followed crucially
different from all that had preceded it. Seeing a face anticipating orgasm, even if
it is staged, is a powerful sell: In the absence of other sexual images, many
women came to believe that they must have that face, that body, to achieve that
ecstasy. 96
Hopkins similarly argues that the way to counteract males’ objectifying intentions is “to
flaunt one’s own sexual power”. Unfortunately, “This strategy works best if you are
92
An old term re-launched and made popular by The Spice Girls. “Girl Power has been added to Roget’s
Thesaurus as a synonym for feminism” Susan Hopkins, Girl Heroes. The New Force in Popular Culture
(Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press Australia, 2002), pp. 11-12.
93
Hopkins, p. 105.
94
Hopkins, p. 23.
95
Angela McRobbie in http://www.theory.org.uk/mcrobbie.htm (date accessed 2 September 2003).
96
Wolf, Beauty Mythp.135.
31
young, slim, attractive - and a media superstar”.97 To achieve the beauty ideals promoted
in the magazines, women resort to all sorts of measures: fashion, diet, exercise, beauty
regimes, plastic surgery and anything to compensate for their “lack”.98 Of course, it is
often not a lack at all, but a woman’s face or body may seem to lack something because it
does not follow the general conventions of beauty. Therefore, according to Hopkins,
before females can win they have to join the mainstream ideology to beat the system
from the inside. Nevertheless, magazine publishers probably realize that to enforce
undiluted a blunt, male-dominated ideology would not be popular given the widespread
acceptance of female emancipation. It is better that they maintain what looks like an
emancipatory and feminist stand in their female magazines.
Ballaster et al mention that, “magazines are part of an economic system [capitalism] as
well as part of an ideological system [patriarchy] by which gender difference is given
meaning.” 99 Magazines are a manifestation of a male-female ideological binary, both in
their production as a commodity and as an ideology. Marxist feminists have identified
this binary as the relation between producer (male) and consumer (female). 100 In the
female magazine industry, production is a “male” oriented business. Although ownership
of the magazines may be in the hands of females, business is a male public space where
females have to adjust to fit in. Females more often do not take the central positions
although they are indispensable in the male-oriented economy.
97
Hopkins, p. 35.
98
Bordo, pp. 245-75.
99
Ballaster, pp. 9-10.
100
See Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought. A Comprehensive Introduction (London: Routledge, 1989), pp.
94-129.
32
The agents of control and instruction in magazines are also most often males. Magazines
give the impression of being published by females, for females and about females.
However, males handle most of the capital and profit:
control of this flow of knowledge, information and social imagery is concentrated

in the hands of those who share in the power, wealth and privilege of the
dominant class, this ruling class will ensure that what is socially circulated
through the mass media is in its interests and serves to reproduce the system of
class inequalities from which it benefits. 101
The ruling class is almost always associated with males, because men dominate both
politics and business. Although Lumby maintains that the above examples of the binary
system in which males are producers and females are consumers is an
oversimplification, 102 the fact remains that women are not yet in charge in determining
their own images and representation to promote real female empowerment.
Women’s Magazines as Pop Culture
Piliang maintains that the cultural political struggle for women in the media is to seize
and determine meaning. 103 The point of the struggle is to break gender binaries and
stereotypes and work for pluralism and alternatives. Locating women’s magazines
within pop culture leads to an understanding of the struggle for power. Pop culture in its
oscillation between resistance and commodification shows that meanings and
representation can be appropriated and manipulated.
101
Strinati, p. 137.
102
Chaterine Lumby, Bad Girls. The Media, Sex and Feminism in the 90s (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997),
p. 13.
103
“Perjuangan politik kebudayaan bagi wanita di dalam media adalah perjuangan memperebutkan
‘makna’. in Wanita dan Media. Konstruksi Ideologi Gender dalam Ruang Publik Orde Baru. Idi Subandy
Ibrahim - Hanif Suranto, eds. (Bandung, Indonesia: Remaja Rosdakarya, 1998), p. xvi.
33
According to Althusser, society consists of “relations between structures”. 104 One simple
view of society is as a duality of the ruling and the ruled - and the dominant and the
dominated. The ruling class has the power to determine the course of economic progress
and cultural production. It defines and promotes high culture. Strinati gives an example
of elitist theorists of popular and mass culture who
tend to deal with this problem [ie. mass culture] by diminishing the importance of
the mass consumers of popular culture because they do not share the assumptions
and the aesthetics of the elite. 105
Culturally, this class draws the line between “the best and the rest” so as to maintain their
assumed superiority. 106
At the other end of society is the mass-produced low culture which includes the rest of
society outside the ruling class. 107 The low culture is not low in itself, but designated
simply because it is outside the criteria of high culture as established by the dominant
ideology. Being consumed by the masses, the so-called low culture is deemed to
dominate in terms of quantity but not in terms of quality. Owing to the large number of
supporters, low culture becomes mass culture and eventually gains its popularity as
pop(ular) culture. It emerges as the mass culture of the non-dominant majority.
Conversely, the dominant class in a society intends high culture to be acknowledged
104
“Althusser’s point is that societies have to be thought of in terms of relations between structures rather
than an essence and its expressions.” in Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture
p.148.
105
Strinati, pp. 39-40.
106
see Strinati, pp. 38-49.
107
For references on pop and mass culture see Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton, eds. The Subcultures
Reader (London; New York: Routledge, 1997); Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural
Identity. London: Sage, 1996; C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby. Popular Culture. Production and
Consumption (Malden; Mass.; Balckwell Publishers, 2001); Joanne Hollows, Feminism, Femininity and
Popular Culture. Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2000; Angela McRobbie, ed. Zoot
Suits and Second-hand Dresses. An Anthology of Fashion and Music (Boston: Unwin Hyman, c1988);
Postmodernism and Popular Culture. (London; New York: Routledge, 1994); Back to Reality? Social
Experience and Cultural Studies (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 1997) and
Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (London; New York: Routledge, 1996).
34
widely, but at the same time to evolve in a restricted circulation. This is due to the fact
that exclusivity enables high culture to maintain its prestigious status.
Unlike high culture, pop culture acknowledges fragments of trends rather than uniform
standards. Hence, it can be consumed selectively without devouring the whole. 108 In this
respect pop culture cannot be separated from postmodernism and is one of its
manifestations. Pop culture as part of the postmodern attitude reacts to the monolithic
standard established by the ruling class. Postmodernism, we could say, is set against
anything binary and oppositional. It argues that two things can be different without
having to be situated at opposite ends of a line. Pop culture’s opposition to high culture is
mostly defined by people of “high culture” in an effort to structure “the other” as lower
in the hierarchy of aesthetics. The ruling class interprets culture in such a way as to
preserve their position as the patrons of high culture. Adult white male heterosexual
capitalists often personify the ruling class which produces high culture. The realm outside
of this group is recognized as “the other” or the “deviant”, and by definition experiences
discrimination. The intensity of a discriminative act depends on how many aspects of the
above standard a person deviates from. An unemployed black lesbian female teenager,
for example, would suffer a five fold discrimination.
Pop culture has always been associated with rebelliousness, a result of its marginalization
in society. The oppressed revolt against oppressive conventions, adolescents rebel against
adults, females are marginalized by males, and low culture is marginalized by high
culture and so on. In this process, however, pop culture does not continuously uphold its
pure, rebellious nature. Being the property of the majority, pop culture is a potential
108
Strinati, p. 41.
35
marketing force. Acknowledging this potential leads to the commodification of this
culture by the ruling class due to the fact that the mass majority constitute a massive
market. The pop culture instigated by the non-dominant population as a consequence is
“liable to be hijacked, distorted and sold back to its ‘owners’ as a commodity.” 109 The
pop culture of the masses is, therefore, provided by and run by the ruling class.
Capitalists of the ruling class intervene by supplying pop culture with commodities. They
are aware of the opportunity to exploit the masses as a large market niche and the selling
potential of pop culture as a commodity. In this situation, capitalists manipulate both the
consumers and the products of pop culture because they gain profit from what they
marginalize. In this way, according to Hopkins, “Popular culture has absorbed and
appropriated the counter culture − what was once radical is now mainstream”. 110 The
commodification of pop culture has to some extent transformed pop culture into
“prestigious” culture as a consequence of its selling power. By setting up images of pop
culture as empowerment, the ruling class identifies the rest of the population as potential
consumers and sells pop culture as products.
The selling of pop culture as products manipulates “empowerment”. The sense of
empowerment is achieved by giving pop culture endorsement through promotion,
propaganda and advertising. The marketing of pop culture in this way also appropriates
the postmodernist jargon of plurality and empowerment to sell products. An example of
this can be seen on the Adidas website. Adidas sports shoes employ the slogan,
“impossible is nothing”. 111 The website opening page features Muhammad Ali and his
109
Ballaster, p 35.
110
Hopkins, p. 23.
111
Adidas http://www.adidas.com/com/performance/home.asp (date accessed 30 September 2004).
36
daughter Laila Ali. (Pages on athletes’ stories cover athletes from different races and
nationalities, both females and males.) The whole advertisement seems to embrace ideas
of equality. The advertisement suggests that power and strength can emanate from
anywhere as long as there is willpower involved, and uses the popular “politically-
correct” perception of judging people by their achievements rather than by their race or
gender. In setting up the story in this way, the shoes become a symbol of the ability of
anyone to go anywhere, crossing all mental and physical boundaries. However, Adidas
shoes sell for high prices and are only for the rich, therefore the “empowerment” does not
go anywhere.
Most pop culture commodities deal more with images than function. Strinati maintains
that:
in a postmodern world, surfaces and style become more important,...The

argument is that we increasingly consume images and signs for their own sake
rather than for their ‘usefulness’ or for the deeper values they may symbolize. 112
In the end, the process of selling pop culture is financially manipulative. The selling
initially fulfils the demands of pop culture by providing commodities, but later on re-
constructing the demands through the hegemonic images that they sell. This dual
construction is not merely to gain profit, but also to inconspicuously protect the status
quo of the ruling class. 113
Marxist feminist critics find that females’ position in the economy is always at a
disadvantage. 114 There are four female positions in the economy vis-a-vis male
112
Strinati, p. 225.
113
Strinati, p. 137.
114
See Heidi Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism. Towads a More Progressive
Union”, Michele Barrett, Capitalism and Women’s Liberation”, Linda Nicholson, Feminism and Marx.
Integrating Kinship with the Economic” in The Second Wave. A Reader in Feminist Theory. Linda
37
producers. Firstly, females are a source of free labour in private space. A housewife
provides her services for free by preparing meals, cleaning the house, doing the laundry
and so on, so that the male breadwinner can function properly. She gets food and board
and clothes in return. Secondly, females are a source of cheap labour in the public space
because they generally do not earn as much as males for the same job. Thirdly, females
are objects of spectacle employed to sell products. Whether the products are targeted at
females or males, females’ function as a “decoration” in marketing and advertisements is
far more significant than that of males’ in terms of “decorating” the advertisements as
models. Lastly, under the producer-consumer divide females are perceived as consumers
who purchase the products.
As part of pop culture, female magazines rely on females as role models in the images
and as potential consumers of the magazines. By extension, the existence of the
magazines is also backed up by female resources in other sectors, such as in production,
distribution, logistic, and whether or not the sector is directly related to the running of the
magazines. Nevertheless, the domain of the magazines’ production and circulation is
predominantly male in ideology. Lumby says that:
The ‘reality’ about the interaction between the mass media...women and identity
in late capitalist society is far more complex than this oppositional model in
which men are patriarchs, buyers and producers and women are reduced to
victims, commodities and consumers. 115
However, in the wider context the dichotomy of male/female is inevitable. It is exhibited
in the active/passive binary in media representation, in the dominant/dominated binary in
determining meaning and in the producer/consumer binary in media production.
Women’s magazines carry all these binaries on the surface and in the subtext. There is,
Nicholson, ed. (London; New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 96-145; Rosemarie Tong. Feminist Thought.
pp. 94-129.
115
Lumby, p. 13.
38
therefore, an interdependence between women’s magazines and the social context. One
can be a source of information for the other.
We can conclude that the narrative of femininity in women’s magazines reflects the
rhetoric in society that idealizes females as a private but generic feminine being. The
specificity of the genre and the scope of women’s magazines do not make them free from
male power. Although male representation in women’s magazines is insignificant, male
power is perpetuated in many aspects of the magazines production. The selling power of
women’s magazines relies on a male ideology that glamourizes females’ subordinated
position. In addition, consumerism, female objectification and cheap labour are shown to
be natural, though disguised, in the production of women’s magazines. The glorification
and, at the same time, the trivialization of women in women’s magazines, are partly
mirroring the women’s lived experiences in society.
The following chapter on the social background of Indonesian adolescents will place
Indonesian female teen magazines in a national context. The emergence of Indonesian
teen magazines would not be possible without the mass existence of adolescents who
make up a significant share of the supporters of pop culture. This chapter discussed how
women’s magazines reflect the society in which they are produced. The next chapter will
discuss how a society helps shape girls’ magazines.
39
Chapter 3
THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF INDONESIAN ADOLESCENTS
The term and concept of adolescence is a relatively recent one in Indonesia. In fact,
adolescence is a new concept in many countries of the world. In the United States, for
example, the concept of adolescence was not popular before the Second World War.
Ehrenreich et al mention that:
Consciousness of the teen years as a life-cycle phase set off between late
childhood on the one hand and young adulthood on the other only goes back to
the early twentieth century, when the influential psychologist G. Stanley Hall
published his mammoth work Adolescence. (The word ‘teenager’ did not enter
mass usage until 1940.) 116
Previously the common understanding was that childhood continued straight to
adulthood. Manderson and Liamputtong say that, in situations where young men and
young women (or girls) enter marriage at an early stage in their life, teenhood simply
may not exist. 117 Many sociologists argue that mass and prolonged education has created
adolescents by delaying marriage and employment. However, anthropologists have done
research in many societies where adolescence is a period that marks a person’s
maturation towards adulthood. 118 So there is always an acknowledgement of a certain
stage before adulthood, although it may not necessarily be a separate stage. This chapter
discusses Indonesian adolescents as a social group that emerged as a result of Indonesia’s
national development in the twentieth century. Adolescence is discussed in this chapter
116
Barbara Ehrenreich and Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs, “Beatlemania. A Sexually Defiant Consumer
in Subculture?” The Subcultures Reader, Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton eds., (London; New York:
Routledge, 1997), p. 532.
117
Lenore Manderson and Pranee Liamputtong, “Introduction”, Coming of Age in South and Southeast
Asia. Youth, Courtship and Sexuality (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2002), p. 2.
118
See, for example, Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1943)
and Alice Schleel and Herbert Barry III, Adolescence. An Anthropological Inquiry (New York; Toronto:
Macmillan, 1991).
40
not as a biological state of human physical development, but as the result of changes in
the state’s perception and the treatment of young people by society.
Over the last century, Indonesian society has created a generation of youth that fits in
with its own changing needs. As Kaplan argues, “Every society attempts to preserve itself
by inventing the adolescence it requires.” 119 For instance, during the Dutch occupation
Indonesian nationalists needed to recruit all the human resources so as to get rid of the
Dutch. In the 1920s, at the start of the nationalist movement, young people were both
enlisted and represented as “freedom fighters”. During the New Order (1966-1998),
however, the state demanded political stability and compliance from young people to
sustain the power of the state. At the end of the New Order, rapid economic and
communications development expanded the middle class and young people were seen as
significant marketing targets in an expanding consumer culture. They are now among the
most important consumers in Indonesia today.
From Pemuda to Remaja: From Freedom Fighters to Adolescents
Indonesian literature from the 1920s until Independence in 1945 rarely acknowledged a
specific period in a young individual’s life equivalent to the modern day adolescent. 120
There were young people but they were not categorized as adolescents. These young
people were the pemuda. This word comes from the word muda, meaning young. The
prefix modifies the meaning to “young people”. During the nationalist movement against
the Dutch, this word was used to represent young Indonesian intellectuals and activists.
Although both pemuda and remaja refer to young people, the political conditions of the
time put the pemuda at a more mature level than remaja.
119
Kaplan, p.336.
120
See books published during the Dutch occupation by Balai Pustaka.
41
In the 1920s, some of the youth organizations included Pemuda Indonesia (Young
Indonesia) with its counterpart Putri Indonesia (Indonesian Girls), and Jong Islamieten
Bond (Young Islamic Alliance), which established a female branch called the Jong
Islamieten Bond Dames Afdeling or JIBDA (Young Islamic Alliance Ladies Branch). 121
While the establishment of branches for women and girls suggest equality, such
organizations mostly started as all-male movements only later establishing female
branches. Female branches were subordinated and subsumed into the male organizations;
for example, some female branches had their own agenda to reform polygamy and female
education among Indonesians at the time. 122 Marriage during this period was conducted
at a relatively young age. Locher-Scholten mentiones that child marriage was common
during the Dutch period among “the natives” despite cries from educated Indonesians and
concerned Dutch people for a regulation to prevent it. Little girls as young as twelve or
thirteen were rushed off into arranged marriages. 123 However, they had to forgo their
agenda in order to show a “united front” to the Dutch government. 124 The women did not
want the polygamy issue to be used by the Dutch as a wedge to divide the Indonesian
nationalist movement. 125
During the struggle for independence the word pemuda denoting youth did not have any
meanings suggesting adolescence. Taylor refers to the word pemuda as having “a legacy
of violence” which invokes images of revolution and social turmoil. 126 At the time the
word stressed the emergence of energetic and patriotic males ready to defend their
121
Locher-Scholten, p. 160.
122
123
Locher-Scholten, p. 189 and Terence H Hull. The Marriage Revolution in Indonesia (Atlanta:
Population Association of America, 2002), p. 2.
124
125
126
Jean Gelman Taylor, Indonesia. Peoples and Histories (New Haven; London: Yale University Press). p.
376.
42
country during the revolution. Young girls’ role in the public space as pejuang (fighters)
alongside pemuda was duly noted, although still limited to their feminine stereotype as
carers of others.
The inclusion of female fighters or pejuang in the national political and armed struggle
came from the realization that the independence movement needed to deploy all human
resources available including females and young people. Both young Indonesian males
and females united to gain political recognition from the Dutch government. However,
Locher-Scholten comments that:
It [the nationalist movement] only wanted them [the women] to side in the
nationalist struggle for national independence... Women could and should serve as
‘helpmates’ in the struggle for the national cause. 127
Pemudi is the female equivalent of pemuda, meaning young females or young women.
Despite the rise of the concept of female youth as political partners, the term pemudi was
not used as often or considered as the equal to its male version. For example, the Sumpah
Pemuda (The Youth Declaration) in 1928 does not have its equivalent Sumpah
Pemudi. 128 Ethnicity existed in the masculine form such as the term putra daerah which
means son of the region. School books about regional youth organization during the
Dutch occupation used the word pemuda to translate the Dutch word jong to denote
regional organization based on youth and ethnicity: Pemuda Jawa (Javanese Youth),
Pemuda Makasar (Makasar Youth), and Pemuda Ambon (Ambonese Youth). When
pemudi is used it as almost always together with pemuda, not on its own.
127
128
Jun Kuncoro H., “Bahasa Media Massa Masih Mendiskriminasikan Wanita” in Wanita dan Media.
Konstruksi Ideologi Gender dalam Ruang Publik Orde Baru [Women and the Media.Constructing Gender
Ideology in the New Order’s Public Space] Idi Subandi Ibrahim and Hanif Suranto eds., (Bandung,
Indonesia: Remaja Rosdakarya, 1998), p. 218.
43
The pattern of activities at the time implies that women’s organizations functioned
around their gendered roles, while men’s movements were more concerned with the
destiny of the people of the nation. 129 Men’s organizations were the over-arching
movements that were seen as more important and as covering the interests of both
genders. A common stereotype from the discourse of this period is women’s role in the
community kitchen (dapur umum) serving the freedom fighters and as first aid providers
in the Red Cross. 130
After Independence, the leadership of Sukarno marked the last chance for the pemuda to
be associated with riots, radical social change and demonstrations. As a charismatic
leader, Sukarno had the ability “to move the masses” to support his leadership. 131 These
“masses” largely consisted of the pemuda from the freedom fighting era. However, later
on the pemuda’s presence in the public political arena was to launch “de-Sukarnoism” to
protest against Sukarno’s leadership. 132 This protest intensified towards the end of the
Old Order when pemuda as a social group were associated with angry students during
mass rallies protesting Sukarno’s leadership and policies. In this context, the term
pemuda was often linked with male university students demonstrating against inflation
and Sukarno’s abuse of power. The image of pemuda was of strident proponents of
radical social political change.
The New Order that succeeded the Sukarno era gave a new context and content to the
word pemuda. The political movement of the pemuda was stifled. The state claimed that
129
130
Nuraini Juliastuti, “Budaya Cewek” Kunci http://kunci.or.id/teks/12cewek.htm (date accessed 21
October 2003).
131
Ben Anderson ttg PEMILU [Ben Anderson on the General Election]
http://.hamline.edu/apakabar/basisdata/1997/07/07/0001.html (date accessed 31 October 2003).
132
David Bourchier and Vedi R. Hadiz, eds. Indonesian Politics and Society. A Reader. (London; New
York: Routledge Curzon, 2003), p. 71.
44
it needed stability to carry out the development programs to build the nation without
unnecessary political interference from the mass of the pemuda. 133 Under the New Order,
the term pemuda was used in a stately way to address future generations. However, they
were not necessarily “young”, presumably because some of the activists were the pemuda
from the Old Order who were then well into their forties. Youth organizations
(organisasi pemuda) endorsed by the government, such as Komite Nasional Pemuda
Indonesia (KNPI or The National Committee of Indonesian [Male] Youth) and Pemuda
Pancasila (Young Men of Pancasila), 134 often included males who were not young and
indeed were well into their forties also. Tokoh pemuda or youth leaders of the New Order
like Abdul Gafur and Abdullah Puteh, to name just two, were not young by the standards
of age but they represented the generasi muda (young generation) or generasi penerus
(the succeeding generation). They were part of the masses of pemuda who were
constructed to become proponents of the state’s social, political and cultural agenda.
During the Soeharto era, the word pemudi, indicating female youth or females in general,
appeared less and less in formal institutions. Edriana says that this is an indication of the
masculinization of the nation. 135 However, according to Kuncoro there was an effort to
include the word puteri (young female teens) alongside its male counterpart putera
(young male), to acknowledge the female gender. For example, in the name Forum
Komunikasi Putera Puteri ABRI, (FKPPI or Communication Forum for Sons and
133
This non-political mass is called the floating mass. For information about floating mass see Bourchier
and Hadiz, pp 45-9.
134
Jun Kuncoro H., “Bahasa Media Massa Masih Mendiskriminasikan Wanita” [The Language of Mass
Media Still Discriminates Against Women] in Wanita dan Media. Konstruksi Ideologi Gender dalam
Ruang Publik Orde Baru [Women and the Media.Constructing Gender Ideology in the New Order’s Public
Space], Idi Subandi Ibrahim and Hanif Suranto eds., (Bandung, Indonesia: Remaja Rosdakarya, 1998), p.
218.
135
Edriana, “Representasi Perempuan dalam Ruang Publik. “Kalam”, Nasionalisme, dan Perempuan” [The
Representation of Females in Public Space. “Kalam”, Nationalism and Females] in Wanita dan Media.
Konstruksi Ideologi Gender dalam Ruang Publik Orde Baru [Women and the Media.Constructing Gender
Ideology in the New Order’s Public Space] Idi Subandi Ibrahim and Hanif Suranto eds., (Bandung,
Indonesia: Remaja Rosdakarya, 1998), pp. 65-71.
45
Daughters of the Indonesian Military) we find acknowledged the fact that among its
members are females. 136
Under the New Order, this gender-balanced naming was not carried out and applied
consistently in official naming of state institutions. Many organizations had apparently
gender-neutral names to refer to institutions for both sexes and also male-oriented
institutions or organizations. For female institutions/organizations the names always
denoted the gender. For instance, the term Tenaga Kerja Indonesia [Indonesian
Labourers] refers to Indonesian male workers overseas. The female counterpart of this is
Tenaga Kerja Wanita [Female Labourers]. The word polisi refers to policeman and
police in general, and the word polisi wanita or polwan is used to refer only to police
women. This has the equivalent effect of the English words “man” and “men” that can
refer to either males or all human beings.
Names of formal institutions and formal organizations, which appear to be genderless,
are actually often centered around or exclusively for males: groups containing females
are given are given a specific name since they are not included in the male group.
Ruthven shows that sexist language reveals sexist attitudes in society. His examples are
in English, nevertheless they are revealing and show how female marginalization
operates through language. 137
136
Kuncoro, p. 218.
137
“Some examples are the suffixes, for instance, like the ‘-ess’ which turns ‘actor’ into ‘actress’ and
‘poet’ into ‘poetess’. Here, because ‘actor’ and ‘poet’ happen to be words used of men, the creation of
feminine agentives to describe the same activities done by women implies that women constitute at best
some sort of special case and at worst an ersatz version of the real thing. Or take the case of naming: why
have so many things pertaining to women been named in terms of their relation to men? In the case of
personal names, for instance, why did an unmarried woman have to be styled ‘Miss’ and a married one
‘Mrs’ when both married and unmarried men were indistinguishably ‘Mr’; and why did women have to
lose their surnames on marrying, and sometimes even their first names (Mrs Humphry Ward)?” KK
Ruthven, Feminist Literary Studies. An Introduction (London: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 65.
46
According to Ruthven “...if the English language [or Indonesian, for that matter] is felt to
138
be sexist, it must be because of how we use it rather than because of what it is.”
Female words are less used whenever a masculine noun exists. Once feminine nouns are
used, their usage implies the dominance of the masculine words and/or the rarity of the
female concept itself. Examples show that language is “man-made” not “woman-
made”. 139
In 1973, the New Order passed a new Marriage Law that, among other things, prevented
marriage for females under sixteen and males under nineteen. 140 In 1984, the government
launched the six year compulsory education drive (Wajib Belajar) for elementary school
children and, in 1994, the government extended the program into junior high school,
making education compulsory for nine years (Wajib Belajar Pendidikan Dasar 9 Tahun)
from age six to fifteen.141 By establishing this minimum age for marriage and legislating
education nationwide, the New Order helped to create the early breed of remaja or
Indonesian adolescents. According to the Indonesian dictionary, the term remaja “applies
to young women who have already had their menarche and young boys who enter
maturity, or mature; currently meaning boys or girls between childhood and adulthood at
the age of puberty like junior high school students; young, young people”. 142 It is since
138
KK Ruthven, Feminist Literary Studies. An Introduction (London: Cambridge University Press, 1984),
p. 60.
139
Black and Coward in KK Ruthven, Feminist Literary Studies. An Introduction (London: Cambridge
140
Hull, p. 2.
141
see Djoko Hartono and David Ehrmann. “The Indonesian Economic Crisis. Impacts on School
Enrolment and Funding” in The Indonesian Crisis. A Human Development Perspective Aris Ananta, ed.
(Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003), p. 183
142
1 dikatakan kepada anak wanita yang mulai haid dan anak laki-laki yang sudah akil balig, dewasa 2
dewasa ini yang dimaksud: anak laki-laki atau wanita antara anak-anak dan dewasa pd usia puber spt
siswa-siswa SMP; 3muda: kaum -J.S. Badudu and Sutan Mohammad Zain, Kamus Umum Bahasa
Indonesia (Jakarta, Indonesia: Pustaka Sinar Harapan, 1996), p. 1152.
47
the 1970s that the word remaja has been commonly and increasingly used to represent
adolescents. 143
Remaja and the legacy of the New Order
Shiraishi says that the concept of “modern school childhood” in Indonesia started with
the establishment of primary education during the Dutch occupation, irrespective of
whether Dutch or Malay was used as the language of instruction. 144 However, modern
Indonesian adolescence, or remaja, emerged much later on as a legacy from the New
Order following the end of Sukarno era. Shiraishi argues that the concept of remaja in the
New Order was produced to counter “the revolutionary pemuda of 1940s and the students
of 1960.” 145 Remaja in the New Order became visible but were politically insignificant.
Remaja in public discourse are frequently associated with having a good time and an
abundance of facilities and opportunities. Ben Anderson comments that:
Remaja as a social group are young people, they are not working, but pursuing
their education instead. So the change from pemuda to remaja is the result of the
spread of the Indonesian education system. Another reason is the emergence of
the Indonesian middle class during the New Order. Along with this has also been
the emergence of spoilt youngsters whose mums and dads are wealthy,
consumerists, etc. 146
It is true that talk on Indonesian teen culture (budaya remaja) almost invariably invokes
images of middle-to upper-class adolescents. It implies that teen culture is identical with
groups of teenagers who are well provided for. Adolescents from the lower class are
143
See Saya Shirashi in Young Heroes. The Indonesian Family in Politics (New York: Cornell University,
1997), p. 149 and Interview with Ben Anderson in Ben Anderson ttg PEMILU [Ben Anderson on the
General Election] http://.hamline.edu/apakabar/basisdata/1997/07/07/0001.html (date accessed 31 October
2003).
144
Shiraishi, p. 123.
145
Shiraishi, p. 149.
146
Remaja sebagai kelompok sosial adalah orang yang masih muda, tidak bekerja tapi duduk di bangku
sekolah. Jadi perubahan dari pemuda menjadi remaja adalah akibat meluasnya sistim pendidikan di
Indonesia. Sebagian lagi karena munculnya kelas menengah di Indonesia selama Orde Baru. Muncul juga
anak-anak manja yang papi-maminya banyak duit, sikapnya konsumtif, dsb.
“Ben Anderson ttg PEMILU” [Ben Anderson on the General Election]
48
rarely alluded to as having any culture at all. Lower-class adolescents are discussed at the
other extreme in terms of social gaps, social unrest or juvenile delinquency. One example
is the use of the term anak jalanan (street kids) instead of remaja jalanan (street teens) to
refer to adolescents who loiter around major intersections and the centre of big cities
carrying out activities and petty crimes. The use of the word anak (child), has the effect
of differentiating and belittling the status of lower class adolescents. This shows the
exclusivity of the word remaja to refer to financially and educationally well-provided-for
adolescents.
As remaja are now acknowledged as a new and significant social group in Indonesian
culture, they are starting to gain attention from the state. This group is significant in state
discourse in terms of human resources and potential social costs, which are seen as
mostly moral. The state views the period of adolescence as a turning point. If adolescents
successfully pass this “trial” period, the future of the nation and the society is safe. On
the other hand, if the nation and the society fail to arm adolescents with the proper
knowledge and attitudes, the future of the country is at risk. The National Development
Guidelines 1999-2004 (Garis-Garis Besar Haluan Negara 1999-2004) warn about the
decline in the quality of the young generation. The Guidelines state that lack of
creativity, will-power, capacity to develop the mind, lack of capacity to perform social
activities and lack of courage to take chances will impede the process of preparing the
nation’s next generation. 147
147
Penurunan peranan dan kualitas diri terjadi juga di kalangan generasi muda. Kreativitas, kemauan,
dan kemampuan mengembangkan pemikiran dan melakukan kegiatan eksploratif, melakukan aksi sosial
untuk berani coba-ralat pada generasi muda mengalami hambatan sehingga pada akhirnya menghambat
proses kaderisasi bangsa. see Garis-garis Besar Haluan Negara 1999-2004 [National Development
Guidelines 1999-2004] http://www.lin.go.id/detail.asp?idartcl=180502miLA0001&by=IndBangun (date
accessed 9 August 2004).
49
In practice, the New Order with its centralized education system tried to instil in students
the idea that authority knows what is best for them. This eventually led to lack of critical
thinking in the Indonesian education system developed by the New Order. 148 Ben
Anderson claims that the Old Order used education to move the masses, but that the New
Order used it to paralyze the students’ critical mind. He refers to the depoliticization of
university students during the New Order, known as the Normalisasi Kehidupan Kampus
(Normalization of Campus Life), 149 which implies that it is not usual for “normal”
students to engage in political activities. The proper attitude expected from remaja is
obedience to authority. In Anderson’s words, “Education is designed to make young
people obey and not to think too much”. 150 In Shiraishi’s words these adolescents are
constructed to be “politically tame”. 151
The slogan of development, as reflected in the Indonesian media, often refers to the
young generation as the succeeding generation (generasi muda adalah generasi penerus
bangsa). 152 The discourse of putting the future of the nation on the shoulders of younger
generation may seem noble, but it could be read as an excuse to deploy any method to
steer and control them along a particular path in an effort to protect the nation’s future.
The state continues to execute its slogan by putting adolescents on a political leash. Even
after the downfall of the New Order in 1998, the legacy of government’s uneasiness
towards the rebellious nature of its youth lingers. Habibie cancelled the Normalization of
Campus Life policy during his presidency, which meant allowing university students to
148
See Lynette Parker, “Engendering School Children in Bali.” The Journal of Royal Anthropological
Institute, 3 (1997), 497-516 and Mochtar Buchori, Notes on Education in Indonesia. (Jakarta: The Jakarta
Post and The Asia Foundation, 2001).
149
Ben Anderson ttg PEMILU [Ben Anderson on the General Election]
150
...pendidikan dirancang untuk membuat anak muda patuh dan tidak banyak mikir. in Ben Anderson ttg
PEMILU [Ben Anderson on the General Election]
151
Shiraishi, p. 149.
152
Compiled from various Indonesian media sources on the internet.
50
be involved in politics. 153 Nevertheless, despite the legal re-entering of young people into
the state’s political ring, popular images of non-political adolescents were already well-
established.
The state, through discourses in the media, claimed that one of the biggest threats faced
by Indonesian adolescents is globalization. The impact of globalization on Indonesian
adolescents was discussed in the media at the time of, and after the end of, the New
Order. However, the connotation of globalization is often limited to cultural
westernization, which is often associated with moral degradation. 154 Therefore none of
the discourse was actually in favour of globalization, as it was never seen as something to
embrace in Indonesian society. In connecting globalization with adolescents, the
discourse grew even more hostile towards it. Adolescents were seen as being in danger
from the negative influence of globalization. The discourse assumed that if today’s
younger generation lost their “high eastern values” to the “immoral western values”, the
country would be morally colonized. In most of the discourse, globalization was
perceived as a menace, with adolescents the most prone to its destructive nature.
Therefore, it was argued, every preventive measure was to be taken to “filter”
globalization so as to make it “safe” for Indonesian adolescents to adopt and consume.
The following quote from Suara Merdeka daily reflects how Indonesian authorities
viewed adolescents:
The present adolescents are the country’s next generation who will continue the
nation’s development and be the human resources in the future. They have to
153
“Bina Graha Cabut Pembatalan SIUPP” [Bina Graha to Cancel SIUPP] Kompas Online.Wednesday, 27
May 1998. http://www.seasite.niu.edu/indonesian/Reformasi/Chronicle/Kompas/May27/bina01.html
154
I would like to thank Pam Nilan and Kathryn Robinson for this qualification, that globalization is rarely
associated with the positive side of technology, trade and communication.
51
become a quality generation, with a competitive edge, and the ability to build a
defence against and grow under the gushing threats of globalization. 155
The words “defence” and “gushing threats” in the above quotation refer to globalization
as a fighting challenge, rather than a developmental tool for broadening the horizons of
young people.
Amien Rais, in his book Moralitas Politik Muhammadiyah (Muhammadiyah Political
Morality), has this to say on globalization in the context of Islam (therefore Indonesia,
since Islam is the religion of the majority):
winning Indonesia’s adolescents is a long term obligation of Islamic teaching. Our

children and adolescents are an invaluable asset. We have to save them from the
erosion of faith caused by the invasion of non-islamic values which seep into the
heart of various Islamic communities in Indonesia. If our children and adolescents
have a strong fortress (al-hususn al hamidiyyah) in this era of globalization and
information, if God is willing, then our future will stay pure. 156
The word “fortress” is used to depict what is needed in the face of globalization. Rais
sees globalization as an invasion and as the bearer of all worldly sins. The discourse that
heartily welcomes globalization − because it brings with it technology, a new sense of
equality, awareness, and solidarity − is rare. The keynote theme of globalization in the
Indonesian media is always about urging the young generation to be constantly on guard
against the intrusion:
155
“Padahal remaja masa ini adalah generasi penerus pembangunan bangsa dan sebagai sumber daya
manusia (SDM) pada masa mendatang. Mereka harus menjadi generasi berkualitas, memiliki keunggulan
kompetetif, dan kemampuan untuk bertahan serta berkembang dalam terpaan ancaman pengaruh
globalisasi.” Generasi Abad ke-21 Terjebak Mitos Rokok. [Generation of the 21st Century Trapped in
Smoking Myths] Suara Merdeka, Monday 10 December 2001.
http://www.suaramerdeka.com/harian/0112/10/ragam2.htm (date accessed 31 October 2003).
156
“.merebut remaja Indonesia adalah tugas dakwah Islam jangka panjang. Anak-anak dan para remaja
kita adalah aset yang tak ternilai. Mereka wajib kita selamatkan dari pengikisan aqidah yang terjadi
akibat ‘invasi’ nilai-nilai non-islami ke dalam jantung berbagai komunitas Islam di Indonesia. Bila anak-
anak dan remaja kita memiliki benteng tangguh (al-hususn al hamidiyyah) dalam era globalisasi dan
informasi sekarang ini, Insya Allah masa depan kita akan tetap ceria.” in RB. Khatib Pahlawan Kayo,
“Problematika Dakwah Masa Kini”. [The Contemporary Problems of Teaching Islam] MajalahTabligh,
Dakwah Khusus, Vol. 01/No. 12/July 2003. http://www.muhammadiyah-online.or.id/mtdtkvol01_12.asp
52
The young generation have to be able to see truthfully the process of globalization
nowadays as a new challenge that needs to be met by increasing the quality of the
self and the community that supports it.
...
In the process of globalization which praises promises of individualism,
independence, freedom, and human rights, the young generation have to be able to
see rationally the new enemies attacking the young generation, young people and
adolescents. These enemies are nicely packaged, and seem to be interesting,
enjoyable, and full of promise.157
According to the above passage, individualism, independence, freedom and even human
rights should be eyed suspiciously. The quotation gives clear evidence of how
‘authorities’, through the media, have the ability to construct new meanings in support of
themselves. The individuals acting as the ‘authorities’ in the above examples are the
state, the Islamic socio-political groups and the media. They all represent the power to be
heard and to influence the public to support the state. The words globalization,
individualism, independence, freedom, human rights are given new derogatory meanings
that would accommodate and justify any action carried out by the authorities in
governing its youth. The deterioration of the meaning of the words is constructed in order
to uphold the political status quo.
The legacy of the New Order labels individualism as vice, and compares it to the
communal family tradition in Indonesia which views the society as a big family. 158
According to the New Order state ideology, the interest of the big family (that is, society)
157
“Generasi muda harus dengan jujur melihat proses globalisasi sekarang ini sebagai tantangan baru
yang perlu dihadapi dengan meningkatkan kualitas diri dan masyarakat yang mendukungnya... .Dalam
proses globalisasi yang sangat mengagungkan promis individualisme, kemerdekaan, kebebasan, dan hak-
hak asasi manusia, generasi muda harus mampu melihat dengan rasional musuh-musuh baru yang
menyerang generasi muda, anak muda dan remaja, yang dipaket indah dengan pajangan yang menarik,
yang menyenangkan dan nempaknya memberikan promis yang menjanjikan” The writer of the article is the
former head of BKKBN (Badan Koordinasi Keluarga Berencana Nasional, National Coordinator of
Family Planning) during the New Order. Haryono Suyono, “Dengan Sumpah Pemuda Kita Bersatu untuk
Maju.” Suara Karya, Friday, 31 October 2003. http://www.suarakarya-online.com/news.html?id=73747
158
See Shirashi’s Young Heroes 1997.
53
should come first. Individual freedom and independence are not cherished because
Indonesian culture promotes cooperation and working together in society (gotong
royong). Even human rights can come second if it is viewed as threatening the society.
By putting itself as representative of “the society”, the state plays around with rules and
regulations since it can arbitrarily impose meanings.
Capitalism, along with globalization, is another example of a word with a bad reputation
as a result of the state’s discursive manipulation. The reputation of these words is part of
a long chain reaction, which was itself part of Soeharto’s effort to rhetorically disconnect
Indonesia from foreign influence. This was despite the fact that the regime relied heavily
on the IMF, World Bank and a wide range of capitalist investment for its national
development programs. What has happened is the disappearance of the word “capitalism”
but, strangely, the burgeoning of the practice of capitalism itself is perpetuated by the
state. 159
As much as the Indonesian government hated calling itself capitalist, what it practises in
its national economic policies is basically capitalism. Heryanto believes that:
Capitalism is sponsored by our government. Since capitalism is not a label to be

proud of, it is promoted with euphemistic terms such as development, Second
Long Term Development Plan, industrialization, globalization. 160
Capitalists of the New Order relentlessly expanded their markets under different names,
such as businessmen or conglomerates. 161 It is also a public secret that most business
people are related in some ways or the other to the authorities. They could be family,
159
Ariel Heryanto, Perlawanan Dalam Kepatuhan (Bandung, Indonesia: Mizan, 2000), p. 83.
160
...kapitalisme itu ...disponsori oleh pemerintah kita. Berhubung kapitalisme bukan julukan yang bisa
dibanggakan, ia dikampanyekan dengan istilah-istilah eufemisme seperti pembangunan, PJPT II,
industrialisasi, globalisasi. In Heryanto, Perlawanan Dalam Kepatuhan p. 363.
161
Heryanto, Perlawanan Dalam Kepatuhan p. 83.
54
relatives and friends. This is not surprising, considering that former president Soeharto
practised the same thing by giving business privileges to his families, relatives and
cronies. All big businesses in Indonesia are conducted under this intricate web of familial
relationships.
Under this set of social conditions, Indonesia’s remaja develop into a new social group
that is different from young people in the previous era. A different political background
has shaped the socio-cultural condition of remaja through education, the economy and
other formative aspects in society. The following section will show that commerce,
globalization and marketing expansion are the force behind the rise of Indonesian teen
culture.
The Rise of Indonesian Teen Culture
It is in the middle of these economic justifications, that capitalism is bad in theory but
good in practice, that the teen market thrives. Not only that, but the number of
adolescents in Indonesia is growing in number, and as a proportion of the total
population. As remaja they come from the wealthy middle-to-upper class.162 In line with
the advance of technology and communication, and the globalization of the media, new
products are continuously being invented for teenagers. It is ironic that adolescents who,
according to the state, should be protected from the “vice” of globalization are also
increasingly the target. According to Nielsen Media Research in Indonesia, as quoted in
the daily newspaper, Kompas, the number of products made for adolescents was
162
Adolescents make up approximately 20% of the population. Between 1970 and 2000, the 15-24 year
age group increased from 21 to 43 millions, or from 18 to 21% of Indonesia’s total population of over 200
million (Sulistinah & Westley 1999). Sulistinah, I. A.. & P. Xenos 2000 “Notes on Youth and Education in
Indonesia,” Ceria – Cerita Remaja Indonesia, http://www.bkkbn.go.id/hqweb/ceria/ Accessed 2/12/04.
For statistics on the population of adolescents in Indonesia see Ceria. Cerita Remaja Indonesia
http://www.bkkbn.go.id/hqweb/ceria/sg1proyeksi%20penduduk%20muda.html
(date accessed 10 january 2005).
55
increasing compared with the number of products for other sections of the demography,
such as adults. At the beginning of 2003, there were 309 products advertised for
adolescents on television and radio. By the end of the year the figure had increased to 328
products. 163 As Kasali an expert on Indonesian markets writes, Indonesian adolescents
are a difficult “moving target”, but he claims that once the target is locked, high profit is
assured. 164 Adolescents are a potential market because they are almost instinctively open
to change, unlike the older generation which is more likely to cling to its old values.
Adolescents want to adjust to changes because this flexibility sets them apart from the
older generation. There is a popular slogan among Indonesian adolescents that says
“dare to be different” (berani tampil beda) − this implies exclusivism. Quoting Hall:
the ‘unities’ which identities proclaim are, in fact, constructed within the play of
power and exclusion, and are the result, not of a natural and inevitable or
primordial totality but of the naturalized, overdetermined process of ‘closure’. 165
Realizing this need of adolescents to be “different” and in an effort to identify different
groups of adolescents, an Indonesian market research company called Surindo has
conducted research and “detected eight segments of teen psychographics in urban areas,
called funky teens ... bad-mood teens ... ‘whatever’ teens ... doubtful teens ... boring teens
... cheap teens ... and cool teens”. 166 This research shows how seriously Indonesian
business people have engaged themselves in teen marketing. Surindo identifies new
demographics to create new images. Once the images are set, producers using Surindo’s
findings can modify and add segmented products according to their invented
demographic images.
163
Ada Gula Ada Semut, Ada Kita Ada Iklan http://kompas.com/kompas-cetak/0305/09/muda/301674.htm
164
Rhenald Kasali, “Dugem” [Clubbing] Kontan. http://www.kontan-
online.com/05/10/manajemen/man2.htm (date accessed 03/04/2003).
165
Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1996), p. 5.
166
Kasali, “Dugem” [Clubbing] Kontan.
56
Indonesian teen culture started in the 1980s. The new Marriage Law, the compulsory
education program and the rise of the middle class brought modern and urban Indonesian
adolescents into exposure in the public market space. This coincides with the period that
Robison refers to as “The Rise of Capital”. 167 This was the period when national
development accelerated, marked by the rapid advance in technology and
communications. These conjunctions started the representation of modern adolescents in
the media that we see today.
As noted in the introduction, television played an important role in establishing teen
culture. In 1989, RCTI became the first private television station broadcasting nationally,
after almost thirty years of monopoly by the government-owned station, TVRI. 168 This
had a significant impact on Indonesian pop culture with the introduction of American
programs and entertainment on RCTI. Apart from the availability of capital to import
foreign entertainment, there was also a chain reaction because, in America itself, pop
culture was on the rise in the 1980s through their international entertainment industry. 169
Americanization is a global phenomenon with a global effect. 170
Two of the most popular teen characters produced in this era were Catatan si Boy [Boy’s
Journal] and Lupus [a boy’s name]. Sen and Hill observe that:
Lupus, Boy and similar characters should be related to the rise of the teenage
market generated by the growth and prosperity of the upper- and middle-classes in
the 1980s − a market that advertisers were keen to reach. Boy, the super-rich kid
with a taste for brand-name products, was a good way to reach consumers,
167
See Richard Robison, Indonesia, The Rise of Capital (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986).
168
Krishna Sen and David T. Hill, Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia (Melbourne: Oxford University
Press, 2000), p, 112.
169
Strinati, p. 21-38.
170
Strinati, p. 21-38.
57
particularly in a serialised story which could depend on a regular following, both
in terms of a specific demographic and regular access. 171
The city in which these movies are set is Jakarta, the country’s capital. This reflects
Jakarta’s role not only as the centre of government but also as the culture capital. Movies
and entertainments in Indonesia are mostly produced with a Jakarta mindset. Oetomo
even claims that Indonesians recognize Jakarta as the capital of everything. 172
Eventually what evolves in Jakarta is used as the paradigm of popular culture around
Indonesia. There is a “love-it-or-leave-it” attitude in regions outside Jakarta with regards
to Jakarta’s influence on their culture. People in the regions look upon Jakarta as the local
“west”. Whether they are for or against the cultural domination of Jakarta, the city is used
as the comparative yardstick to measure their own modernity or lack thereof.
Although there have been many expressions of anti-Jakarta and anti-Java sentiment
thanks to the political and development domination that Jakarta and Java represent, this is
not reflected in Indonesian pop culture. The entertainment media do not pick up the anti-
Jakarta and anti-Java sentiment. Rather they depict Jakarta and the rest as two extremes:
Jakarta is the hegemonic epitome of modernity, and ethnicities outside Jakarta are the
‘exotic’ others and sometimes they are even put down as ‘primitive’. Jakarta in turn looks
up to America as the leading western country in pop culture and as the standard of
modernity. Sen and Hill say that, “ ‘American’ objects are naturalised as part of Jakarta
teenagers’ life.” 173 The blend of American and western culture in the media is never
presented as an effort to be Americans or westerners. Instead it is presented as global
culture. The blurring of Americanisation in the teen media is constructed to eliminate the
171
Krishna Sen and David T. Hill, Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia (Melbourne: Oxford
University Press, 2000), p, 152.
172
Dede Oetomo quoted in Alia Suastika, “Anak Kota Punya Gaya” [The Style of Urban Youth] Kunci
http://kunci.or.id/teks/12kota.htm (date accessed 21 October 2003).
173
Sen and Hill, p. 152.
58
boundaries between inside and outside, and between Indonesian and foreign, to make the
adoption of the foreign culture seem natural.
After RCTI, the rapid development of private television stations accelerated the growth
of teen culture. There was a growing number of television programs oriented towards
adolescents. 174 According to Kitley, the development of entertainment on television goes
hand-in-hand with the development of print entertainment media. 175 The exposure of
young people to adolescent themes on television programs has boosted the popularity of
teen magazines and teen tabloids. New teen tabloids are published because now there are
more teen celebrities to supply material for the tabloids.
Most of the Indonesian entertainment media targeting adolescents are produced locally.
Nonetheless, the standard in format, performance and appearance of the media often
shows references to, and influences from, American (that is, western) entertainments.
America is the epitome of pop culture in Indonesia. However, America in the local pop
culture is not the United States per se. It is suffused with all the whiteness, the western-
174
The first wave of commercial televisions (RCTI, TPI, SCTV, Indosiar) starting from 1989, brought
about the rise of Indonesian sinetron (soap operas). These feature rich and famous adults: career women,
beautiful wives, and wealthy businessmen. The characters are set in big houses and they are seen getting
into and out of expensive cars. These soap operas promote consumerism through their images of high class
Indonesian society. See Amrih Widodo. “Consuming Passion.” Inside Indonesia.
http://www.insideindonesia.org/edit72/Theme%20-%20Amrih.htm (date accessed 6/05/2003), pp. 2-4.
The second wave of commercial television (Metro TV, TV 7, LaTivi, Global TV, and Trans TV) in 2000-
2001 coincided with a florescence of school and campus stories featuring adolescents. The breakthrough
came in 2001 when Ada Apa Dengan Cinta (What is it with Love) was produced and hit the box office in
cinemas all over Indonesia. One thing that remained the same was the opulent upper class families. The
titles reveal the genre: Cinta Anak Kampus (Love Stories from Campus), Senandung Masa Puber (Tunes
of Puberty; the title is often abbreviated to SMP, that also means Junior High School, which is what the
drama is all about), Cinta SMU (High School Love) and Yang Muda Yang Bercinta (The Young Ones are
the Ones in Love).
175
“Another dimension of the commercial discourse about television is the expanding range of print media
publications that promote commercial programs. Vista, Hai, Monitor (banned in 1990), and Citra are slick,
glossy publications that provide weekly programs listings, features on stars and forthcoming films, and
industry gossip about the film, music and television world. Their style and content differentiate them
sharply from the high-road, quality journalism and commentary that papers such as Suara Pembaruan and
Kompas have traditionally presented on TVRI. The audience-as-consumer construct of the industry
publications reinforces the commercial construct of the commercial channels.” in Kitley, Television,
Nation, and Culture in Indonesia p. 99.
59
ness and the global images represented by “America”. The standard presentations of pop
images refer to white, western and American celebrities.176 These pop images eventually
have the power to construct body images through their dominating presence in the local
entertainment industry. One of the manifestations is the popularity of mixed-race
celebrities in Indonesia. Baulch notices that having mixed blood or being Eurasian cannot
go unmentioned in interviews or articles about Indonesian celebrities. 177
At the start of my research in 2002, there was a craze for a Taiwanese boy band called
F4. They featured in a television soap opera which was aired by one of the private
television stations. They were as popular as their western counterparts among Indonesian
teenagers. After F4, Asian soap operas began paving their own way to fame among
Indonesian teen fans through television and magazines. Teen media began featuring
Asian celebrities along with western ones. This is not a sign of the waning of the impact
of American culture; on the contrary, I would argue that these Asian celebrities
emphasize the dominance of American culture. The reason why the new Asian (Japanese,
Korean, Taiwanese) stars were popular among adolescents was that they were perceived
to be more like westerners than Asians. These celebrities were selling their “whiteness
and western-ness” rather than their “Asian-ness”. 178 They had light skin, they had straight
hair, they did rap music, they danced and sang hip-hop, they pierced their noses, they had
tattoos on their bodies, and the females wore tank tops showing their belly buttons. All
176
See R. Anderson Sutton,. University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Local, Global, Or National? Popular
Music on Indonesian Television”Presented in Performing Identities: Global Media in Local Spaces. An
International Workshop (University of Wisconsin-Madison Media, Performance, and Identity in World
Perspective, MPI Research Group - Workshop Paper November 20-22 1998).
http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/mpi/workshop98/papers/sutton.htm#N_1_ (dated accessed 14 September 2004).
177
See Emma Baulch. “Alternative Music and Mediation in Late New Order Indonesia,” Inter-Asia
Cultural Studies. 3 (2002), 219-234.
178
I compare this with selling “Asian-ness” in the Indonesian pop market is identical to selling
entertainment to the lower class. For example, the existence of dangdut music and Indian movies as sub-
cultures in Indonesia is strongly associated with the lower class. Dangdut music is less associated with
American pop and so are Indian movies. See Craig A. Lockard, Dance of Life: Popular Music and Politics
in Southeast Asia (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, c1998), p. 54-113.
60
these show mimicry of trends made popular in American pop culture and entertainment.
The Asian youth culture thus impersonated American pop culture in an effort to be the
“new” west. Asian celebrities are symbols of achievements in a pop culture that gives
hope to Indonesian adolescents that they can be like westerners, just like their Asian
idols.
Knowledge of pop celebrities enhances adolescents’ status: they show themselves as
being well informed on teen trends. This is popularly known as gaul, a term which
means:
keeping up with the times, trendy. The standard of gaul is up-to-date knowledge
of music and fashion, dyed hair, the courage to be different, modified and heavily
accessorised cars, latest mobile phone, and the most important thing is not to
seem thick and out of it when talking to people. 179
To adolescents, the appropriate entertainment, cars, mobile phones and fashion are
mostly inspired by images from the ‘west’. These images help them in creating their
prestigious clique as remaja Indonesia with their own high social status. For Indonesian
adolescents, pop culture to a great extent is about modernity and affluence. It enables
them to establish their own peer group and set themselves apart in the society.
Indonesian Teen Culture: A Reflection
Taking Storey’s definition that pop culture involves dominance and resistance, then pop
culture means that wherever there is cultural authority there is always pop culture trying
179
“tidak ketinggalan zaman, trendi. Ukuran kegaulan adalah pengetahuan tentang perkembangan musik
dan fesyen, rambut berwarna, berani tampil beda, kendaraan yang dimodifikasi dan diberi beragam
asesoris, telepon genggam model paling baru, dan yang terpenting tidak lemot (‘lemah otak’) dan tulalit
(nggak nyambung) kalau ngobrol” In Annisa Muharammi, “Glosari Budaya Cewek” [Glossary of Girls
Culture] Kunci http://kunci.or.id/teks/12kamus.htm (date accessed 21 October 2003).
.The word gaul was popularized by the homosexual community which made a significant contribution to
urban/Jakarta teen slangs. Bahasa gaul spread when Debi Sahertian, published her dictionary of bahasa
gaul. See James Danandjaja’s introduction in Debi Sahertian, Kamus Bahasa Gaul. Kamasutra Bahasa
Gaul [The Dictionary of Gaul Slang] (Jakarta: Pustaka Sinar Harapan, 2001)), p. vii.
61
to resist that authority. 180 According to pop culture theorists, early pop culture in Britain
carried connotations of rebelliousness and questioned judgements about the standards of
high culture. 181
Pop culture in England is seen as post-war phenomenon where young working class
males had the resources to build up their own culture. Their culture was seen as an
alternative to high culture. Young males thought that high culture did not represent their
social identity, so they made up their own. Angela McRobbie, in her research on female
pop culture in Birmingham, also noted the need for young working-class females to
establish their own identity in the midst of discrimination due to their class, gender and
age. 182 Young people in McRobbie’s research “fought back” with subversive
appearances and images to reclaim a status that was considered as no status at all (being
lowly paid, lowly educated, sexually discriminated against and so on). It was a bottom-up
movement where the lower to middle class initiated a style, which later on was picked up
by the upper class and made into mainstream fashion. However, Indonesian pop culture
as mediated by the media sprang up in a different way. It is more of an imported culture
introduced by the media than a culture of resistance. Although certain kinds of pop
culture in Indonesia, like rock music, are associated with local rebelliousness, this is not
so much resistance as an effort to imitate a form of resistance from their western
counterparts that local young people see in the media.
When this imported pop culture was adopted by Indonesians, the media helped spread the
images nationwide giving the impression of a national pop culture. A significant fraction
180
John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. An Introduction (Harlow, England: Prentice Hall,
2001), pp. 10-11.
181
See books by Stuart Hall and Angela McRobbie in the bibliography.
182
McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture pp. 44-65.
62
of Indonesian pop culture is supported by adolescents. Following Mathews argument that
culture is not entirely inherited, but is also a matter of choice from what is on offer, it can
be said that Indonesian adolescents choose and defend their culture and their idols. 183 It is
a matter of where the choices of culture come from and who provides them.
According to Heryanto, Indonesian culture is made up of the interweaving of national,
regional, and foreign culture. 184 Indonesian teen culture in the magazines accordingly
consists of these three elements, although they do not contribute equally, with “regional”
culture comprising a minimal portion. Adinegoro, the “Father of Indonesian Journalism”
says about Indonesian culture, that:
Indonesia did not have any culture of its own … it only had the national language,
and ... they had to create their culture and identity in this language. In short ...
Indonesia was, and still is, a huge national project. 185
Globalization came in the midst of the attempt to form an Indonesian culture and became
the main source of Indonesian pop culture. Indonesian teen culture is, therefore, the result
of external influence mixed with local conditions. It does not come from a dissatisfied
group of people as in Hall’s and McRobbie’s findings.
Teen pop culture in Indonesia developed because of the media spreading globalized and
westernized entertainment. Overtime, Indonesian adolescents came to see themselves as
belonging to this media-led culture. The Indonesian media do not always reflect social
reality, but they do reflect the dominant ideology in the socio-economy, and in the end
183
See Gordon Mathews. Global Culture / Individual Identity. Searching for Home in the Cultural
Supermarket. London; New York : Routledge, 2000.
184
Heryanto, Perlawanan Dalam Kepatuhan p. 76.
185
Quoted from an interview between Saya S. Shiraishi and Adinegoro’s daughter in Shiraishi, Young
Heroes. p. 86.
63
help shape the social reality based on that dominant ideology. According to Priyo
Soemandoyo:
Mass media have a two way relationship with social reality. On one hand they
reflect whatever exists [in society], but on the other hand they also have some
influence in forming that social reality. 186
The teen market was established through the media by incorporating global culture into
the local culture as a new form of modernity. Eventually this imported culture created
imported demands.
Where are the Girls?
In Indonesia, there is a common perception that public space is usually dominated by
boys rather than girls. This is due to the fact that Indonesian parents view female
teenagers in public space, whether alone without a chaperone or in a mixed crowd with
their male counterparts, as wild (liar, perempuan nakal). This explains the crowd of
female teens in malls or shopping centres. They gather in a crowd to gain their parents
trust by saying that they are there with other girls. 187 Female adolescents are
marginalized twice because of their age and gender. They are dominated and
overshadowed by their male counterparts, as well as by adults. Since Reformasi in 1998,
and the subsequent florescence of feminism in Indonesia, there has been an increasing
tendency to use the word perempuan for woman or female, and also for female
adolescents. An Indonesian feminist, May Lan, claims that the term wanita was used
during the New Order to reduce women to refined beings with a strong emphasis on their
186
Media massa memiliki hubungan dua arah dengan realitas sosial. Di satu pihak ia mencerminkan apa
yang ada, di lain pihak juga ikut mempengaruhi realitas sosial yang ada. Priyo Soemandoyo, Wacana
Gender dan Layar Televisi. Studi Perempuan dalam Pemberitaan Televisi Swasta. [Gender Discourse and
Television Screen. Analysis on Females on Private Televison News] (Yogyakarta, Indonesia: LP3Y and
Ford Foundation, 1999), p. 98. This similar with Graeme Turner’s statement on the media, that “...[it] does
not merely “reflect” social reality; they increasingly help to make it.” Turner, p. 171.
187
Nuraini Juliastuti, “Budaya Cewek”, Kunci http://kunci.or.id/teks/12cewek.htm (date accessed 21
October 2003).
64
passive femininity. She argues that perempuan should be used more because it implies
agency. 188 Following her interview with another Indonesian feminist, Marianne Katoppo,
May Lan concludes that:
Etymologically, wanita derives from vanita in Sanskrit, which means ‘wanted (by
men)’, ‘adored all over the world’, ‘she who is called to carry out orders’. The
point is, according to Marianne Katoppo, the word wanita is derivative, which
puts her (a woman) not as the subject. On the other hand, the word perempuan
has a more positive meaning because it derives from the word empu with prefix
and suffix per/an. 189
Empu, which forms the root of perempuan according to Badudu et al., means a respected
person or the owner. 190 So in a sense, a perempuan is the owner of her own being and she
deserves to be respected in her own right, as opposed to a wanita who belongs to a man
and gains respect from her relation with that man. Ayu Utami, a feminist writer
renowned for her novel Saman, argues that: “The word perempuan derives its rebellious
meaning from its patriarchal interpretation.” 191 Presumably, the use of the word
perempuan is constructed as rebellious in a patriarchal effort to hide its empowering
meaning. During the New Order the word perempuan was considered coarse compared
with the more refined word wanita. Following the end of the New Order, many
Indonesian feminists are trying to reverse this understanding.
188
May Lan, Pers. Negara dan Perempuan. Refleksi atas Praktik Jurnalisme Gender pada Masa Orde
Baru [Press, State and Females. Reflection on Gendered Practices of Journalism in the New Order]
(Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Kalika, 2002), p. 83.
189
Secara etimologis kata “wanita” sesungguhnya berasal dari vanita (Sansekerta) yang berarti ‘yang
diinginkan (oleh laki-laki)’, ‘yang dipuja seluruh dunia’, ‘dia yang dipanggil untuk melaksanakan
suruhan’. Pada intinya, kata Marianne Katoppo, kata “wanita” memuat makna derivatif, yang
menempatkannya bukan sebagai subjek. Sebaliknya, kata “perempuan” bermakna lebih “positif” karena
berasal dari bentuk dasar empu plus imbuhan per/an. (Berdasarkan wawancara dengan Marianne
Katoppo.) May Lan, Pers. Negara dan Perempuan. Refleksi atas Praktik Jurnalisme Gender pada Masa
Orde Baru (Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Kalika, 2002), p. 83.
190
J.S. Badudu and Sutan Mohammad Zain, Kamus Umum Bahasa Indonesia [Dictionary of Indonesian
Language] (Jakarta, Indonesia: Pustaka Sinar Harapan, 1996), p. 388.
191
Kata “perempuan” lebih banyak merupakan suatu pemberontakan gerakan perempuan dari tafsiran
patriarki. May Lan, Pers. Negara dan Perempuan. Refleksi atas Praktik Jurnalisme Gender pada Masa
Orde Baru [Press, State and Females. Reflection on Gendered Practices of Journalism in the New Order]
(Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Kalika, 2002), p. 83.
65
Given the male domination of public space, it can be said that choices of words used are
mostly made by males and followed by females. 192 This is in line with Supelli-Leksono’s
claims that one of the tasks of the Indonesian women’s movement is to reclaim or
“rehabilitate” the meanings of words attributed to them by males. 193 While Indonesian
feminists are busy constructing themselves as perempuan, female adolescents in
Indonesian pop culture are shifting further and further away from the realm of formal
terminology like perempuan, wanita, remaja, pemuda and generasi muda. The most
informal way to address a female adolescent in the magazines is cewek, with cowok for
the male. The origin of this word is the Betawi dialect from Jakarta. Teenagers use the
word cewek instead of other words offered in Indonesian to represent adolescents. Cewek
carries the meaning of female adolescents into a setting that is about them, from them,
and for them. Any adult element introduced into this cewek discourse will have to be
adjusted to fit into the mindset of the teenagers. The word reflects the containment of
teenage girls in their own world with no adult mediation. However, this separate world is
full of adult economic intervention in the effort to construct them as proper consumers.
The female teenagers’ world in popular magazines may seem like an isolated space,
existing in an exclusive atmosphere, but it is a selectively premeditated isolation. This
will be discussed further in chapters five and six.
Although teenage girls may not be that prone to conspicuous consumption, they are
imagined by producers as having access to disposable income and as vulnerable to the
192
See Leksono-Supelli, Karlina. “Bahasa untuk Perempuan: Dunia Tersempitkan” [Language for Women:
Narrowing the World] Wanita dan Media. Konstruksi Ideologi Gender dalam Ruang Publik Orde Baru
[Women and the Media. Constructing Gender Ideology in the New Order’s Public Space] Idi Subandy
Ibrahim and Hanif Suranto, eds. (Bandung, Indonesia: Remaja Rosdakarya, 1998), pp. 197-212.
193
Karlina Supelli-Leksono says it is “Perjuangan memperebutkan makna” [the struggle to reclaim
meaning]. Karlina Supelli-Leksono, “Bahasa untuk Perempuan: Dunia Tersempitkan” in Wanita dan
Media. Konstruksi Ideologi Gender dalam Ruang Publik Orde Baru [Women and the Media.Constructing
Gender Ideology in New Order Public Space] Idi Subandi Ibrahim and Hanif Suranto eds., (Bandung,
Indonesia: Remaja Rosdakarya, 1998), p. 197-212.
66
lure of advertisements. Pop culture theories in England deal a lot with young males.
Nevertheless, the nature of pop culture is identified as feminine in the sense that it is
opposed to the masculine high culture. 194 Following Strinati’s argument, pop culture is
often feminized because of its assumed consumptive nature as opposed to the productive
masculine one. 195 In this respect, Indonesian teen culture like women’s culture has been
feminized and is being heavily commodified. From this point of view it is easy to see the
dichotomy of masculinity and femininity in terms of production and consumption, where
production is seen as the primary act and consumption as secondary.196 McRobbie says
that in pop culture “shopping has been considered a feminine activity.” 197 And teen girls
are seen as more prone to teen marketing than boys judging from the number of products
advertised in girls’ and boys’ magazines.
Finally, pop culture functions like an illusion that provides attainable imagery and
fantasies to Indonesian girls. I would like to use Gidden’s arguments to suggest that
Indonesian teen culture is influenced by something distant, and is not something that
Indonesian adolescents have first hand experience of. 198 The distant culture penetrates in
the form of images and representations. This penetration is mediated by television,
magazines and other forms of teen entertainment that seek to provide images and
representation of “the distant western others” under the name of globalization.
Female adolescents’ attempt to adopt western pop culture can be seen as an effort to
transform illusion into reality by imitating what is presented in the media, or by
194
Strinati, pp. 190-191.
195
Strinati, p. 217.
196
Strinati, p. 191.
197
Angela McRobbie, “Second-Hand Dresses and the Role of the Ragmarket.” Zoot Suits and Second-hand
Dresses. An Anthropology of Fashion and Music Angela McRobbie, ed. (Boston: Unwin Hyman, c1988),
p. 24.
198
Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Oxford: Polity Press, 1990), p. 18.
67
perceiving it as true. In Indonesian media, the representation of Indonesian remaja is that
they are westernised, young, rich and modern. It may not be the reality that covers the
majority of remaja throughout Indonesia, but it is the impression created.
68
Chapter 4
THE MAGAZINES
Magazines in general are an important type of media in Indonesia. In a survey done by A.
C Nielsen, magazines came third as the most popular media that attracts advertisements
in Indonesia after television and newspapers.199 As stated in my introduction, the
magazines I chose for my research are Gadis, Kawanku and Aneka Yess! because,
according to a survey conducted by A.C Nielsen, these are teen magazines with the
highest readership. 200 When compared with other female teen magazines, these
magazines are also the longest running female teen magazines in Indonesia.
There used to be other magazines for girls, e.g. Puteri [Young Girl/Princess] and Mode
[Trend], but they did not last as long as Gadis, Kawanku and Aneka Yess!. Another
magazine called Anita Cemerlang [Bright Anita], has been in circulation for some time
but has never quite reached the popularity of these named three. To Gadis, Kawanku and
Aneka Yess! can be added other relatively new teen magazines Dara [Young Girl] and
the more recent teen tabloids called Keren dan Beken [Trendy and Popular], Gaul [Teen
Trend] and Tren [Trend]. These six titles represent the teen magazine competition. They
also represent more reading options for girl readers.
Most of the teen magazines are for girls. The only boys’ magazine in Indonesia that is
equivalent in its content to the girls’ magazines is Hai [Hi]. Other magazines that attract a
substantial male-teen readership specialize in certain fields. For example, Angkasa [Sky]
199
According to A.C Nielsen Survey in Indonesia. World Magazine Trends 2001/2002
200
A.C Nielsen Survey in Indonesia. World Magazine Trends 2001/2002
69
is a magazine that specializes in aircraft, Soccer is a magazine for soccer fans, and
Komputeraktif [Computer Active] is a magazine about computers and cyberspace,
Otomotif [Engines] is about cars, and Hot Game is a magazine about computer games.
All of these magazines are published by PT Gramedia, the biggest publishing company in
Indonesia. 201 Apart from the local magazines, there are also magazines that are licensed
from English-language American magazines, such as CosmoGirl Indonesia and
Seventeen. These magazines are like the American versions with a few adjustments to fit
into the local culture.
Judging from the cost of each issue, all of the above magazines are targeting middle-to
upper-class teenagers. The price is high when compared with the regional minimum
wage. 202 Although the readership might be wider than the targeted audience, the fact
remains that the magazines are building up a fan base with middle-to-upper class
adolescents at the core. If they get more readers than that, due to the circulation of
secondhand magazines and hand-me-downs from richer to poorer readers, that is
considered a welcome bonus. But it is the support from adolescents of higher social status
that will help the cycle of interdependence between advertised products and the
magazines to continue.
In this chapter, I describe the profiles of the magazines before the analysis of these
magazines as a genre. What these magazines have in common is fashion and
201
http://www.gramedia-majalah.com (date accessed 10 January 2005).
202
For example, to subscribe to Gadis would cost Rp. 30,000 a month. The average minimum wage in Java
is Rp. 300,000. The magazine would cost 10% of a lower class family income. (AUD 1 is around Rp 5000.
The magazine would cost AUD 6 and the minimum wage is AUD 60). For regional minimum wage in
Indonesia see: Departemen Tenaga Kerja dan Transmigrasi. Perkempangan Upah Minimum Propinsi [The
Department of Labour and Transmigration. The Development of Regional Minimum Wages].
http://www.nakertrans.go.id/majalah_buletin/warta_naker/edisi_1/perkembangan_ump.php (date accessed
10 January 2005).
70
entertainment as the main staple of Indonesian girls’ magazines. A lot of other topics
branch out from these two fields. Another feature that these magazines share is the fiction
section in the form of short stories. It is very common for girls’ magazines and tabloids
in Indonesia to include short stories in their content. In the analysis, I do not delve into
these short stories because the diversity of the content and theme of the stories makes it
difficult to include them within the scope of the analysis. For example, Kawanku has very
diverse kinds of short stories. My sample includes topics such as social awareness,
friendship and love. Short stories in Aneka Yess! deal mostly with love, relationship and
horror stories. Gadis features more mature and sophisticated short stories. Therefore I do
not discuss the short stories specifically since the analysis in the following chapters is
done based on the commonality of the magazines instead of the uniqueness of each
magazine. Similarly the following magazines profiles are not to compare or contrast the
three magazines, but to introduce them as one genre, leading to the analysis of the
representation in the magazines.
Gadis
The magazine’s title, Gadis (Young Lady), was chosen from several possible candidates
from local languages in Indonesia with similar denotations: Nona (from eastern
Indonesia), Uni (from West Sumatra), Pingkan (from Sulawesi). 203 I assume that Gadis
was chosen because it was more widely known in the Indonesian language, and because
it is not associated with a particular region or ethnic group or language in Indonesia. On
several of the magazines’ covers there are additional slogans: “Proud to be Indonesian
Girls” (Bangga jadi Cewek Indonesia) and “We are Girls who Care” (Kita Cewek
Peduli). This magazine also claims to be “The first Teenage Girls Magazine in Indonesia
203
http://www.gadis-online.com/majalah.cfm (date accessed 7 April 2003).
71
since 1973”, 204 with a slogan on the cover that says “The Top among the Pop” (Paling
Top di antara yang Pop). The date of the first publication was 19 November 1973. Being
the first, Gadis set the model to be imitated and expanded by other girls’ magazines in
Indonesia. In the span of thirty years, Gadis has proven its ability to adjust to fluctuations
in market demand and market rivalry.
Information obtained from the on-line edition of the magazine reveals that Gadis’
mission is to “inspire Indonesian girls to be always active.” 205 Gadis declares that it “has
always held spectacular events in its effort to scout for ‘active girls’ we can all be proud
of.” 206 There are three spectacular events mentioned with regards to this scouting effort:
The Teenage Girl Pageant (Pemilihan Putri Remaja) in the 70s and 80s, The Coverboy
Search (Pemilihan Cowok Sampul), and The Covergirl Search (Pemilihan Cewek
Sampul).
The magazine mentions several names of individuals in its profile, all of whom were
winners and runners-up in the above events, and who are now celebrities in the
entertainment business as models, actresses, singers and a writer (who is also an ex-
model). There are only two names included in the magazine’s profile who are not
entertainers. One is the covergirl for the first edition of the magazine, who was a drum
majorette from Tarakanita (a very popular private high school for girls) in Jakarta. The
other one is said to be a career woman, even though she started off as a model. Despite
clear evidence that these events and contests usually lead to the entertainment business
(even the drum majorette brings out the notion of a celebrity in a smaller scope), Gadis
204
205
...GADIS ingin memberi inspirasi buat cewek-cewek Indonesia untuk selalu aktif. ibid.
206
GADIS selalu punya acara seru yang mampu menghasilkan cewek-cewek aktif yang bisa dibanggakan.
72
claims that these events have discovered the “multi talents” (multi bakat) of these young
girls. 207 This implies the limitation of the meaning of the word “talent” that covers only
the activity and the capacity to perform and entertain other people. Fame and popularity
achieved by winners of these events and their success in the entertainment industry seem
to legitimise the positioning of female adolescents as objects of spectacle. This
consequently leads to the perception of the importance of looks as assets for girls to gain
acceptance from the public.
According to Petty Siti Fatima, Editor-in-Chief of Gadis for fourteen years:
Readers of Gadis are teenagers who live in big cities, who are also exposed to
developments in technology, they are smart, active, stylish, and they love music.
But teen readers are not loyal readers. If they think that Gadis does not represent
their taste, they are bound to go away. Moreover, there are many teen magazines
these days. They have a lot of options. 208
Gadis has managed to survive for thirty years despite the cut-throat competition from
other teen magazines. The magazine claims it is due to their knowledge of the
characteristics of middle-to upper-class teenagers, and the way they steer editorial policy.
This is also what they are selling to the advertisers, claiming that, “we are the first very
best, so we are the best” (English words original). 209 I assume that other female teen
magazines learned a great deal from Gadis in terms of reading and inventing teen
demands and also in formatting the magazines’ layout, although currently Indonesian
female teen magazines also follow trends from their western counterparts.
207
Dari ajang ini banyak sekali muncul cewek-cewek multi bakat. ibid.
208
Pembaca Gadis adalah remaja yang tinggal di kota-kota besar, juga sangat terbuka terhadap
perkembangan teknologi, pandai aktif, gaya, dan senang musik. Tapi, pembaca remaja bukan pembaca
setia. Kalau Gadis dianggap tak lagi mewakili selera mereka pasti ditinggalkan. Terlebih lagi, banyak
majalah remaja yang beredar saat ini. Mereka banyak pilihan. Pantau. Kajian Media dan Jurnalisme.
Tahun II No. 019 - November 2001, pp. 30-33. http://www.pantau.or.id/txt/19/12.html. (date accessed 3
April 2003).
209
Pantau. Kajian Media dan Jurnalisme. [Monitor. Media and Journalism Analysis] Tahun II No. 019 -
November 2001, pp. 30-33. http://www.pantau.or.id/txt/19/12.html. (date accessed 3 April 2003).
73
Gadis is published as the sister company of a renowned Indonesian women’s magazine,
Femina. Like Gadis, Femina is also the first and leading popular Indonesian women’s
magazine. They are both published by PT Gaya Favorit Press owned by Sofjan
Alisjahbana, the son of the great Indonesian writer Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana. 210 Sofjan
Alisjahbana’s wife, Pia Alisjahbana, is the editor of both Gadis and Femina. Considering
that she is the editor of both magazines, we can expect that Pia Alisjahbana’s influence in
Femina also shows in Gadis. According to Suzy Azeharie in her research on Femina,
despite its modern approach to women, Femina still upholds the conventional roles of
virtuous and angelic women in society: that of a wife and mother. 211 Furthermore, three
names that Suzy Azeharie mentions as the founders of Femina are also on the board of
directors of Gadis: Mirta Kartohadiprodjo, Widarti Gunawan, and Pia Alisjahbana. 212
Ria Clara, writing about Gadis, says that Gadis does not draw a clear line between
content and advertisement, which is one of the basic principles in journalism. 213 Gadis
cannot overlook the fact that advertisements are the main source of revenue because
readership itself cannot support the magazines financially. Which is why the magazine
has incorporated entertaining and educating aspects into the magazines, in order to attract
both readers and advertisers. However, Ria Clara concludes that this is a common
occurrence with media in which the content is, to a certain extent, dictated by sponsors.
Later I will examine how these three magazines negotiate the boundary between
maintaining the local ideology while still keeping its popular style to attract readers and
210
“Sofjan Alisjahbana” Apa dan Siapa. Pusat Data dan Analisa Tempo
http://www.pdat.co.id/hg/apasiapa/html/S/ads,20030626-80,S.html (date accessed 10 January 2005).
211
Azeharie. pp. 136-141.
212
Azeharie, p. 136.
213
Pantau. Kajian Media dan Jurnalisme.[Monitor. Media and Journalism Analysis] Tahun II No. 019 -
Pantau. Kajian Media dan Jurnalisme. [Monitor. Media and Journalism Analysis] Tahun II No. 019 -
74
sponsors. Currently, Gadis is issued every ten days with a cover price of Rp. 10.000
(roughly AUD 2). This means that every month there are an average of three issues of
Gadis, plus several special editions like Gadis’ Anniversary Edition or Gadis’ Annual
Edition. Special editions cost slightly more than the regular edition.
Kawanku
Kawanku (My Friend) was first published on 5 August 1970. 214 It is older than Gadis, but
this magazine does not claim to be the first teenage magazine in Indonesia because it
started off as a children’s magazine. Although not the first, Kawanku is currently
published by the biggest publishing company in Indonesia: PT Gramedia. At the moment,
Kawanku is the most expensive magazine of the three. Each weekly issue costs Rp.
9,000, which amounts to Rp 36,000 a month.
I remember that the magazine used to target young teen readers, but was not gender
defined, having the slogan “Kawanku. Stil” which stands for “Not a Kid Anymore”
(Sudah Tidak Ingusan Lagi). The word “stil” also means stylish or trendy in Indonesian
language. “Stil” may also mean still (to this day), since the magazine is still using the
same name but with a different model and targeting a different age-group of readers.
Today, Kawanku is a specifically teenage girl magazine with the slogan frequently cited
in the television advertisement: “Kawanku. Knows Best what Girls Want” (Kawanku.
Paling Tahu Yang Cewek Mau).
The magazine cover states that it is the “Active & smart girls’ magazine” (Majalah cewek
active & smart. English words original). There is that word ”active” again. According to
214
http://www.gramedia.co.id/iklankwk.asp (date accessed 3 April 2003).
75
the profile provided by publisher PT Gramedia, this magazine is intended for female
teens from high school year 8 to year 11 (kelas 2 SMP - kelas 2 SMU). The content
features short stories, current events, fashion articles, music, films, popular knowledge,
teen lifestyles and teen problems. 215 Kawanku states that its scope is “Fashion,
Psychology, Short Stories, Films, Music, and Celebrities.” 216 Kawanku’s switch to
becoming a female teen magazine could be an indicator of the promise of profit given the
greater purchasing power of young girls as its potential market, despite the fact that there
is more competition in this field than in the children’s magazines market.
In every edition of Kawanku, Candra Widanarko, the editor-in-chief, writes a witty
editorial article on the front page. She addresses her female readers as a young
intellectual and mature audience. An example of her writing is her article about the use of
logic (logika). She says that the way people talk these days is so convincing that what is
not right seems to be logical just because people say it over and over in a certain way:
Because we are used to listening to people talking with bad logic [sic]. Even a lot
of great individuals featured on TV or in the newspapers have their logic twisted.
In everyday conversation, it is highly probable that we will be engaged in a
conversation that does not seem to have a cause-and-effect logic. The trouble is
we are rarely aware of ignoring this causal effect logic....The uncool result of this
ignorance is when you underestimate the serious issues, but over-react on the
light stuff...
Here is one sentence as an example of what seems like truth but is actually bogus,
‘She is beautiful, but she likes to hold grudges’. Hee, hee, like you can’t hold
grudges because you’re beautiful? What’s that got to do with it ? 217
215
Majalah untuk remaja putri usia kelas 2 SLTP - kelas 2 SMU. Menyajikan cerita pendek, serta liputan
dan artikel fashion, musik, film, pengetahuan populer, gaya hidup remaja, dan problema remaja.
216
Lingkup Bahasan: Fashion, Prikologi (sic), Cerpen, Film, Musik, Selebriti.
217
Karena kita terbiasa mendengar omongan orang yang logikanya payah. Bahkan, pernyataan orang-
orang hebat yang muncul di TV maupun di koranpun tidak sedikit yang kacau. Dalam percakapan sehari-
hari, memang dimungkinkan terjadi percakapan yang tidak mengindahkan logika sebab akibat. Namun
masalahnya, pengabaian logika sebab akibat ini enggak kita sadari....Akibat yang lebih nggak asyik, kita
bisa menggampangkan hal serius atau merumitkan hal gampang. ...Nih, ada satu contoh kalimat yang
seolah-olah benar padahal ngawur, ‘Dia cantik, tapi pendendam.” He he, memangnya kalau cantik nggak
boleh pendendam ? Apa hubungannya, coba? (Bold type in original).
Kawanku. No. 30/XXXII. 20 - 26 January 2003. p. 8
76
At other times she talks about friends, concerns about the environment, and a wide range
of contemporary topics. I see this as the way the editors carry out their mission to educate
girls to be “smart” as suggested by their slogan on the cover. The article suggests that
readers should be critical of ideas presented in their magazine (the ideas and logic of the
advertisers?). However, the content seems to negate this by following the common
format of teen magazines packed with “immature” material. This may show that at the
same time they do not want to scare away potential advertisers. Once female readers flip
the following pages, they are on their own to be selective and critical.
Aneka Yess!
This magazine is published by PT Aneka Yes. Aneka Yess! (Variety Yes!) does not
provide any editorial profiles like the two previous ones. The following is information
gathered from the content of the magazine. Aneka Yess! claims to have the highest rank
among teen magazines in Indonesia. 218 It is also the youngest (the latest issue indicates
its eleventh year which dates it back to approximately 1992). It is the thickest magazine
of the three not because of its editorial content, but because the advertorial pages take up
comparatively more space than in Gadis and Kawanku. In one sample of Aneka Yess! the
first twelve pages after the cover, and before the table of contents, consist only of
advertisements with no editorial material. The amount of editorial content is the same as
for the other two magazines. With a fortnightly price of Rp. 9.900, Aneka Yess! is the
cheapest magazine in terms of monthly expense (Kawanku, which is a weekly magazine,
costs Rp 9.000, and Gadis, which is published every ten days, cost 10.000). Aneka Yess!,
218
Aneka Yess! no 24. 21 November - 4 December 2002. p. 112.
Aneka Yess! no. 23. 7 - 20 November 2002. p. 156.
Aneka Yess! no. 5. 27 February - 12 March 2003. p. 52.
77
being the cheapest magazine among the three in terms of monthly cost has a substantial
readership and therefore attracts more advertisers.
The name of the magazine (Variety) suggests variety of content. However, a further look
into the magazine will show that eventually this variety is dominated by celebrities and
fashion. The words “Aneka Yess!” on the cover, including the word “yess” and the
exclamation mark that follows, are the official name of the magazine. The name recalls
an exclamation from the hit movie Home Alone 1, featuring McCaulay Kulkin with his
clenched fist and elbow pushing downwards exclaiming “Yess!”. Despite the fact that the
government has put in some effort to encourage the use of Indonesian names for
Indonesian products and venues, the word “Yess!” persists on the cover. (Note also the
words “smart” and “active” on the cover of Kawanku). From observation, I judge that
Aneka Yess! is the most frequently advertised female teen magazine on television. It
would appear that television advertising is convenient for Aneka Yess! because being a
fortnightly magazine, it does not have to change its advertisements for each new issue as
often as the others.
Its popularity is said to have been gained by following its motto: “Not only a Magazine
but a Youth Centre” (English words original).219 Aneka Yess! claims to hold events and
activities for teenagers. Note the word “activities” which now seems to be the keyword in
selling female teen magazines. Following is a quote from the editor’s answer to a reader’s
letter which clearly outlines this point:
(Aneka Yess! is not just a magazine, but more of a youth activity centre). So
whatever the form of the activities involved, we are putting in every effort to be
219
78
the place to empower teenagers. Of course, this is done by holding positive
activities.
(Aneka Yess! bukan sekedar majalah, tapi lebih merupakan sanggar aktifitas
remaja). Jadi apapun bentuknya, kami berupaya untuk menjadi tempat
pemberdayaan remaja. Tentunya dengan menyelenggarakan kegiatan-kegiatan
yang positif. 220
The quote in the Indonesian language shows that the editor’s speech has a strong
resemblance to that of some Indonesian authority at a formal function. It has all the
regular jargon: “pemberdayaan” (empowerment), and “kegiatan-kegiatan yang positif”
(positive activities). These are all words used many times in electronic and print media in
talks about adolescents. In addition to being clichés, most people take for granted that
they know what the terms actually mean. Indonesians tend to use words with wide
meaning in public discourse when what they refer to has a limited application. (This
probably shows that Candra Widanarko of Kawanku is right in her essay about “twisted
logic” that with all the frequently-used jargon, anything can be made to sound right).
The editors in the magazines have taken up positions as parents, or as “playleaders”, who
are conducting and leading these teenagers towards positive activities. The activities held
are called Topguest, Covergirl, Coverguest, Coverboy, Boys Roadshow (English words in
the original), which indicate that they are combinations of modeling and entertainment.
Other activities mentioned are: celebrating your birthday with celebrities at Aneka Yess!
headquarters, celebrity look-alikes shows, and charity activities (with celebrities, of
course). 221 On the whole, the look of this magazine is packed and crowded, which gives
the impression that the teenagers are very busy indeed. Nevertheless, the activities for
“active youth” seem to revolve around teen celebrities and their entertaining activities,
220
221
79
and do not include other possible activities that allow young readers to go beyond the
glamour of celebrity articles and activities.
Summary of the Magazines
Magazines / First Publisher Cover Freq. Monthly Notes

Average published price cost
issue in Rp.
readership
222
Gadis 19 PT Gaya 10.000 Every 30.000 The first Indonesian

November Favorit 10 female teen
440.000 1973 Press days magazine. Issued by
the same publisher as
Femina (Indonesia’s
highest selling
women’s magazine)
Kawanku First PT 9900 every 39.600 Owned by the
published Gramedia 7 days biggest publisher in
278.000 as Indonesia
children’s
magazine 5
August
1970
Aneka Yess! Around PT Aneka 9000 every 18.000 Claims to be the
1992 Yes 14 most popular.
496.000 days
Jakarta as the centre of being
All of the magazines discussed in this chapter are published in Jakarta. Magazine
circulation is concentrated in Java which is the most densely populated island in
Indonesia, and the most urbanized. However, Javanese culture does not make any
contribution to the content. The culture of the magazines is instead Jakarta-centric. The
trend-setters and Indonesian celebrities featured mostly live in Jakarta. It is also the
centre of production of most print and electronic media, and of entertainments such as
222
Source of readership http://www.magazineworld.org/assets/downloads/IndonesiaWMT01.pdf (date
accessed 2 August 2004).
80
films and television. Most of the events covered in the magazines happen in Jakarta.
Feature articles about people and events outside the city employ a Jakarta gaze as well.
The term “Jakarta-centric” here does not refer to the indigenous Betawi culture of
Jakarta, but more to the cosmopolitan nature of Jakarta as the capital of Indonesia. It is,
therefore, the city with the most exposure to global influence. The magazines discussed
focus on the modernity and western-ness of Jakarta, and portray a lifestyle characteristic
of the middle to upper classes living in Jakarta.
Jakarta as the ethnic melting-pot of the nation is also a multi-ethnic city. Its population is
made up from all around Indonesia. But ethnicity is not represented in these magazines
(unlike for example, Femina, which is more Javanese-centric). 223 Ethnic origin is waived
in favour of an ethnically-unidentifiable cosmopolitanism. The magazines’ profiles in this
chapter is placed within the wider context of upper-class lifestyle situated in Jakarta. The
next chapter will discuss what kind of cosmopolitanism and lifestyle is introduced in the
magazines.
223
Azeharie, p. 137.
81
Chapter 5
GLOBALIZING THE BODIES OF INDONESIAN ADOLESCENTS
I propose to place my discussion of how adolescents are represented in Indonesian female
teen magazines within a larger context of global-local interaction at the national level.
Teen magazines are sites where globalization meets Indonesian identity in their choice of
content. They merge globalized culture with Indonesian urban youth culture until the two
are inseparable. Globalization in the magazines is presented as modernity that comes
from the west. The west here is treated as monolithic and unproblematic, while the
heterogeneity of western culture is ignored. Most of the time Indonesian culture is
subsumed by global western culture. However, it should be noted that sometimes
Indonesian-ness is presented as markedly distinct and separate from the west. I will be
discussing this last point in more detail in chapter six.
Indonesian teen magazines are part of capitalist practice in terms of the way teen culture
is created and commodified. Viewing teen magazines as serious business (despite the
often not-so-serious nature of the content), I would like to use Merry White’s argument
with regards to marketing to adolescents, to claim that Indonesian female teen magazines
often have a conflicting double agenda in representing adolescents. 224 On the one hand,
these magazines have to fulfil what the market needs in order to achieve their own
financial security. On the other hand, as part of the society where these magazines are
published and circulated, they have to acknowledge what the society wants.
224
White, “The Marketing of Adolescence in Japan.” p. 261.
82
According to White, what the market needs from female teen magazines is homogeneous
consumers. 225 A single type of consumer is easier to handle than a scattered demographic
of adolescents. The cover price, products advertised and lifestyles featured in the
Indonesian teen magazines determine the social class of readers they attract, which is the
middle-to upper-class. By providing updates on products and lifestyles, the magazines
create a need in the minds of young people to accept change for the sake of fashion in
order to become part of the “in” group. The constant changes depicted create the need to
constantly spend.
The changes are part of the magazines’ effort to invite adolescents to become members of
the young and modern society. The magazines present globalization as modernity.
Modernity in the magazines is the result of communication and transportation that allows
the transfer of values and products from one place to another, which gives the recipients a
sense of progress. Modernity for the teen magazines means the latest celebrity gossip,
fashion, music, entertainment and urban teen lifestyle. In presenting the latest trends, the
magazines are sending the message that Indonesia is up-to-date with the rest of the world.
Given the hegemony of western/American pop culture in the context of Indonesian teen
culture, familiarity with the “geographically distant” American pop culture is perceived
as modernity. Transfer of culture and values from the “orient” to the “occident” is not
perceived as modernity. It may be seen as exotic but rarely modern. Technology and
celebrities coming from Asian countries, or from outside the west, have to be endorsed
by the western public before they make their way to an Indonesian teen audience. The
endorsement may be suggested by using European, Eurasian or local models with light
225
White, “The Marketing of Adolescence in Japan.” p. 261.
83
skin, to suggest that the technology or product is from the west. Matthews argues that,
increasingly, Asian models are used in preference to white Anglo-saxon ones to advertise
Asian manufactured electronic technology like Samsung computers and mobile
phones. 226 However, I think the overall trend is still towards using European or Eurasian
models to market global and local products. 227
As seen in the magazines’ content, modernity is seen as created by, and imported from,
the west. But instead of looking at it as an invasion (like the state does), the magazines
present modernity as an inevitable change that confirms and normalizes the identity of
Indonesian remaja. In a way, the magazines as local products are “penetrated by and
shaped in terms of social influences quite distant from them.” 228 However, images
presented in the magazines adopt the social influences of the west habitually, so that
readers do not see them as blatant American pop culture domination. Frequent exposure
to the westernised pop images in the magazines validates this Americanized pop culture
as a natural part of Indonesian adolescent life.
Adolescents featured in Indonesian female teen magazines create a sense of peer pressure
for readers in a panoptical way. The readers see how other Indonesian teens perform their
roles as modern adolescents in the magazines and are able to see how they measure up. In
this way these adolescents look over one another and themselves. Foucault’s argument
about the spread of power and domination maintains that physical appearance (the body)
226
Julie Matthews, “Deconstructing the Visual: The Diasporic Hybridity of Asian and Eurasian Female
Images” Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context.Issue 8, October 2002.
http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue9/gooncraven.html (date accessed 13 May 2004).
227
See Hannah Beech, “Eurasian Invasion” Time Asia. April 23, 2001 vol. 157 no. 16
http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,106427,00.html (date accessed 7 May 2004).
228
Giddens, p. 19.
84
is the showcase of an individual’s internalization of power, which s/he sees as natural,
and not as the result of the exercise of power at all. 229
The west is presented as modernity, progress and sophistication by the magazines.
However, there are instances where the west is constructed as the bad influence. The
magazines’ discourse puts the blame on foreign culture, thereby positioning Indonesia as
holding the moral high ground. This occurs most especially when Indonesian identity is
constructed separately from that of the west and/or is placed in opposition to it. As a
result, the content of these female teen magazines is a combination of western pop ideals
of modernity, and the national and more conservative representation of innocent remaja
Indonesia. 230
In chapters five and six I would like to tease out the western and the local elements in the
magazines to see how they merge, and how they are separated to construct the
magazines’ version of adolescent identity. The magazines I examined do not represent
facts but, rather, create cultural ideals as models for Indonesian urban society. I wish to
discern how the magazines transfer to their readers the western look and the local values
to establish acceptable images of modern Indonesian adolescents. I am arguing that the
magazines are constructing a modern hybrid ideal. Western-ness is sometimes refuted
and the Indonesian local culture (the east) brought up and emphasized, when western
229
See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).
230
This is parallel with Carla Jones’ ideas with regards to one ideal of Indonesian women. She says that
“the New Order image of the ideal modern Indonesian woman combined Western ideologies of bourgeois
domesticity with local, so-called traditional ideologies of femininity and bureaucratic images of dutiful
citizenship.” In “Dress for Sukses: Fashioning Femininity and Nationality in Urban Indonesia” Re-
Orienting Fashion. The Globalization of Asian Dress. Sandra Niessen, Ann Marie Leshkowich and Carla
Jones, eds. (Oxford; New York: Berg, 2003), p. 192 and see also Pam Nilan, “Mediating the
Entrepreneurial Self: Romance Texts and Young Indonesian Women”, in medi@sia, T.J.M. Holden and T.
Scrase, eds., (Oxford: Oxford University Press [in press]).
85
influence is perceived to pose a threat to the local culture. The local culture, for the most
part, comes up as a buffer against the supposedly morally decadent west.
Brenner argues that women often bear the burden as indicators of modernity. She
observes:
that images of women more than men have been used to signify the transition
from tradition to modernity, and that this has its own significance in the
Indonesian context. 231
This idea that females are often used to signify modernity is frequently related to
adolescents’ appearance in teen magazines. However, attitudes and values are also
important for the magazines to include and together add up to the whole modern image
being represented.
The marketing of teen magazines relies on the idea that female adolescents are young
women. This allows them to adopt the same marketing scheme for adolescents as they do
for women in an effort to “sell” modernity. The marketing scheme for women relies on
the idea of the male gaze and the inactivity of females’ own gaze upon the opposite sex.
This leads to female narcissism where women like to look at themselves being looked at
by men. 232
In comparison, popular male magazines (Ralph, FHM, Playboy and the Indonesian boys’
magazine Hai), that are based on the premise of the male gaze, are full of women, not full
of men. Models in women’s magazines are not males because women do not stare at
men. They stare at the female models as an idealization of womanhood. That is why these
231
Suzanne Brenner, “On the Public Intimacy of the New Order: Images of Women in the Popular
Indonesian Print Media” Indonesia 67 (April 1999), p. 16.
232
John Berger as quoted in Sophia Phoca and Rebecca Wright, Introducing Postfeminism Richard
Appignanesi, ed (Cambridge, England: Icon Books; New York: Totem Books, 1999) and Naomi Wolf
Beauty Myth (London: Vintage, 1990), p. 76.
86
teen magazines are dominated by images of girls instead of boys. For girls, the magazines
perform the role of a girlfriend sharing secrets and tips so that the young readers can keep
up with teen trends. These magazines let their readers into the inner circle of teen culture.
Transforming the Look
Teen magazines are both a catalogue of pop culture and a glossary of teen culture. By
buying the magazines teen readers are consuming images and ideas. These images and
ideas are not only informative but also persuasive. Moreover, the magazines’ message of
potential ability and need to transform appearance and performance corresponds with the
magazines’ need to invite more advertisers. The magazines facilitate the physical
transformation by offering products required to satisfy the readers’ need to look modern.
Simultaneously, the content (articles, short stories) provides its readers with both the
guidance and rules on correct behaviour and attitude as well as proper knowledge of teen
trends.
Look is everything in female teen magazines. Visual pleasure and the idea of looking and
being looked at are indulged. Compared to the boys’ magazine Hai, Indonesian girls’
magazines pay more attention to the colour and image coordination of the pages.
Cheerfulness is the impression that readers get from a quick browse of these magazines.
Many pages give a sense of being cluttered with information, where short sentences and
illustrations predominate. All this suggests easy reading which does not have to be done
in one sitting, but can be put down and picked up at any time.
The magazines present images of good-looking adolescents on almost every page.
Advertisers complement these images with products to achieve the look of, or to enable
87
the imitation of, the look of the models. Female magazines are passionate about detailed
close-up photographs. In these photographs, the face, as the most exposed part of the
body, becomes indicator of the smoothness of the whole body. Smooth skin, as the
majority of advertisements suggest, is regarded as the main indicator of physical beauty.
This is apparent in the contrast between the covers of Aneka Yess!, Kawanku and Gadis
and the covers of the Indonesian boys’ magazine Hai. Covers are important as a signpost
to suggest what potential readers may expect in the content. Unsurprisingly, then, the
covers of female teen magazines often bring readers’ attention to the models’ appearance,
stressing the faces of pretty girls with flawless complexions. In contrast, the covers of
Hai magazines have more variety. They show different formats in terms of photograph
lay-out and they usually include a background to the bodies, not just faces as shown in
figure 5.1. Most covers of girls’ magazines reflect the way these magazines are
preoccupied with the meticulous detail of facial beauty. The make-up has to be done
perfectly in order to look flawless for the close-up shoot. The covers of Hai on the other
hand indicate that physical beauty is not as important.
In the girls’ magazines perfect skin is as important as fashion. In one sample of
Kawanku 233 , after the cover, there are three advertisements for skin products. The first
advertisement inside the cover is the advertisement for Lux Beauty Shower liquid soap:
“Come on, let’s try the shower sensation with Lux Beauty Shower….!”
Want what is soft, romantic, energetic or sexy? All these sensations come from
Lux Beauty Shower Starter Kit. And Free Shower Puff! Come on and buy…what
are you waiting for?!
Only available in Jakarta and the surrounding area [in small print]234
233
Kawanku. No. 24/XXXII. 9-15 December 2002.
234
“Cobain semua sensasi mandinya Lux Beauty Shower yuuuk!” Mau yang lembut, romantik, enerjik,
atau pun seksi, semua sensasinya komplit dalam Lux Beauty Shower Starter Kit. Gratis Lux Shower Puff
88
Figure 5.1: Comparison of covers of girls’ magazines (top) and boys’ magazines (bottom)
This is followed with Johnson & Johnson’s Clean & Clear facial care:
Sure steps to beat oily skin…

Clean & Clear and under control
Oil free, acne free. 235
Still focusing on the skin, the next advertisement is Cussons Baby Lotion:
As beautiful as a young lady…

As soft as a baby…
For me only Cussons Baby Lotion is soft and smooth enough to take care of my
skin. 236
The above advertisements communicate a lifestyle that is typically female adolescent in
nature. The first one expresses the idea of fun in taking a shower; the second is about
acne which is highly associated with puberty; the last one emphasizes the youthfulness of
adolescent skin. Lux Liquid Soap is not a product made specifically for teens. However
the advertisement is designed to reach out to adolescents and this is obvious in the
informal teen language (Cobain semua sensasi mandinya Lux Beauty Shower
yuuk….!…ayo beli…ngapain nunggu,: “Come on, let’s try the shower sensation with Lux
Beauty Shower …. !… come on buy…what are you waiting for ?!). The advertisement
says that female teens need their own cosmetics rather than having to share with their big
sisters or their mothers. Some companies have developed new ranges specifically for
teen girls. Mustika Ratu [meaning “the queen’s weapon”], one of Indonesia’s leading
cosmetic brands, has developed a teen line called Mustika Puteri [meaning “the princess’
weapon”] and markets it with the slogan, “Mustika Puteri. It’s a teen cosmetic, it’s our
[English words original] lagi! Ayo Beli …ngapain nunggu?! Hanya tersedia di Jakarta dan sekitarnya.
Kawanku. No. 24/XXXII. 9-15 December 2002.
235
Jurus jitu ‘ngakalin kulit berminyak…Clean &Clear and under control [English words original]. Bebas
minyak, bebas jerawat.
236
Secantik Gadis…selembut bayi. …Bagiku cuma Cussons Baby Lotion yang halus dan lembut untuk
merawat kulit tubuhku.
89
very own cosmetic.” 237 Belia [young] is another example of a teen range, marketed to
complement Sari Ayu [the essence of beauty] which is the line for women. 238
This seeming obsession with skin care is common in girls’ magazines and the skin that
gets the most attention is facial skin. According to Goon and Craven the face has become
personal and public at the same time. It is personal because it is unique and each person
has a different face. It is also public because it is always on display to identify a person.
Therefore they maintain that beauty regimes dealing with facial complexion have been
commodified heavily because the face has come to represent the whole body and the
whole person. 239
Advertisements for whitening lotion are also ubiquitous in females’ magazines in
Indonesia. A smooth and acne-free complexion is not enough, beautiful skin has to have
a light colour as well. Since the launching of Pond’s Skin Whitening cream in the 1990s,
almost all cosmetic brands in Indonesia have produced their own lines of skin whitening
products. And is not just in Indonesia. For example, the Taipei Times reports:
While Westerners spend cash topping up their tans to appear attractive, many
Asians are slathering on lotions to reduce skin colouring as they embrace a
different concept of beauty that for them says white is right. Studies by market
research company Synovate say sales of skin whitening products in Asia are
soaring as the region’s beauty conscious try to lose the pigmentation they
consider unattractive. Nearly half of Hong Kong women surveyed by the
company last year bought such treatments, up from 38 percent in 2002. Whitening
creams were also bought by more than a one-third of females in Indonesia,
Malaysia and Taiwan. …In Thailand, the whitening lotion segment accounts for
237
Mustika Puteri. Kosmetik remaja kosmetik kita-kita. Aneka Yess! No. 26. 19 December 2002 - 1
January 2003, p. 91.
238
See Belia online http://www.belia.com/index.asp. (date accessed 30 November 2004).
239
Patricia Goon and Allison Craven, “Whose Debt?: Globalization and Whitefacing in Asia”
Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context. Issue 9, August 2003
http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue9/gooncraven.html (date accessed 6 May 2004).
90
more than 60 percent of the country’s annual US$100 million facial skincare
market. 240
Just like other cosmetics, initially whitening products were only targeted at women.
However, it was soon discovered that the adolescent market was also likely to be a
profitable one. Teen girls are introduced to several brands in the magazines; for example
Marina White, Pond’s White Beauty, Mustika Puteri Whitening Complex, Citra White
Lotion and Biore Bright White System. The advertisements for whitening products are a
part of a larger whole that sets “whiteness” as an ideal of beauty. The magazines seem to
cherish light skin. They portray many people with light skin and rarely those with darker
skin. Models with light skin, either with the help of studio lighting or make-up, help set
the preference for lighter skin colour in the magazines and in Indonesian society
generally.
Advertisements for skin whitening products are very fierce in promoting the advantages
of light skin, to the point of insulting those with dark skin by implying that dark skin is
less or not appealing. Furthermore, the insult is made to sound logical instead of
demeaning. There is a taken-for-grantedness in the magazines’ discourse of a general
preference for light skin. While the dark-skinned readers might be quite resentful, the
boom in sales of whitening lotion all over Asia mentioned above may indicate that those
with dark skin agree that their skin colour is a disadvantage.
240
“White is still right? On the surface anyway “ Taipei Times. Thursday, 25 March 2004.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/03/25/2003107738 (date accessed 8 April 2004). See
also Patricia Goon and Allison Craven, “Whose Debt?: Globalization and Whitefacing in Asia”
Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context. Issue 9, August 2003
http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue9/gooncraven.html (date accessed 6 May 2004), Julie
Matthews, “Deconstructing the Visual: The Diasporic Hybridity of Asian and Eurasian Female Images”
Intersections. Issue 8, October 2002.
http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue9/gooncraven.html (date accessed 13 May 2004) and
Hannah Beech, “Eurasian Invasion” Time Asia. April 23, 2001 vol. 157 No. 16
http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,106427,00.html (date accessed 7 May 2004).
91
Advertisements for teen magazines construct whiteness as something that is delicate and
soft. Citra Beauty Lotion, in one of its series of advertisements, portrays a little teddy
bear and no life model (see figure 5.2). The teddy bear is a gift from a boy to a girl.
Attached to the teddy is a card, signed with an initial “p”, from the boy that says:
Little sister,
I picked this cute one to keep you company, you, the one with whiter skin each
day. 241
And then the caption of the advertisement declares that:
Because your skin is whiter, you’ll get a sweet surprise from someone
That beautiful feeling that comes from having whiter skin. 242
Dinda [little sister] here has no equivalent in English. It is an archaic term of endearment
often used in a poetic and romantic way by a male to a female. “Little sister” refers to the
assumed youth of a female when compared to a male. It implies not just the youth, but
also the innocence and immaturity of a female set against the presumed sophistication
and protective nature of the male lover. The pair for Dinda is Kanda meaning “big
brother”. Dinda therefore connotes a female who is smaller, younger and more fragile,
coupled with her lover, “the big brother” who is bigger, older and stronger. “Big brother”
and “little sister” suggest the dichotomy of a boy-girl relationship which extends from
the male-female dichotomy. It implies the superiority of the first over the second: man-
woman, older-younger, stronger-weaker, wiser-more innocent, leader-subordinate, and so
on.
The card for Dinda here suggests male approval of whiter female skin that leads to
romantic love. Approval is emphasized by the gift from him to her as an appreciation of
241
Dinda, yang mungil ini kupilih untuk temani kamu yang kian putih. Gadis no. 27/XXX/7-16 October
2003, p. 19.
242
Karena kulitmu makin putih kamu dapat kejutan manis dari seseorang. Rasa cantik dari kulit lebih
putih. Gadis no. 27/XXX/7-16 October 2003, p. 19.
92
Figure 5.2: Citra White Lotion: turning white for male approval
Figure 5.3: Mustika Puteri Whitening Complex: white skin to match your outfit
her pale complexion. The gift, a little white teddy bear, is not just a metaphor for skin
colour (a white little sister), it also symbolizes softness and cleanliness. For a girl, to
maintain soft and clean skin is to not engage in too much outdoor activity (since that
would lead to perspiration and greasy skin), and not be exposed to the sun. This implies
that somebody else will do errands for the girl, just like the little teddy which is not going
anywhere on its own, but is tucked neatly into a beige bag. The advertisement clinches
the matter in the last sentence: “The beautiful feeling that comes from having whiter
skin”. This is so straightforward an association that it needs no further explanation. White
is beautiful, dark is not. White here is the sought-after paleness, a result of pampering and
indulgence, in contrast with dark and rough skin which results from outdoor activity
related to work. It is not just a skin colour that is being praised, but whiteness represents a
class of its own, a class of female adolescents who are delicate, soft, beautiful and
pampered.
Another teen whitening product frequently advertised in the girls’ magazines is Mustika
Puteri Whitening Complex (see figure 5.3):
Mustika Puteri Whitening Complex

You can wear any colour for your clothes. It will always match.
You don’t have to worry about the colours of your clothes. Match it up with
Puteri Whitening Complex. Want proof...? Puteri Whitening Complex, a line of
safe whitener made specifically for teenagers’ skin, turning your skin naturally
whiter from day to day. 243
This advertisement addresses not the vulnerability of being white (like a helpless teddy)
but the practical side of whiteness. A female adolescent with white skin is treated like a
white piece of paper. She can wear any colour she likes. The whiteness of her skin will
243
Mustika Putri Whitening Complex. Mo pake baju warna apa aja...pasti Matching! Ga kuatir lagi deh
soal warna baju. Matchingin aja dengan cara Puteri Whitening Complex. Mo bukti...? Puteri Whitening
Complex rangkaian pemutih khusus buat kulit remaja yang aman, membuat kulit jadi lebih putih alami dari
hari ke hari. Gadis. no. 24/XXX/5-15 September 2003, p. 2
93
emphasize the colours of her outfit like a sheet of white paper enhances colours painted
on it. Although the advertisement does not use an allusion like the teddy bear, the ending
is very similar; that is, in leaving the “face and body soft and smooth”. 244
One of the effects of addressing the practical side of whiteness is that the word
“complex” in the product name seems to lose its meaning. In this advertisement the
complicated and intricate process of whitening is, in fact, commended. The range of
products advertised includes facial scrub, moisturizer, body foam and hand and body
lotion, which are deemed to reinforce one another to achieve the intended result. The fact
that a girl has to apply four different lotions every day to boost the process of whitening
is not seen as impractical. The number of products presented indicate that the range of
whiteners is “complete” rather than complex.
On top of this advertisement page, capital letters bolster the word puteri, which has two
meanings: female adolescent and princess. 245 The word puteri informs the readers that
the line of products is specifically designed for female adolescents; additionally, the word
puteri connotes a high status, as high as that of a princess. The capital letters in the word
“whitening” assure potential young consumers that whatever product is chosen the end
result will be white skin. However, the advertisement also advises that to have white skin
all over the body, not just the face, the whole whitening line should be used. Once the
whole body is white, a female teen will look like a princess. It is not the illusion of a fairy
tale princess, but a “fashion” princess who has the ability to wear anything in any colour,
including clothes that expose the skin like the revealing clothes worn by the model. They
244
Wajah en body [English word original] halus, lembut…Gadis. no. 24/XXX/5-15 September 2003, p. 2
245
See John M. Echols and Hassan Shadily, An Indonesian-English Dictionary (Ithaca : Cornell University
Press, 1989), p 443 and / J.S. Badudu and Sutan Mohammad Zain, Kamus umum bahasa Indonesia (Jakarta
: Pustaka Sinar Harapan, 1994), p. 1111.
94
consist of white top and dark shorts that accentuate the lightness of her legs. This is also
enhanced by the dominant colour of the page, which is pinkish white to emphasize
paleness (like the beige colour in the teddy bear advertisement). Most advertisements for
skin whitening products prefer pale and soft hues that run parallel with the intended pale
skin colour.
From both Citra (the teddy bear advertisement) and Puteri it is obvious that the image of
a well-pampered, beautiful and fashionable female adolescent is the main ideal. To
achieve this pampered ideal, female adolescents have to engage religiously in a beauty
routine. These girls, it is suggested by the magazines, have to do a lot of work (as in self-
beauty treatments) to give the impression that they do not have to work (as in manual
labour). The “high maintenance” of the body is not regarded as hard work since the
beauty routine is presented as pleasureable, just like the Lux soap advertisement that
portrays taking a shower as “sensational” and fun.
The only work these teen girls have to do, according to the advertisers, is to take good
care of themselves and then go out and have fun and show off their beautiful skin. In the
Puteri advertisement the latter point is shown by the small pictures around the model
which depict girls in different poses and colourful clothes. The active poses of the girls
in the small set, and the model’s “sweet” and resting pose, do not contradict each other.
They are both structuring the modern teen image: the resting pose suggests that she has
no need to engage in hard manual work, but instead she is free to have fun on all sorts of
occasions (hence the different and colourful clothes). The small pictures thus suggest that
the kind of activity made for female teenagers is having fun.
95
Modernity associated with whiteness is suggested in the Pond’s White Beauty
advertisement (see figure 5.4). The product uses the word “white” on its labels, but the
advertisement uses the word “putih” instead of white. They both mean the same thing.
There are two ways to suggest light skin in Indonesian language: putih (meaning white),
kuning langsat (meaning yellow). Kuning langsat has a more native and natural
connotation. It is rarely used in skin whitener advertisements, presumably because the
word is used to suggest the skin of Indonesian girls which is naturally light, or because
“yellow” is deemed not white enough. In the girls’ magazines the word putih has an
unambiguous whiteness, possibly because it is perceived that white does not come in
hues like other colours, consequently reassuring the potential consumers of the sure-fire
result. They are going to be white, not light brown, not yellow but simply white. The
Indonesian term putih represents the result expected by Indonesian females. However, the
English usage of “white” refers to the sophisticated western technology used to create the
whitening lotion. The usage of “white” indicates global referencing and global
endorsement of the product. 246 It is used in all of the names of the whitener products
found in the magazines: Marina White, Pond’s White Beauty, Mustika Puteri Whitening
Complex, Citra White Lotion and Biore Bright White System.
Whichever word manufacturers use to market their products, whiteness is a combined
package of innocence and yet also a sophisticated life style. The Pond’s Institute
advertisement (in figure no. 5.4) justifies the use of whitening lotion. The word
“institute”, and the imagery of a science laboratory, present the product as “safe” since it
relies on technology and research to formulate the lotion. The computers at the reception
emphasize the sophisticated customer service that the institute tries to provide.
246
See Carla Jones, “Dress for Sukses: Fashioning Femininity and Nationality in Urban Indonesia” Re-
Orienting Fashion. The Globalization of Asian Dress. Sandra Niessen, Ann Marie Leshkowich and Carla
Jones, eds. (Oxford; New York: Berg, 2003), p. 200.
96
Figure 5.4: Pond’s Institute: white as a symbol of modernity
Two of the customers walking out represent two generations, a mother and a daughter.
The whitening product suggests that a skin-whitening regime is not only the
responsibility of women but of young girls as well. Whiteness, according to the
advertisements, conveys the impression of modernity and rationality. Artificiality,
uncertain result and possible side effects are not addressed. The advertisements anticipate
the internalization of whiteness as the ultimate beauty ideal.
All this technological and scientific effort on the part of the Pond’s Institute is to summon
the imagery of nature as shown in figure 5.5. Despite all the unnatural work put into it,
the desired result is to look natural. 247 In figure 5.5 (part of an advertisement series),
Pond’s White Beauty presents the natural sensation that accompanies whiteness. It is
about comfort, softness and purity:
Cloud, jasmine, snow, milk, paper, lather, cotton, pristine, dove, foam, clean,
vanilla, cream, swan, your skin.
Pond’s White Beauty
Skin looks whiter and smoother. 248
The sensation of being able to feel all of the abovementioned things is promised along
with whiteness. Although “white” is the main theme and the main colour in these
advertisements, being white is not the end in itself. It is more the means and the
advantages of being white that are sought.
Apart from the intensity of advertisements for skin whitening lotion, the preference for
and propaganda about, light skin is pervasive in everyday life in Indonesia. The
Indonesian phrase hitam manis (which means “dark but sweet”), justifies the notion that
247
Katie Conboy, Nadia Media and Sarah Stanbury “Introduction” Writing on the Body. Female
Embodiment and Feminist Theory Katie Conboy, Nadia Media and Sarah Stanbury, eds. (New York:
Columbia Press University, 1997), p. 2
248
Aneka Yess! no. 04. 13-26 February 2003. p. 11.
97
Figure 5.5: Pond’s imagery of natural white skin
whiteness does not need a positive aesthetic adjective. There is no phrase “putih manis”
(white but sweet) because white is regarded as sweet and taken for granted as being better
then dark skin. This attitude is reflected in the magazines through the absence of and the
minority status of dark skin, and through articles that are not specifically talking about
skin colour. But the effect is just the same. An article featuring a model called Shareefa
Daanish has this to say:
[This] girl admits to sun phobia. “I have heliophobia! I get really worked up
under the sun. Don’t want to get dark. I usually run around frantically under the
sun, looking for a shady place. People say I’m over reacting,” she says. Daanish
showed off her skin that is now much lighter because of luluran [a traditional skin
treatment of scrubbing the old skin to enhance a newer and lighter layer of skin]
every ten days at the beauty salon. 249
Daanish’s personal data in the magazines reveal that she was born in London. She is a
model for several products that are advertised on television and also in teen magazines.
Her personal details and achievements as a model reinforce one another: she is a model
because she has light skin; she can afford treatment to have lighter skin because she is
rich; being born in London symbolizes her wealth. Her education at Parahiyangan
University is a plus: it is a well-known and expensive private university. This implies that
she is wealthy. Finally her university education suggests that she is relatively smart.
Intelligence, popularity, beauty and wealth; all of these attributes are seen to emanate
from white skin. An article on New Year’s resolutions reveals that light skin is
“cleaner”:
Inne’s [a model] wish in 2003…is to have lighter skin.

‘Just don’t feel confident with my dark skin right now. Want to have lighter skin,
so it looks cleaner. Not that I’m dirty or anything…’ 250
249
Cewek yang mengaku phobia sama yang namanya matahari. “Gue kan heliophobia ! Kalau ada
matahari aku ribet. Takut hitam. Jadi kalau ada matahari suka lari-lari, bawaannya pingin neduh. Kata
orang-orang sih berlebihan,” jelasnya.
Daanish menunjukkan bahwa sekarang kulitnya sudah lebih putih karena baru luluran. “Aku luluran
setiap sepuluh hari di salon,” katanya. Kawanku. no 11/XXXIII. 8-14 September 2003, p. 66.
250
harapan Inne di tahun 2003…pengin mutihin kulit. “Enggak pede ah, punya warna kulit gelap kayak
sekarang. Pengin punya warna kulit yang agak terang, biar kelihatan bersih. Bukan berarti sekarang kotor
lho.”Kawanku no. 25/XXXII 16 – 22 December 2002, p. 7.
98
Another short profile of a budding male teen celebrity describes how he has to give up
his fishing hobby. His profession as an actor for television soap operas discourages him
from doing anything that exposes him to the sun since dark skin is deemed not
compatible with the camera:
You know, without fishing, Zaky’s skin is dark enough, hehehe. Since fishing is
going to make his skin way darker, Zaky now admits to limiting his fishing
activities. ‘Right after fishing, sure enough, my skin goes way darker. It really
shows in front of the camera. So I don’t do it too often these days.’ 251
Jupiter, another teen actor, relates how people think that his dark skin is not pleasant:
‘The good thing about joining paskibra [a corps in charge of flag raising
ceremonies at Indonesian high schools] is that I’m more disciplined in time
management…but there’s the downside. My skin gets darker like this. People say
it’s uglier. But frankly, if I may say so, I prefer it to be darker,’ 252
The way Jupiter contradicts public opinion has to do with the gendered aesthetics of
white skin. Females are more prone to public distaste for dark skin, while males can still
get away with not being so white in appearance. Dark skin for males may be associated
with masculinity and strength (presumably the influence of African American in music
video clips). It does not always communicate hardships and low prestige as is the case for
females.
The idea of being white, and the sense of power that comes along with it, is so accepted
that magazine articles tend to exacerbate this white skin ideology rather than stop it from
becoming more entrenched. Having a white complexion is not just a matter of skin
colour. It encompasses a whole package of privileges. White has become a symbol of
251
Tahu dong tanpa memancingpun kulit Zaky sudah hitam, hehehe. Karena memancing itu bisa bikin kulit
jauuuh lebih keling, sekarang Zaky mengaku jadi enggak bisa bebas memancing lagi. “Habis mancing,
pasti kulit gue jauh lebih keling. Dan kelihatan banget di kamera. Jadi jarang mancing deh….”Kawanku
no. 11/XXXIII 8-14 September 2003. p. 22.
252
“Bagusnya ikut paskibra itu ya aku bisa jadi lebih disiplin soal waktu….Tapi ada jeleknya juga. Kulitku
jadi agak gelap gini. Kata orang sih lebih jelek. Tapi kalau boleh jujur sih, aku lebih suka yang agak
gelap,…” Kawanku no. 29/XXXII 13 – 19 January 2003, p. 31.
99
success, especially for females. In an article about a televison program, a girl who made
an appearance on television was laughed at because she looked so dark on the screen:
When the program was aired on TV, Lala watched with her family at home. Lala
was laughed at by her mom, dad and her three siblings. Well, there was one shoot
when she looked really dark and black. The next day, her friends made fun of her
as well. 253
White skin has come to represent so many other things that follow from being white that
it is hard to fight back. Popularity and status connected with whiteness are so enticing to
young females that it is easier to agree than to insist on the equal aesthetic of dark skin.
The aversion to a dark complexion is an issue that is being handled aggressively and yet
naturally by the magazines. The discrimination against dark skin is pervasive, and it has
become entrenched as the norm.
Apart from the image of neglected skin, there is, as I have indicated, a notion of lower
class status associated with dark skin. Following is a quotation from a short story in
Aneka Yess!:
Ning has been restless these last few days. It’s a week before Valentine, but she’s
not ready for a stunning appearance at Sisca’s party. She feels like she wants to
look different on Valentine’s day. The dress? No problem. A pink one with laces,
bought several days ago, will make her look fashionable. Shoes? Not a problem
either. Her biggest problem is her skin that’s getting darker because she’s been
swimming too much. It’s just no match with Rio’s. Rio’s face is so oriental with
the clear skin and all. If they walk together people might think that she’s the
daughter of Rio’s servant. How dreadful is that? 254
253
Waktu acaranya tayang di TV, Lala nonton bareng keluarganya di rumah. Lala sempet diketawain
nyokap, bokap, dan ketiga kakaknya. Abis, ada satu syut dimana doi kelihatan keling dan item banget.
Besoknya, temen-temennya di sekolah juga enggak kalah seru ngeledeknya. Kawanku,no.34/XXXII/ 17 –
23 February 2003, p. 71.
254
Beberapa hari ini Ning sedang kebingungan. Valentine tinggal seminggu lagi, tapi ia belum siap untuk
tampil mempesona di pesta yang akan diadakan di rumah Sisca nanti. Ada keinginan untuk tampil beda di
hari kasih sayang itu. Soal baju? Tidak ada masalah. Baju dengan aksen renda yang dibelinya beberapa
hari lalu, pasti akan membuatnya tampil modis. Soal sepatu? Juga tidak ada masalah. Masalah
terbesarnya adalah kulitnya semakin hitam karena terlalu giat berenang akhir-akhir ini. Nggak cocok
dong, kalau dia berdampingan dengan Rio. Wajah Rio kan oriental banget dengan kulit bersihnya. Salah-
salah kalau mereka pergi berdua Ning akan disangka anaknya pembantu Rio. Bisa gawat kan? “Pemutih
Pembawa Bencana” [The Whitening Lotion Disaster]. Aneka Yess! no. 04. 13-26 February 2003. p. 116.
100
The dark skin evokes the image of a maid’s daughter who not only represents lower class
status but also hardship and labour. The story is implying that, with this kind of social
image, it is just impossible to look beautiful. Beauty is not a natural state despite all the
effort to look natural. 255
Whiteness is associated with wealth, since the ability to pursue beauty through modern
facilities has to be well supported financially. In this story, Ning represents wealth and
high class status: she observes Valentine’s Day through her purchase of a pink evening
dress for the occasion. Her acknowledgment of an imported tradition links her with a
western image that boosts her status. Ning decides to put on a whitening lotion to match
her skin with the new dress and her boyfriend’s whiteness. The stigma of being dark is
that it is embarrassing:
Ning puts on the Ken Dedes Mask [a whitening mask] that Yuli has given her.
Hope the mask works. So on Valentine’s day, she won’t be an embarrassment
when walking side by side with her beloved Rio. 256
The next day Ning wakes up with a white spot on her chin, a side effect from the lotion:
‘I’m not going to school, it’s embarrassing!” How could a good looking girl like
me get skin disease?’ Ning whined. Mom walked closer and raised Ning’s chin,
she looked at the white mark. ‘It’s not a skin disease, did you put on face cream
last night? Hmmm…did you use my whitening lotion?’ 257
This reflects an assumption that whitening lotion is part of the everyday cosmetic regime
for both adult and young women. The mother cannot advise her daughter to be content
with her own natural skin colour and be just the way she is, because the mother herself
255
Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina and Sarah Stanbury eds., Writing on the Body. Female Embodiment and
Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 2.
256
Ning menggunakan masker Ken Dedes yang diberikan Yuli padanya. Mudah-mudahan ampuh. Hingga
saat Valentine nanti, dia nggak malu-maluin bila jalan sama Rio tercinta. “Pemutih Pembawa Bencana”
[The Whitening Lotion Disaster]. Aneka Yess! no. 04. 13-26 February 2003. p. 117.
257
“Ning nggak mau berangkat sekolah, malu!! Masa sih cakep-cakep panuan?” rengek Ning. Mama
mendekat diangkatnya dagu Ning dan beliau memperhatikan tanda belang itu. “Ini bukan panu, kamu
pakai obat wajah semalam? Hayo…kamu pasti pakai obat pemutih punya mama ya ?” “Pemutih Pembawa
Bencana” [The Whitening Lotion Disaster]. Aneka Yess! no. 04. 13-26 February 2003. p. 117.
101
wears whitening lotion. In the end, Rio said that he liked Ning regardless of her skin
colour. Nevertheless, the message of the story is not so much encouragement for those
with darker skin, as a warning to be cautious in choosing whitening products. The short
story, just like the advertisements, suggests that there are different whitening products for
girls and women. Therefore potential consumers should choose wisely in order not to end
up like Ning.
Another significance of whiteness for Indonesian girls is that it represents the mix and
match of local and global attributes. One of the manifestations of this global-local mix-
match is the popularity of Eurasians in the Indonesian entertainment business. Teen
celebrities with mixed European and Indonesian blood (called Indo in Indonesian
language) have long been popular in the Indonesian media. In this respect, then, female
teen magazines are just continuing a long adulation of Eurasians. These Eurasian teens
have the advantage of not just fulfilling the standard required look, they are also the
embodiment and the materialization of two cultures: the east and west.
The media, and the public’s fascination with Eurasian celebrities echoes admiration for
the western persona without betraying their own origins. Yanto Zainal, the president of
an advertisement agency from Jakarta who claims that “Indos have an international look
but can still be accepted as Indonesian [sic]”. 258 The idea of Indos being Indonesian,
despite all the western attributes they reproduce, turns out to be important for these
magazines as well. In fact, there seems to be a certain pride in being able to claim as
Indonesian anything that has a western touch. So, instead of identifying these Eurasian
teen celebrities as “westernised” and coming from “out there”, the magazines proudly
258
Hannah Beech, “Eurasian Invasion” TimeAsia, April 23, 2001, vol. 157 no. 16
http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,106427,00.html (date accessed 7 May 2004 ).
102
introduce them as Indonesians. The media is so saturated with Eurasians that, “If you
only looked at the media you would think we [Indonesians] all looked indo except for the
drivers, maids and comedians”. 259 Once again, the idea that class and status are attached
to the west is apparent here.
In these magazines, teen celebrities with Eurasian blood cannot go unnoticed. Eurasian
parentage is always mentioned in teen media as if to boost the image of teen
celebrities. 260 Mixed parentage mostly suggests ideal beauty and appearance and serves
to justify their popularity (not to mention their ability to speak English or another
European language fluently). The adulation of Eurasians to some extent shows that
beauty is not always in the eyes of the beholder but can sometimes be a constructed
convention. Telling the public that someone has a Eurasian ancestry seem to add value to
the visual effect.
By extension, being white should be combined with modifying other parts of the body.
The following is a quote from an advertisement for contact lenses. It is in a pull-out
booklet form attached to one issue of Gadis:
“You don’t have to be a westerner to have colourful eyes. Just wear contact
lenses. Your eyes will become more expressive. 261
This “expressiveness” is clearer in figure 5.6 where each eye colour is given a character:
“Bubbly Blue”, “Mystic Grey”, “Soothing Honey” and “Gorgeous Green”. Bubbly blue
is cheerful and pleasant. Mystic grey is intelligent and interesting. Soothing honey is
259
Dede Oetomo as quoted from Hannah Beech, “Eurasian Invasion” TimeAsia, April 23, 2001, vol. 157
no. 16 http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,106427,00.html (date accessed 7 May 2004).
260
Emma Baulch, “Alternative Music and Mediation in Late New Order Indonesia” Inter-Asia Cultural
Studies Vol 3, 2002. pp. 219-234.
261
Nggak harus jadi orang barat untuk bisa punya mata berwarna. Pakai saja lensa kontak. Mata pun jadi
lebih ekspresif. Gadis no. 25/XXX/16-25 September 2003.
103
Figure 5.6: Contact lenses to match your personality
realistic and matter-of-fact. Gorgeous green is passionate and beautiful. All
characterizations are in English to stress the expressiveness of these western eyes. In big
letters stretched across the page the theme is printed in Indonesian: “There is a Rainbow
in Your Eyes” (Ada Pelangi di Matamu). This rainbow theme mirrors not only the variety
of colours but also the option and the ability to change, as even westerners with
“colourful” eyes only have one natural colour. These soft lenses therefore enable
Indonesian female adolescents not only to be more “expressive”, but also to change the
colour of their eyes whenever they please. The dissatisfaction of having expressionless
eyes is compensated for by acting as the agent of change.
There seems to be a subtle satisfaction in getting closer and closer to the white western
image, not just with skin resemblance but also with eye colour. The above advertisement
implies that western eyes are more desirable since “colourful” eyes are more expressive.
The category of colourful excludes the colour of Indonesian eyes. It constructs native
Indonesian eyes as less exciting because they are not as cheerful, pleasant, intelligent,
interesting, realistic, matter-of-fact, passionate or beautiful. More quotes from contact
lens advertisements in Kawanku and Aneka Yess! support this notion:
[A]ren’t you jealous of Kirsten Dunst’s clear blue eyes or Britney Spears’ brown
hazel ones ? Throw away your jealousy. We can have brown, blue, or even green
eyes. Change your eye colour in seconds. The secret? Soft lenses, of course! 262
Are you often fascinated by Elijah Wood’s eyes that are as blue as the sky? It’s
alright to be fascinated, but you have to know that we can be like them! Just wear
contact lenses and match it with the right make up, and you won’t be beaten by
their looks. 263
262
…ngiri nggak sih ngelihat mata biru bening seperti Kistren Dunst atau cokelat hazel [English word
original] seperti Britney Spears ? Sekarang buang deh rasa iri. Kita juga bisa kok punya mata berwarna
coklat, itu, atau hijau sekalipun. Dan warna mata kitapun bisa diubah dalam hitungan detik. Rahasia ?
Pakai soft lens dong! Kawanku no. 32/ XXXII, 3-9 February 2003. p. 71.
263
Kamu sering terkagum-kagum melihat bola mata Elijah Wood yang sebiru langit? Kagum sih boleh
saja, tapi kamu harus tahu kita juga bisa seperti mereka! Tinggal pake contact lens dan sesuaikan dengan
riasan mata, kamu nggak akan kalah oke deh! Aneka Yess! no. 23. 7-2 November 2002. p. 78.
104
This desire for western eyes is made more explicit in the above advertisements, with
references to western celebrities. Jealousy is a silent admission of admiration, as
admiration projects a sense of a standard that puts the object of jealousy above the
admirer. Envying western eyes implies that those eyes are superior. In order to be
equally attractive and superior, Indonesian eyes have to make the proper adjustments.
However the discourse of western superiority is disguised in a discourse of empowerment
to renounce inferiority:
“…we can be like them!”
“…you won’t be beaten…”
The more these advertisements emphasize the ability to imitate, the more they are putting
western images on a pedestal.
Bordo, in her analysis of contact lens advertisements, argues that even though contact
lenses may not imply any political or racial message, the preference for certain colours is
problematic. 264 The dominant race is never represented as imitating the less dominant
one. An advertisement for contact lenses in Cosmopolitan magazines prefers darker
eyes, but does not allude to dark eyes as belonging to any (eastern) race. 265 Deep dark
eyes are seen as expressive without making any reference to the imitation of any specific
racial group.
In the magazines, it is interesting to note that colour choice of the soft lenses is more
open to those with light skin:
264
Bordo, pp. 251-58.
265
See Australian Cosmopolitan Hair and Beauty, Issue 1, 2, p. 29 and 3, 2004 and Cosmopolitan, issue
378, December 2004, p. 125.
105
For those with dark skin, pick colours with a brownish hue…
For those with whitish skin, pick colours that are paler, like blue or grey. 266
This gives the impression that those with white skin have more options with regards to
fashion, not only in choosing clothes as stated in the Puteri whitening lotion
advertisement but also in choice of contact lenses. Options that come with white skin are
also linked with flexibility in social life. As exemplified in the advertisements and the
short story about Ning, a female with white skin will establish her status in public life
with regards to class and gender. Whiteness launches images of opulence and femininity.
The promise of transformation is accompanied by the feeling of empowerment and
capability to “improve”, as instilled by manufacturers and advertisers and endorsed by
the magazines. It is backed up with possibilities of exposure and acknowledgement in
every issue of the magazines. A female reader with the perfect white look (either real or
airbrushed), can send her photographs to the magazines for the fashion pages, letters to
the editors, or the poetry column and have her pictures published in the next issue.
Sending in their photos would give female teens a sense of belonging to the same popular
clique covered by the magazines. From the letters to the editors in Aneka Yess! (see
figure 5.7) 267 it is obvious that the letter-writers do not only want to send letters but also
to have their photographs published next to the pages where professional teen models are
displayed. The poses in figure 5.7 tell of their attempts to imitate models that they
regularly see in the magazines. The magazines publish the letters to show the kind of
readers they are attracting. The letters show off the extent of the magazines’ popularity.
In figure 7, the letters come from Jakarta, Sulawesi, Sumatra and Hong Kong. This
266
Untuk yang berkulit cenderung gelap, pilih warna-warna kecoklatan…Untuk yang berkulit cenderung
putih, pilih warna-warna yang sedikit pucat seperti biru dan abu-abu. Gadis no. 25/XXX/16-25 September
2003.
267
Surat Pembaca [Letters to the Editors], Aneka Yess! no. 4, 13-26 February 2003, p. 77.
106
Figure 5.7: Showing off in “Letters to the Editor”
suggests a national as well as an international readership and appeal. Although editors
may not select the letters based on the aesthetic of the photos, the images presented help
boost the prestige of the magazines. The teen readers help to naturalize the constructed
images of professional models. Similar hairstyle, outfit and pose help to reinforce and
justify the trends introduced in the magazines. Figure 5.8 268 compares the similar
performances and appearances of common teens and models.
Indonesian teen models play a large and quite specific role in female teen magazines.
Unlike western celebrities featured in the magazines, Indonesian models are more
“plausible” and “probable” due to their proximity to the readers. Their role as models is
the most important. As the name suggests, they are the “role models”. These models are
essential as the embodiment of the magazines’ message on modernity. They epitomize
the amalgamation of qualities and values held by the magazines. Each of them is a
showcase of the magazines’ interpretation of global culture on Indonesian bodies.
Modelling activities seem to be the most featured activities in Indonesian female teen
magazines. 269 The three magazines state that their mission is to provide Indonesian girls
with ideas and examples of how to be creative and active. However, it is clear that the
words “active teens” and “teens’ activities” usually mean modelling and other related
activities. Apart from the mass-attracting nature of models and celebrities, I perceive this
passion for modelling as a means constructed by the magazines to sustain their function
268
Aneka Yess! no. 4, 13-26 February 2003.
269
The same phenomenon is noted for America by Kelley Massoni, “Modelling Work: Occupational
Messages in Seventeen Magazine”, Gender & Society 18.1 (February 2004), pp. 47-65.
107
Figure 5.8: Beautiful readers trying to be like professional teen models.
as a “cultural supermarket”. 270 Models are the display mannequins at the windows of the
magazines’ global store. They parade products and communicate lifestyles to the readers.
The magazines create a conceptual space for female adolescents. McRobbie maintains
that magazines are more popular among girls than among boys because reading the
magazines qualifies as a private activity for females. 271 Magazines are seen to
accommodate females’ occupation of a private domain. 272 Solitary girls reading
magazines in their bedrooms are the popular image connected with this media.
Nevertheless, adolescents generally have a paradoxical space in which public and private
space switch from one to the other: “many teenagers identify the home, where space is
competed for, and activities scrutinized by other family members, as a public space and
the street, where anonymity is possible, as a private space.” 273
Thus, reading can merge the two conceptual spaces. These merged spaces signify the
double agenda of the magazines. The public space fulfills the marketing scheme to
induce girls to go out, spend their allowance and show off their purchases. The private
space, on the other hand, fulfills the common notion of homebound girls, sitting nicely
and quietly in the containment of their room and under their parents’ supervision.
270
A term coined by Gordon Mathews to depict culture as matter of choice instead of purely inherited, in
Global Culture/Individual identity. Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket (London; New York:
Routledge), p. 5.
271
See in Sian Lincoln “Teenage Girls’ ‘Bedroom Culture’: Codes versus Zones” After Subculture. Critical
Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. Andy Bennet and Keith Kahn-Harris eds. (Basingstoke; New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 94-106.
272
For references of girls culture see Angela McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture 2000 , Angela
McRobbie and Mica Nava eds., Gender and Generation (London: Macmillan, 1984), Bennet, Andy and
Keith Kahn-Harris eds., After Subculture. Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture (Basingstoke;
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and Susan Hopkins, Girl Heroes: The New Force in Popular
Culture 2002.
273
Valentine quoted in Alison L. Bain, “White Western Teenage Girls and Urban Space: Challenging
Hollywood’s Representations” Gender, Place and Culture, 10. 3 (September 2003), p. 201.
108
However, the public life introduced to female adolescents in the magazines is a “safe”
domain for the teenagers in which they are depicted as flocking in groups, in luxurious
and relatively protected malls and away from the adult world. These teenagers, as Bain
argues, are in the safe privacy of a public space. 274 It is a romanticized version of a public
space invented for female adolescents that eliminates all sign of the hardships and
dangers of real public space. It is in this utopian adolescent space that the magazines
actively produce a potential Indonesian urban youth culture.
The purpose of the models is that they should perform their roles as ambassadors of
youth culture on this stage of the make-believe public world. The invented public space
provides a virtual showcase that delivers modernity and globalization to readers of the
magazines. This enclosed public space designed specifically for teens allows the
magazines to exercise certain measures to protect the “innocence” of Indonesian girls
while still maintaining the sophistication of a modern culture.
Modelling contests and all sorts of activities involving teen models are featured
frequently in the magazines because they ensure the continuity of the merry private
public space. Activities sponsored and endorsed by the magazines, and featuring teen
celebrities, are intended to turn adolescents into a monolithic cultural group − the kind of
group that will assist and take active part in the material and cultural consumption
promoted by the magazines. Cep Yusuf (male) from Garut (a small town in West Java)
sent a letter to the editor of Aneka Yess! enquiring about the requirements to be a model.
The magazine replied:
274
See Alison L. Bain, “ White Western Teenage Girls and Urban Space: Challenging Hollywood’s
Representations” Gender, Place and Culture, 10. 3 (September 2003), pp. 197-203.
109
For a guy, for sure, not less that 165 cm in height, the taller the better. 22 years is
the oldest age we can consider. But the most important thing is physical
proportion and the look. Remember, being photogenic is the main factor. 275
As this reply shows, the answers to questions about standard prerequisites for entering
modeling contests are supplied in the magazines. Information about personal grooming,
the latest fashions and a trendy lifestyle, plus suggestions for the necessary modifications
to be able to enter the “in” group are all available in the magazines. To help potential
models comply with the height prerequisite the magazines supply them with
advertisements for height enhancer:
Confidence with Ortopedi.

The desire to be taller may come from different causes; maybe you are a male or
female whose girlfriend or boyfriend is taller than you. Or maybe due to height,
you cannot become what you dream to be: flight attendant, nurse, model or
candidate for the Indonesian Police/Army, just because your height falls a few
centimeters short. 276
Ortopedi Height enhancer (Figure 5.9) 277 at first glance seems to target male readers of
female magazines. The advertisement assumes that a male should be taller than a female
to form an ideal couple as expressed by the speech bubble: “I wish he was taller”.
However, the professions mentioned in the advertisement are more female oriented. For
example, female flight attendants, nurses and models. The last profession in the
advertisement, TNI-POLRI, refers to a policeman and/or soldier. A police woman is
usually referred to as POLWAN. Therefore, out of four professions mentioned, three are
aimed at women.
275
Yang pasti, untuk cowok, jangan sampai di bawah 165 cm, lebih tinggi lebih bagus. 22 tahun adalah
maksimal umur yang bisa kita pertimbangkan. Namun yang paling penting adalah proporsi tubuh dan
wajahnya. Ingat lho, faktor fotogenic adalah terutama. Aneka Yess! no. 04. 13-26 February 2003.p. 76.
276
Percaya diri dengan ortopedi.
Keinginan untuk menjadi lebih tinggi, bisa disebabkan oleh banyak hal, mungkin anda seorang pria atau
wanita yang mempunyai pacar yang tubuhnya lebih tinggi daripada anda. Atau mungkin karena masalah
tinggi badan, anda tidak bisa menjadi orang impian anda: pramugari, perawat, model atau anggota TNI-
POLRI hanya karena tinggi badan anda KURANG BEBERAPA CENTIMETER saja.
Aneka Yess! no. 19. 11- 24 September 2003. p. 126.
277
Aneka Yess! no. 19. 11- 24 September 2003. p. 126.
110
Figure 5.9: Ortopedi height enhancer: for models and police officers
While there are several professions mentioned in the advertisement, only models and
entertainers are regularly featured and represented in the magazines. Occupation and teen
representation in the magazines shows that there is a form of adulation commanded by
show business. Massoni argues that although in real life modelling is not that accessible
as an occupation, the magazines’ extensive coverage of models and modelling activities
make the profession more probable than it really is. 278
The second height enhancer product (Figure 5.10) 279 reflects the relation between ideal
height and female aesthetics. The female model for the advertisement has fair skin and
brownish hair, which suggests that being tall with white skin and a “non-native” look is
advantageous for Indonesian females. The claim that the product is “new from the USA”
emphasizes the need for endorsement from the west. The advertisement says that it is,
“A new formula from the USA, which has been proven in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan
and in the country of its origin.” 280 The message that taller is more beautiful seems to
blur the logic of the above sentence. Relatively tall Americans (despite the
multiculturalism of America, it is clear that the advertisement refers to white Americans
who are naturally taller than Indonesians) are posed as living proof that the product really
works. Height that produces the effect of slenderness becomes part of an aesthetic
package. It complements other requirements to produce a good look: height, the colour of
the skin, the posture of the body and the fashionable attire.
278
Although Massoni’s research is in the US, I think it is reflective of a globalized pattern in the modeling
and entertainment profession. Kelley Massoni, “Modelling Work: Occupational Messages in Seventeen
Magazine” Gender & Society Volume 18, no. 1 (February 2004), p. 48.
279
Aneka Yess!, no. 4, 13-26 February 2003, p. 135.
280
Formula baru dari Amerika telah dibuktikan ribuan Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan maupun dari
Negara asalnya.
111
Figure 5.10: Height Enhancer from America: an effort to be tall and white
The magazines standardize beauty and turn it into uniformity through modelling contests
and model-centric content. Standardizing performance and appearances in a constructed
ideal provides adolescents with a sense of standard in their effort to belong to a
prestigious group. At the same time a uniform ideal renders it easier for magazines to
market their modern cultural products. 281 According to Gordon Mathews, one way to
develop a sense of identity is to see “oneself to be in common with others.” 282 In the
advertisement for the Revlon Modelling contest (Figure 5.11)283 the dominant standard of
beauty ideals is apparent. It is more standardized for the female models than for the
males. Although one female model has very short hair (above shoulder), an eye-catching
consistency in the appearances of the other female finalists in the picture is the long,
straight and sleek hair. The style is reminiscent of classic Indonesian shampoo
advertisements: shoulder length, parted in the middle and black. The male models,
although all of them have short or near-short hair, have less uniformity compared with
their female counterparts because of the different hairstyles.
These classic images, not just the hair, but also the whole gendered standard of
appearance are pervasive in the magazines’ content. Female performance through
grooming and style seems to imply that in real life females are governed by more rules of
aesthetics than males. The similarities of the female styles indicate that females are more
influenced by fashion trends than males. It is true that female fashion is more diverse, but
the adoption of fashions has to follow the latest trends. Males are subject to fewer fashion
rules and are therefore freer than females in terms of clothing and fashion choices.
281
“[Media]…for efficiency and profit, favours a homogenous cohort view of its audiences” White, p. 261.
282
Mathews, p.17.
283
Aneka Yess! No. 20. 25 September – 9 October 2003, p. 48.
112
Figure 5.11: Revlon modelling contest. Standardizing the look
The Revlon modelling competition represents adolescents from around Indonesia. Their
origin, stated next to their names, reveals that they all come from prominent cities. None
of them come from small towns. By stating the cities next to the models’ names, the
magazine is turning the appearances of these models into a nationwide urban look, by
suggesting that urban adolescents all over Indonesia have this kind of style.
Modelling competitions (as in Figure 5.11) in teen magazines identify their contestants
not just by name, but also by city of domicile and current education (and often the names
of the institutions). This indicates that where a teenager lives is as important as her/his
educational background. An adolescent does not have to be a genius or a smart student,
but being registered at a formal educational institution boosts her/his status, especially if
the institution is a difficult and expensive one to get into. The idea of being a high school
leaver but not pursuing a higher degree is not “cool”, no matter how popular a teen model
is. As young professionals, these celebrities realize that their modelling work is treated as
a part time job. The magazines make sure that the celebrities’ main profession is as
students. In all of the interviews and articles on teen celebrities, none are portrayed as
drop-outs or as not pursuing further education: they are either high school or university
students. Personal grooming would not be complete without fashion. Apart from news
from the entertainment industry, fashion is the staple of female teen magazines. Jones
shows how female fashion is used to communicate different positions of gender in
Indonesian society. 284 In teen magazines, fashion serves to form an identity that
differentiates adolescents from adults and simultaneously establishes their collective
membership of the global fashion industry. Modern fashion is western fashion. In spite
of the fact that Islam is the religion of the majority in Indonesia, female teen fashion
284
Jones, pp. 185-213.
113
ideals in magazines do not deter them from flaunting the flesh. Hipsters and sleeveless
tank tops are the norms (see also girls previous figures).
Following field studies in Indonesia in 1999, Pam Nilan comments that:
It is curious that although Indonesia is a strongly Muslim country there are rarely
any images of veiled young women in Muslim dress in the magazines, despite the
increasing popularity of this trend among middle–class young Muslim
women…The clothing depicted in girls’ magazines is often revealing and the
poses are provocative. However, standards of female modesty are required of
most young women in Indonesia, whether veiled or not. 285
Now, six years later in the twenty-first century, the magazines still do not discourage
fashion that is tight, see-through or scanty. They negotiate this un-Islamic fashion in two
ways. First, female adolescents are posed in such a way as so to stress their childishness.
Therefore their innocence and cheerfulness negate any sense of sensuality despite the
skimpy gear. Second, there are more and more images of ordinary teenagers wearing
jilbab 286 in the teen magazines’ articles. These ordinary teenagers wearing jilbab serve to
balance the magazines’ content of western fashion. In a way, these jilbab-wearing
teenagers are maintaining (to a certain extent they are emphasizing) modernity because
they are not portrayed conducting religious activities: they are shown attending a concert
or entering a modelling contest. 287 They appear in pictures sent to the editors or enquiring
about a chance to pose for a fashion page.
285
Pam Nilan, “Romance Magazines, television soap operas and young Indonesian Women” Review of
Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs. Volume 37, no. 1. Canberra: The Association for the Publication of
Indonesian and Malaysian Studies, Inc., 2003, p. 51.
286
An Islamic attire that involves covering the hair.
287
See for example in Aneka Yess! no. 21. 9-22 October 2003 p. 122, a girl wearing jilbab is seen involved
MC course held by the magazine. In no. 23, 7-20 November 2002, p. 60, a girl with jilbab in a beauty
course session. In p. 128, girls wearing jilbab in a tour groups to Singapore. In p. 154, girls parading head
scarves for Ramadhan (the fasting month) but they are all wearing tight top with short sleeves. In p. 156 a
girl wearing jilbab poses with her boyfriend who is also her teacher. They pose with their faces close to
each other.
114
As mentioned previously, modesty, with or without jilbab, is achieved by constructing
poses that demonstrate childishness, cheerfulness and innocence. One of the constant
adolescent images is the wide toothy smiles that signify happiness and a carefree outlook.
The colourful covers support the notion of childish fun. The magazines sustain a cute,
innocent, cheerful and happy image. Facial expression, pose, colours and decorative
illustration produce the intended effect of female naivety. In Figure 5.12 the covers of
female teen magazines show cute expressions compared with the more sensual covers of
the male teen magazine Hai. Kinsella in her discussion of cuteness in Japan reveals that
childishness in fashion and attitude is a manifestation of Japanese teenagers’ “refusal to
grow up” because the adult world is seen as bleak and oppressive. 288 Cuteness in
Indonesian teen magazines may be based on similar assumptions: that the adult world is
stressful, therefore do not grow up too quickly but seize the adolescent moment. Girls’
magazines thrive on these images of cheerfulness and childishness.
288
Sharon Kinsella, “Cuties in Japan”, Women, Media and Consumption in Japan, Lise Skov and Brian
Moeran, eds (Hawai’i; United Kingdom: University of Hawai’i Press, Curzon Press, 1995), pp. 242, 250.
115
Figure 5.12: The cheerful smiles on girls’magazines versus the mature sophisticated look
on boys’.
Chapter 6
SHAPING ATTITUDES AND VALUES
As discussed in earlier chapters, Indonesian public discourse often constructs its
adolescents as being in danger from the menace of globalization. The state treats
globalization as an outside force that is taking over local culture. The most welcome note
this public discourse can make of globalization is to look at it as a challenge (tantangan).
Nevertheless, the dominant message demonizes globalization as disrupting local society
and values.
What the Indonesian government disagrees with in theory they may agree with in
practice. The state may sound “allergic” to globalization in its discourse. Nevertheless,
the state embraces globalization more than they are willing to admit. Media and
communication made globalization inevitable in day-to-day practice in Indonesia.
Therefore, there is a contradiction within the state’s version of globalization in Indonesia.
On the one hand, it is a rhetorical threat in public discourse but, on the other, it is a state-
supported practice spread by global trading.
As part of the society, the magazines acknowledge the norms and conventions that
circulate in public discourse with regards to local gender identity. The magazines
dutifully address this public discourse and concern in their content. This results in a
mixture of modernity and conservatism, generating a degree of discrepancy or
inconsistency in creating images of female adolescents.
116
Transferring the Ideas through the Language
Indonesian was adopted as the national language through the Declaration of Youth
(Sumpah Pemuda) in 1928. The national language functions as a bridge between different
ethnicities which have their own regional languages. For the older generation, Indonesian
comes second after their regional mother tongues. For younger generations, especially
from urban areas, the Indonesian language is their mother tongue, and this young urban
group may have little knowledge of their regional language. People from the younger
generation are introduced to the language at school and by watching television. 289 Due to
its connection with schooling, the ability to speak Indonesian brings a certain status to the
speaker. It signifies that the person is educated. 290
TVRI as a government-owned television station played an important role in spreading the
Indonesian language, especially through its news programs. 291 TVRI has managed to
wipe out local accents in its national news and other programs, through its introduction of
a kind of Indonesian language that has a national accent that cannot be traced to a certain
region, because one of the main missions of TVRI is to show Indonesia as a unity. 292
Following TVRI’s example, most media broadcasting and publications circulating
nationally adopted the Indonesian language as the main language of presentation.
Indonesian female teen magazines have adopted the same policy by using the Indonesian
language. However, the girls’ magazines use a kind of Indonesian language that is unique
to Indonesian teen magazines.
289
See Lyn Parker, “Engendering School Children in Bali,” The Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute
3 (1997), 497-516, and “The Subjectification of Citizenship: Student Interpretations of School Teachings in
Bali” Asian Studies Review, 26.1 (2002), 3-37.
290
For further information on the social status of Indonesian language, particularly in a Javenese
environment see Suharsono, “Javanese in the Eyes of Its Speakers. Reflections from a Suburban Area of
East Java, Indonesia” thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western
Australia, 2004, chapter 6,8,9.
291
See Kitley, p. 210.
292
See Kitley, pp. 207-210.
117
The magazines’ verbal content is communicated in a typically teenage way by using non-
standard Indonesia language. However, it is much more complex than this because of the
mix of other elements: languages in the Indonesian teen magazines include non-standard
Indonesian, Betawi words and dialect, popular slang and English. This unique mix
differentiates the type of language that is employed by teen media and it signifies youth,
informality and an urban or global culture. The non-standard Indonesian indicates
informality since it is the kind of Indonesian language that is supposedly used in
everyday public discourse in Indonesia. I say supposedly because every region has its
own local Indonesian dialect influenced by the regional languages. However, the
Jakarta-centric national media give the false impression that the non-standard informal
Indonesian is spoken in the same way all around Indonesia even though what they use is
the non-standard Indonesian used in the Jakarta area.
The Betawi dialect is the dialect used by people around Jakarta or those who claim that
they come from Jakarta. This dialect originates from the Betawi people as the natives of
Jakarta. People who claim that they are from Jakarta are not Betawi people by ethnicity.
Ethnic Betawi people in their area of Jakarta speak in a slightly different way from the
young executives in the Central Business District area of Jakarta. I see this appropriation
of the local language as a reflection of the taking over of Jakarta by non-Betawi people
who are initially new comers, but eventually call Jakarta their hometown. Oetomo claims
that Indonesians recognize Jakarta as the capital of everything, starting with its language
domination over other regional languages:
Jakarta’s role as the country’s capital, as the place where the most powerful - or
those deemed to be the most powerful - the most beautiful and the richest
Indonesian people reside, is very important in constructing the Indonesian
118
language...[T]he [Indonesian language with] Jakarta dialect seems to have become
the coolest and the best accent to be heard and spoken. 293
It is understandable that Jakarta is the culture capital of Indonesian adolescents. As the
gateway to the country, Jakarta is the centre of Indonesian pop culture.
Teenagers appropriating this kind of Indonesian language and using the dialect are
indicating that they come from the city and are comfortable with an urban life style. This
is in contrast to adolescents who speak with regional “accents”. Teenagers from Jakarta
assume that those with regional accents come from distant areas of Indonesia, outside the
culture capital, and that therefore they have minimal knowledge of urban teen culture. I
recognize that the idea of having an accent suggests domination and power; that is, that
those who have the power to say that others have accents are suggesting that they are the
norm and that those with the accents are the deviation. By choosing this particular style
of language, the magazines are reflecting the centralizing power and hegemony that
emanates from privileged ways of communicating.
To be familiar with this type of language is a matter of teen social status and teen
prestige. The magazines create the impression that those who speak the language are
popular teenagers who are “in the know” and are savvy in the field of teen trends. Usage
of informal language combined with slang and the Jakarta/Betawi dialect by adolescents
is a way to confirm an exclusively adolescent identity. To the older generation, this type
of language use does not provide the same social status that applies to teenagers, and they
may be at risk of not being taken seriously by other adults when they employ this kind of
293
Menurut Dede Oetomo (1986) peran Jakarta sebagai Ibukota, tempat orang-orang Indonesia yang
memang atau dianggap paling berkuasa, paling cantik, paling kaya dan sebagainya berada, penting dalam
menyebarkan bahasa Indonesia....logat Jakarta menjadi logat yang seolah-olah paling keren dan paling
enak didengar. in Alia Suastika, “Anak Kota Punya Gaya” [The Style of Urban Youth] Kunci
http://kunci.or.id/teks/12kota.htm (date accessed 21 October 2003).
119
language. So writing with an accent in the magazines excludes adults from being a part
of the adolescent world, while it provides teenagers a sense of belonging to a realm that
separates them from grown-ups. I see this as an example of privacy in public space for
teenagers where they are linguistically shutting out adults. 294
The use of slang takes the linguistic isolation of the teenagers from the older generation
even further. Danandjaja says that the idea of Indonesian slang is for it to be the secret
language of a group of young people. 295 The source of slang can be anywhere. One
source is the language of criminals and thugs around Jakarta. Young people in the big
cities adopted this language in the 1980s as bahasa prokem (language of the
criminals). 296 Around the year 2000 young people adopted the secret language of
homosexuals, called bahasa gaul (the trendy language). 297 This language became popular
among adolescents, university students, young executives and celebrities. 298 Familiarity
with Indonesian popular slang, therefore, gives the user a sense of belonging to one of the
prestigious groups mentioned above. The spread of all forms of slang is once again the
result of pop media interdependency among television, magazines and radio.
The use of English words in everyday conversation is also common in the Indonesian
media. This is an adult trend as well as a teenager trend. Many Indonesian dignitaries
interviewed on television express their opinions in the Indonesian language but with
English words included in ways that are incompatible with both Indonesian and English
grammars. The few distorted English words are used as representations of an
294
Alison L. Bain, “ White Western Teenage Girls and Urban Space: Challenging Hollywood’s
representations” Gender, Place and Culture, 10.3 (September 2003), p. 201.
295
See James Danandjaja’s introduction in Debi Sahertian, Kamus Bahasa Gaul. Kamasutra Bahasa Gaul
[The Dictionary of Gaul Slang] (Jakarta: Pustaka Sinar Harapan, 2001), p. v.
296
Danandjaja p. vi.
297
Danandjaja p. vii.
298
Danandjaja, p. vii.
120
international language and as a “global reference.” 299 The use of English words in teen
magazines has been naturalized for quite some time and in many cases has become
inseparable from teen language. I say English words and not English language because
the words are often employed in an Indonesian manner. Inclusion of English words
represents the ability of the writer/reader not only to become a part of a wider culture but
also to maintain a significant national urban youth culture that is Jakarta-centric. This is a
form of “creation” by the magazines; but it also reflects a similar situation in everyday
discourse where English language usage is often used as an indicator of high social status
and class.
Teen celebrity Agnes Monica was asked in an interview about rumours of her
relationship with a male teen celebrity. She replied vehemently, saying that the rumour
that she dated another celebrity’s boyfriend was false:
“The most pathetic thing in my life is ngerebutin cowok orang!” 300

[“The most pathetic thing in my life is stealing somebody else’s boyfriend!”]
Agnes Monica’s speech is normal for average Indonesian urban teenagers despite the mix
and match of two languages in one sentence. Video Jockeys of MTV Indonesia started
this bilingual trend that quickly spread to other teen programs and teen media. 301 It is
prestigious for teen celebrities to have a good or even an average command of the
English language. Another example of this is an article about two teen celebrities, the
299
Jones, p. 200.
300
Gadis, no. 34/XXX/27 December 2002 – 6 January 2003, p 29.
301
See R. Anderson Sutton, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Local, Global, Or National?
Popular Music on Indonesian Television” Presented in Performing Identities: Global Media in Local
Spaces. An International Workshop (University of Wisconsin-Madison
Media, Performance, and Identity in World Perspective, MPI Research Group - Workshop Paper
November 20-22 1998)
http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/mpi/workshop98/papers/sutton.htm#N_1_ (dated accessed 14 September 2004).
121
caption of their picture says, “Arifin and Lala; chatting seriously in English”. 302 This
implies that English is such an everyday part of their language that they can switch back
and forth in English and Indonesian with perfect ease. The ability to speak this way is a
kind of symbol of belonging to a popular and elite group of teenagers because the
language is associated with high social status represented by these young and rich
celebrities.
English words are often distorted to claim “Indonesian-ness”. One local creation is to
spell English words in Indonesian:
Bintang Lux bikin skriming.[screaming] 303

[Stars of Lux beauty soap advertisement made the audience scream]
The word “hand phone” is an example of English word usage that is common in
Indonesia (and maybe Singapore and Malaysia). This word is the Indonesian English
version of mobile phone (in British and Australian English) or cellular phone (American
English):
‘Oh, my boss is going to get angry at me!’ continued the office boy, followed by
the ringing of his mobile phone. 304
In whatever ways the magazines incorporate English into their content, the intention
seems to be to familiarize the teen audience with modernity associated with language so
that Indonesian teenagers feel like the language is part of their mother tongue. Accepting
the language makes it easier to accept other western teen cultural commodities that the
language represents. Figures 6.1 and 6.2 exemplify how teens incorporate non-standard
Indonesian, slang, Betawi language and English into one conversation. This does not
render them all-round linguists, but more Jacks-(and Jills)-of-all-trades, which, in a sense,
302
Arifin dan Lala: ngobrol serius pake bahasa Inggris Kawanku, no. 14/XXXIII, 29 September 2003. p.
77.
303
Kawanku. No. 27/XXXII 30 December 2002-5 January 2003.
304
“Wah, saya bisa dimarahin bos nih!” lanjut si office boy, yang segera disusul dengan deringan
handphonenya.Kawanku. No. 27/XXXII 30 December 2002-5 January 2003, p. 65.
122
Figure 6.1: Let’s talk like a teenager (1)
Figure 6.2: Let’s talk like a teenager (2)
is what adolescence is all about. It is a period of trial and error, with the magazines acting
as their friends and guides while steering them to the magazines’ advantage.
Poppy and Agung are teen celebrities, interviewed in writing in a girls’ magazine. The
following are the written interviews from Figure’s 6.1 and 6.2.
Hello Poppy
My star sign…
I’m a Taurus girl, of course
If you go shopping, you can’t help yourself from buying…
Shoes
If you could go back in time, you would…
Take ballet lesson….hee…hee
Do you believe in life in other planet..
You mean like an alien ? Of course, I do.
If I had super power I would…
Fly wherever I want to
Guy idol that you would like to meet…
Not sure
Best advice that you can give to Kawanku readers…
You better buy it. It’s so us.
If you could have one wish come true next year…
I want to fly (by plane) around Japan
Personal Data:
Name: Pamela Mayiesky (Poppy)
Place and date of birth: Jakarta, 11 May 1986
School: SMU Tarakanita
Gading Serpong year 11
Fans Address: freaky_fairy11@yahoo.com 305
305
Halo Poppy
Bintang gue…
Taurus Girl dunk
Kalau lagi shopping enggak tahan untuk beli…
Sepatu
Kalau boleh mengulang masa lalu, gue bakal…
Les Balet!! Huuhuhuw
Percaya engak sama kehidupan di planet lain?
Alien gitu?!? Percaya aja…
Kalau gue punya super power, gue bakal…
Mau terbang kemanapun gue mau…
Idola cowok yang pingin banget ditemuin…
Bingung
Best advice yang bisa gue berikan buat pembaca Kawanku…
Jangan sampe gak beli, b’coz kita banget !!!
Kalau kamu punya satu permintaan yang bisa dikabulkan tahun depan…
Terbang (pake pesawat) keliling Japan!!
123
and Agung
I’m happy when I’m…

Hanging out with friends (joking around)
Going out with the whole family
The thing that made you laugh the most…
Something lame like Alvyn..hee..hee.
If I could be an animal I want to become..
Don’t really like animals
Because…
[blank]
The good thing about being a guy…
I can protect girls.
I can go out freely and not have to make my mom worry
Best moment this year…
I got lots of gigs
Best advice that I can give to Kawanku readers…
Buy it often, it is so cool
If I could just have one wish come true next year…
Go do the Haj Pilgrimage with mom.
Personal Data
Name: Agung Dumadi (Agung)
Place and date of birth: Jakarta, 25 October 1982
School: Trisakti University – Faculty of Economics
Fans Address: via Kawanku 306
Data Pribadi:
Nama: Pamela Mayiesky (Poppy)
Lahir: Jakarta, 11 Mei 1986
Sekolah: SMU Tarakanita
Gading Serpong kelas II
Fans Address: freaky_fairy11@yahoo.com
Kawanku, no. 21/XXXII 18 – 24 November 2002, p. 6.
306
dan Agung
Gue happy kalau lagi…
Lg ngumpul ma temen (b’canda)
Pergi jalan sekeluarga
Yang paling bisa membuat gue tertawa…
Kalo ada yang garing kyk Alvyn. He he..
Kalau gue menjadi seekor binatang, gue bakal jadi…
Kurang suka animals.
Karena…
[blank]
Yang paling asyik selama jadi cowok…
Bisa ngelindungin cewek
Bebas keluar rumah jadi nyokap nggak kebingungan
Moment paling berkesan tahun ini…
Byk kerjaan yang dijalanin
Best advice yang bisa gue berikan buat pembaca Kawanku…
Sering2 beli Kawanku krn isinya oke2…
Kalau gue punya satu permintaan yang bisa dikabulkan buat tahun depan
Naik haji bareng Nyokap
124
The words that they wrote come from three different languages: Indonesian, English and
Betawi. The English words are girl, shopping, alien, super-power, best advice, b’coz,
happy, moment, Japan and animals. Notice also that Poppy’s e-mail address is “freaky_
fairy” and her real name is Pamela, not an Indonesian name. The Betawi word is gue
(meaning: I/me, but informal). The rest of the words are Indonesian words used in an
informal way. Although the only Betawi word is “gue” when the above written interview
is spoken it would have a thick Jakarta/Betawi “flavour”. The Jakarta dialect is more a
matter of pronunciation than vocabulary. The speech (albeit written) of Poppy and Agung
is typical of adolescent conversation featured on other teen media. This multimedia
omnipresence has the effect of reinforcing the local narrative and creating a distinctive
linguistic world.
The way Poppy and Agung are featured in the article reveals much about the construction
of urban adolescent status. They are both teen celebrities from Jakarta. Their wealth is
revealed through their lifestyles: the possibilities of overseas trips either for a tour around
Japan or a Haj pilgrimage and their level of education. They both study at prominent
institutions. Poppy studies at Tarakanita, a renowned girl school that features most
frequently in girls’ magazines. Agung is a university student at the Faculty of Economics
at Trisakti University, another highly respected institution.
Data Pribadi
Nama: Agung Dumadi (Agung)
Lahir: Jakarta, 25 Oktober 1982
Sekolah: Univ. Trisakti – Fak Ekonomi
Fans Address: via Kawanku
Kawanku, no. 21/XXXII 18 – 24 November 2002, p. 7.
125
High status is also gendered: this is expressed through the different questions for Poppy
and Agung. Poppy is asked about her star sign and favourite shopping item. Agung is
asked about the positive aspects of being male. The answer reflects an expected gender
role behaviour: he can protect females. His second answer with regards to the advantages
of being a male expresses the common opinion that females are not to go out
unchaperoned. Males do not have to worry about protecting their virginity. Their inability
to get pregnant and their undetectable virginity allows them freedom that does not lead to
parental anxiety (“I can go out freely and not have to make my mom worry”).
Education is another important element in teen celebrities’ personal data. The level of
education, as well as the educational institution itself, are part of the requirements for
inclusion in the prestigious adolescent circle. This is in stark contrast with western teen
magazines which do not see education as an indicator of status for teen celebrities. 307 If
Britney Spears were from Indonesia, the local teen magazines would want to know where
she went to school or whether she went to university. However, the education
background of western teen celebrities is not seen as an important piece of information.
The importance of having a student status among teen girls reflects the tendency among
young women in Indonesian to delay marriage in favour of further education and a
professional career. 308 Early marriage is associated with the inability to pursue further
education due to financial constraints, or the inability to secure a profession after
finishing higher education. Either of these would lower an adolescent’s social status in
the eyes of her peers. Early marriage is not in line with the popular image of remaja in
teen magazines: they should be young, single, urban and rich and with a bright future
307
My western magazines samples are Girlfriend, CosmoGirl, Seventeen.
308
See Hull, The Marriage Revolution in Indonesia. 2002.
126
ahead of them. Teen role models in the magazines mostly fall under these categories
(young, single, urban, rich and so on). For instance, Nirina Zubir is a teen celebrity
whose father is a diplomat. Her career as a video jockey for MTV Indonesia and her
involvement in the entertainment business, are very much supported by her ability to
speak English. She acquired her English fluency when staying with her father during his
diplomatic missions in different countries. Furthermore, as she has also lived in the
People’s Republic of China, she also has a good command of the Mandarin language. An
article notes that President Megawati once asked Nirina to be her interpreter when a
Chinese diplomat visited Indonesia, despite the large number of Chinese Indonesians
who are able to speak Mandarin. Nirina mentioned that Megawati chose her because she
309
wanted a native Indonesian (pribumi) to interpret for her. However, the impression
that her appearance in the teen magazine is constructed to convey is more about the
prestige that emanates from luxury and privilege, and not so much about struggle and
hard work as a way to success. This is a picture of education in Indonesia, where one’s
potential intellectual capacity does not always allow access to good education, but where
money can put one into a good school.
In this article, Nirina’s ability to speak several foreign languages is not associated with
hard work and intensive learning; rather, it is shown to come naturally from her
diplomatic background. For urban adolescents of this social class, the ability to speak
English is so taken for granted that its requirement for membership of the elite teen group
rarely needs any mention at all. Another example of this selectiveness at work is the
advertisement for the MTV Air quest for a radio jockey. It is written fully in English
309
in Gadis 28 February - 10 March 2003.
127
without mentioning the English language requirement itself (Figure 6.3). 310 The skills
and capacities explicitly required for the position are more concerned with personality
than with other qualifications (such as a good command of English). A further
advertisement for a local radio station also uses English − there is not a single Indonesian
word in it (Figure 6.4). 311 This radio station is confident that readers/listeners are able to
understand their advertisement. It safely assumes that, if the magazine readers do not
understand the advertisement, then they do not belong to the radio’s clique. The radio
station tries to gain its reputation through exclusivity rather than inclusivity. The English
in the advertisement is easy to understand, but the intention is to imply the superior social
class associated with knowledge of this language, which eventually reflects back on the
radio station.
Nirina’s fluency in English, her trips overseas, her work at MTV − these and many other
foreign associations are attached to her, yet it is proudly claimed that she comes from
Indonesia. Indonesian people look up to Indonesians who are identified in so many areas
with western ways but are nonetheless still Indonesians. So, in a strange ironic way,
Indonesian people elevate the status of Indonesian people who are less associated with
Indonesia. This is their way of claiming the west as their own. The idea of blurring the
boundary between the western and the local makes it safe for the magazines to go back
and forth between the global and the local. 312 Constructing the west-east divide in this
way makes it legitimate to transcend, while claiming roots in Indonesia at the same time.
310
Aneka Yess! no. 20, 25 September – 8 October 2003, p. 114.
311
Gadis no. 24/XXX/15 September 2003, p. 19.
312
See Sen and Hill, p. 35.
128
Figure 6.3: English advertisement for MTV radio DJ hunt
Figure 6.4: English advertisement for a local radio

Pam Nilan, in her research on Indonesia’s soap opera (or sinetron), mentions that, “The
stories are usually set in a middle-class milieu, and the names are often Western-like,
sometimes Sanskrit-derived, but almost never Arabic/Islamic.” 313 The closest the
magazines get to an Islamic discussion is when they feature religious celebrations. It is,
however, not discussed in a religious context, but in the context of feast and get-together
such as new clothes for Idul Fitri or Christmas parties.
Sanskrit names, on the other hand, despite, or perhaps because of, their Hindu-Buddhist
origin, are popular in the magazines presumably because they are linked with an exotic
and ancient Indonesian culture but without the backward and under-privileged impression
that is attached to Javanese names. Also, the Indonesian government often uses Sanskrit
words to name their institutions and programs. This legitimizes the words as being part of
the modern national vocabulary. Sanskrit names are a way to indicate Indonesian identity
without seeming to privilege any one ethnic group.
The same features as were found by Nilan can also be found in the short stories in these
teen magazines. Names in the short stories are sometimes those that are not common in
Indonesian society. The names that are chosen are names common to urban areas, and
often sound like western names, even if they are not, such as Poppy, Peggy, Audy and so
on. Both the more traditional and common names not only suggest an older generation,
but also a rural location, implying a communities lack of exposure to “modern”
information and outside influence. Aulia Muhammad similarly argues about teen soap
operas on Indonesian television:
The king of television soap operas Raam Punjabi very often changes the ‘logic’ of
a plot and the style of the artists. And, it is not unusual for Raam to change the
313
Nilan, p. 53.
129
names of characters in the scenario to represent urban characters. Just watch, there
are no characters by the names of Ahmad, Anto or Amir in the soap operas
produced by Multivision. Raam will change names with local nuance, to develop
new identities, into names like Roy, Joe, Saskia, Diva, Richard or Amanda, which
reveal the ‘city slickness’ of the bearers of the names. Or if the names are of rural
origins, then the rural characters − often represented as dumb or naïve − will be
twisted to the lowest level. The name Cecep [a rural Sundanese name] is probably
an obvious example. ‘A teen audience needs a group of fresh, good looking and
rich teens, who will make them feel that they will be able to do the same,’ said
Raam. 314
Despite the high circulation of the magazines in Java, Javanese names are not commonly
used for the main characters in short stories. This is presumably because Java, despite the
dominance, is the centre of an ancient culture, therefore using Javanese names could
conjure up images of old-fashionedness and poverty, as opposed to images reflecting the
latest trends and wealth that western names seem to imply.
In the media, it is common to identify the older generation by ethnicity or region. The
names used refer back to a time when communication technologies were not as
sophisticated. This meant that each ethnic group was more isolated in their own region.
In contrast, modern adolescents are portrayed as more mobile, at least virtually if not
physically. They cannot be confined, by name at least, to a certain region because of their
exposure to the global media. The younger ones are more exposed and fluid in their
identities. They may be traced to an urban locality with western influence like Jakarta,
314
…raja sinetron Raam Punjabi sangat sering mengganti “nalar” cerita dalam suatu peristiwa, termasuk
style artis. Bahkan, bukan hal yang aneh, Raam mengganti nama tokoh di scenario untuk lebih berwatak
kota. Lihatlah, tak akan ada nama Ahmad, Anto, atau Amir dalam sinetron Multivision Plus. Raam akan
mengganti nama-nama yang bercitra local itu, dan membawa identitas yang lebih jelas dengan nama Roy,
Joe, Saskia, Diva, atau Richard dan Amanda, yang hanya menjelaskan “situasi” kekotaan dari si pembawa
nama. Atau kalaupun membawa nama desa, maka karakter kedesaan − yang tercitra dalam watak blo’on
dan naif − itu akan dijumpalitkan ke nadir terendah. Cecep barangkali jadi contoh y ang jelas. “Penonton
butuh remaja yang segar, tampan dan kaya, yang membuat mereka berpikir dapat melakukan yang sama,”
kata Raam. Aulia A. Muhammad, Identifikasi Diri Remaja Kaca [Teen Self Identification on Television]
http://www.suaramerdeka.com/cybernews/layar/iqra/iqra18.html (date accessed 23 November 2004).
130
but not other local regions. In Kitley’s sense, these young people are the national citizens
of Indonesia with no trace of ethnicity, unlike the older generation. 315
A short story entitled Yang Kung [Grandfather] illustrates how names are related to social
status and the different generations. 316 Yang Kung [Grandfather] is a story about three
generations. The names of the grandchildren are Vonny, Clara, Rianti, Sherly, Lala and
Rian. These are names associated with the younger generation and with modernity
because of their similarity to western names. The older generation are the uncles and aunt
whose names are Oom Sito [Uncle Sito], Tante Nin [Aunt Nin], Oom Laksono [Uncle
Laksono], and Haryanti, the mother. The grandfather’s and the grandmother’s names are
Narso and Sumiyati, respectively. These two older generations use names more familiar
to their region, which is Java.
In Yang Kung, the way the younger people address older members of the family also
indicates their urban status. The father and mother in the family are not addressed as
bapak [father] or ibu [mother], the formal Indonesian terms, but papa and mama. These
words are employed in the story to suggest modernity and western influence. The
generation shift is made more evident in the way the grandfather is addressed − not the
Indonesian word kakek (or English word “grandad”), but a Javanese word instead: Yang
Kung. The housekeeper in the same short story, who stereotypically comes from rural
315
Kitley, in his discussion on TVRI, the Indonesian government television station, mentions that
according to the Presidential decree #27 and # 25, television was used as a “mass communication tool (alat
komunikasi massa) that can be used in molding and reforming the masses … In this early statement, the
ethnic and cultural diversity of the Indonesian population is not considered. Proffered instead is the vision
of an undifferentiated mass that was to be comprehensively transformed into members of a nation in the
making … High priority was to be given to instruction in Indonesian language and to establishing the
values of persatuan dan kesatuan (union and unity).” Philip Kitley, Television, Nation, and Culture in
Indonesia. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2000), p. 80.
316
Tri Wiyono, “Yang Kung “[Grandfather], Gadis, no. 34/XXX/ 27 December – 6 January 2003, pp. 100-
3.
131
Java, is called Nah. The name represents low social status and the bearers of this name
are often identified as maids or villagers. Again this implies that a lower status and
membership of an older generation are more regionally located and identified. As this
short story demonstrate, names are efficient in forming background settings in short
stories in teen magazines. Audience are familiar with these names and they understand
that each name conjures up a particular social context. The teen magazines rarely use
Islamic names in their short stories, presumably because such names suggest
conservatism. Names that sound like Christian names are used more often than Islamic
names because they are identified as western names. This connection to western names
makes it easier to identify the characters in the stories with the latest western trends.
I want to suggest here that character names in the magazines’ stories are treated like
brands. Products that come from Asian countries often have western names, suggesting
that the technology of the product is authentically western and therefore superior. Parallel
to that, names in short stories and fiction equally engage in the idea that western names
determine the quality of the stories and plot. It seems to suggest that while the setting
may have a local nature, the story nevertheless has a glamorous global touch. As a result,
local names are given to unimportant characters, such as maids or drivers or parents,
while western or Sanskrit names are given to important characters. There seems to be a
pattern whereby having a relation to the west is an endorsement of both status and class.
The link can be a blood relationship, or a similarity in appearance or names.
Shaping the Attitude through Gendered Sexuality
The magazines separate the identity of female adolescents from that of mature women.
Female adolescents in the magazines are not portrayed as young women but rather, as
132
teen girls living in a sequestered world. There is no rush for them to grow up. Nilan
argues that teen magazines teach young girls about relationships in preparation for
adulthood. They are mencari jodoh or looking for a soul mate. 317 However, girls’
magazines do not foreshadow the fact that their girl readers will become mothers and
wives. Images of devoted and unselfish mothers and wives, full of responsibilities, would
contradict images of carefree teen girls. Lessons on romantic boy/girlfrined relationships
in girls’ magazines are, therefore, not so much about “marriage messages” as about the
entertaining aspect of a relationship and the status of having a boy/girlfriend. Teen
articles deal with, and discuss ways to avoid, stress in pursuing a relationship as well as
ways to maintain a “healthy” relationship.
Advice on boyfriend and girlfriend relationships is always based on the assumption that
Indonesian teenagers do not engage in premarital sex. 318 The sexuality in the magazines
is always assumed to be heterosexual. Sexuality in girls’ magazines is discussed most of
the time in terms of prevention of, and caution against, the lure of premarital sex. In
girls’ magazines, sex education is about providing moral guidance with regards to
appropriate female sexuality. It is full of messages about morality. In contrast, sex
education in Hai boys’ magazine is about responding to the curious nature of boys who
want to know more about their sexual organs and their function.
In the boys’ magazine Hai, there is a consultation column called “Q&A”. At the bottom
of the column is an explanation about what the consultation page is about:
This consultation column is not intended to show how stupid the person who asks
the question is. On the contrary, having the guts to ask will prove useful, to you
317
Pam Nilan, “Mediating the Entrepreneurial Self: Romance Texts and Young Indonesian Women”, in
medi@sia T.J.M. Holden and T. Scrase, eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press [in press].
318
In contrast with Iwu Dwisetyani Utomo’s finding in “Reproductive Health Education in Indonesia:
School Versus Parents’ Roles in Providing Sexuality Information” that there many adolescents engage in
premarital sex, more that the society is willing to acknowledge. In Review of Indonesian and Malaysian
Affairs 37.1 (2003), 107-134.
133
and to other readers. So basically, don’t be afraid to share, man. Whatever the
problem just ask Nurse Lolli! 319
The sex education in Hai is done in a cheeky and humorous way. The name “Nurse
Lolli” is seemingly intended to invite blunt and daring questions. The illustration of
Nurse Lolli evokes the game of “playing doctor” as she is a busty blonde nurse wearing a
red mini skirt and a long white coat, dangling her stethoscope (Figure 6.5). The column
indicates that sex consultation for boys is not a matter of protecting honour or dignity. It
is treated as if sex education were a matter of satisfying curiosity − ostensibly about
biology. Moral issues are not often involved.
One example of the questions is about distinguishing semen from other substances
discharged from a penis:
That’s not air mani but air madzi! Air mani is the same as semen, but air madzi is
a different thing altogether. Air madzi is the discharge that comes out before the
semen; it functions to cleanse the urethra from disease before the semen comes
out. Usually air madzi is discharged when we’re horny.
When you’re with your girlfriend surely there must be something physical that
you do other than chatting and looking at each other. At least holding hands.
Well, because this activity is done with such tingly feelings (sometimes with
some wicked fantasies), eventually you’re sexually aroused and you get an
erection. This is when the air madzi is discharged. 320
Sex education, either implicit or explicit, in the magazines is a good indicator of the
traditional gender ideology rooted in Indonesian society. The sex education in the girls’
319
Kolom konsultasi ini sama sekali bukan buat nunjukin bahwa yang nanya cemen. Justru, berani
bertanya bakal banyak gunanya; buat diri sendiri dan pembaca lain. Prinsipnya, jangan takut buat sharing
Jack. Apapun masalahnya, kamu tanya aja ke Suster Lolli! “Q&A” Hai 29 September – 5 October 2003 /
TH XXVII no. 39, p. 46.
320
Itu bukan air mani, tapi air madzi! Air mani tuh sama dengan sperma, sedangkan air madzri beda lagi.
Air madzi adalah cairan yang keluar sebelum sperma keluar, yang fungsinya untuk membersihkan uretra
dari berbagai bibit penyakit, sebelum uretra dilalui sperma. Biasanya air madzi ini bakal keluar kalo kita
lagi horny. Kalo kita lagi berduaan sama pacar pasti ada aja dong aktivitas fisik yang kita lakukan selain
sekedar ngobrol-ngobrol dan bertatap mata doang. Yah, minimal pegang-pegang tanganlah…nah,
berhubung nih aktifitas dilakukan dengan perasaan yang dalem (yang kadang-kadang juga diiringin
dengan fantasi-fantasi yang nyeleneh), ujung-ujungnya bisa bikin libido terbangkit dan penis juga jadi
ereksi. Kalo udah begini, jelas aja air madzi netes!
“Cairan Setetes” [A Drop of Liquid] Hai 29 September – 5 October 2003 / TH XXVII no. 39, p. 46.
134
Figure 6.5: The blond nurse Lolli
magazines is a reflection of the society’s interpretation of gendered sexuality. Sexuality is
highly cultural, and sex education in the magazines is not only a biological explanation, it
is also about (and sometimes especially about) religious and social norms.
The sexual discourse in girls’ magazines is therefore frequently dissociated from the
body and always tied in some way to its social and spiritual (religious) meanings:
‘If you think about it, it doesn’t make any sense, does it, how can a baby pass
through such a small opening like the vagina?’ asked Chica in amazement.
‘That is the Glory of God, Cha...’ 321
With its frequent emphasis on the social and moral aspects, sex education in female teen
magazines evades the serious issues of sexual intercourse and pregnancy prevention,
which are the two main issues of sex education in English-language magazines. 322 Sexual
education in Indonesian girls’ magazines consist of basic anatomy and not physiology, as
shown in figure 6.6 which is an explanation about the vagina. It reads:
Vagina/orifisium vaginae This is the ‘gateway’ to the womb. This orifice is used
for copulation (sexual intercourse) and also for giving birth. 323
This article does not explain what happens to these parts and how they are used during
sexual intercourse (“the vagina is used for sexual intercourse” − yes, but used in what
way? how?). It assumes that readers already know from some other source. Adolescents
must try to put the pieces together from what they see, read or hear. School curricula in
Indonesia do not include sex education per se. Rather, information about the anatomy of
reproduction is usually incorporated into a biology lesson. 324 It is then presumably up to
the teachers to improvise or not about how reproduction actually occurs.
321
“Kalau dipikir-pikir, rasanya agak nggak masuk akal, ya, bayi bisa lahir melalui saluran sempit seperti
vagina...?” ungkap Chica nggak percaya. “Itu namanya kebesaran Tuhan, Cha...” Gadis no. 25 /XXX/16-
25 September 2003.
322
I compare it with English language magazines such as Cosmo Girl, Elle Girl, Girlfriend, Dolly.
323
Gadis, 25/XXX/15-25 September 2003.
324
See Sriyono et al., Sains Biologi untuk kelas VII [Biology for year 7]. (Jakarta: PT Sunda Kelapa
Pustaka, 2004), pp. 53-64.
135
Figure 6.6: Explaining the vagina
This detachment of sex education from sexual practice and meaning is parallel with
Brumberg’s findings about the discourse of menstruation among American teenagers,
where discussion is more about the effect of menstruation (leaking, lethargy, nausea,
PMS) than about the meaning of menstruation (that is, that a girl now has the ability to
get pregnant). 325 In Indonesian teen magazines, menstruation is about selling sanitary
pads, panty liners and painkillers. As in Brumberg’s findings, explanations about
menstruation are about “eggs” and “ovulation” and all the scientific terms, but not about
relating menstruation to sexual intercourse. The closest the articles in the magazines get
is subtle warnings such as: “There is now a possibility of getting pregnant from a intimate
relationship with the opposite sex. That is why a girl has to be careful after she gets her
menarche.” 326 Again, there is no further explanation about the intimate relationship.
All advertisements for sanitary pads make claims about comfort, as if the wearer is not
having a menstrual period. With pads, the demonstrations in advertisements only involve
white fabric and blue liquid. Panties are replaced with white cloth, and dark red
menstrual blood is replaced with some blue substance. Perhaps the idea is to get the
image as far away as possible from the real image of menstrual blood, since this is not the
fresh blood of life but more like objectionable waste blood. This breaks down the whole
process of menstruation into something unnatural and hidden. In short, discussions of
periods revolve around the idea of not showing any trace of the menstruation in the form
of pain, premenstrual syndrome, leaking or bulging.
325
See Joan Jacobs Brumberg. The Body Project. An Intimate History of American Girls. (New York:
Random House, 1997), pp. 39-55.
326
“kemungkinan hamil bila melakukan hubungan intim dengan lawan jenis sudah ada. Itulah sebabnya,
cewek harus bersikap lebih hati-hati setelah mendapat haid” Aneka Yess! no. 04, 13-26 February 2003, pp.
74-5.
136
There are no advertisements for tampons in the magazines. The menstrual devices
advertised are all in the form of pads. Presumably this avoidance is linked to the ideal of
virginity. Tampons are just too close symbolically to the penis, suggesting the insertion
of something foreign into the vagina before before marital penetration. It invokes either
the idea of penetration or of masturbation, which are threats to ideals of virginity; neither
of which is a topic any advertising company wants to address. The absence of tampons in
these magazines suggests that female virginity is treated as “sacred”. The “mysterious”
treatment of the vagina shows that knowing too much about its function will lessen its
sacredness, which depends on the naivety and innocence of young girls.
In the discourse on sexuality in the magazines, the attention of female adolescents is
directed towards social and moral issues. Female teens are expected to take up the role of
moral goal-keepers. They have the responsibility of saying “no” and must take control, as
male teens are deemed not to be fit to think as clearly as female adolescents:
As girls, we have to be smart to tell which one is true love and which one is
infected with the lust ‘virus’. Don’t mix the two together. 327
The quote reflects the assumption that it is common for male adolescents to be sexual but
it is the girls’ job to prevent the pregnancy catastrophe by being asexual. Sexuality and
sexual intercourse, when these are featured in the magazines, are rarely discussed as
purely biological process. It is always imbued with moral messages. The morality issues
seem to block the reality of sexual intercourse itself, leaving the information incomplete.
Rather than fulfilling the adolescent’s need to know what does and does not make a
female pregnant, the magazines seem to assume that teen readers know from some other
327
Sebagai cewek, kita mesti lebih smart [English word original] untuk memilih mana yang namanya cinta
sejati dan mana yang sudah terkena ‘virus’ nafsu. Jangan mencampuradukkan keduanya. “Sexita” in
Gadis no. 27/XXX/7-16 October 2003.
137
source already. Information frequently stops at the actions leading to intercourse,
continuing instead with the morality discourse:
Once “lust” gets into our blood stream, there will be signals that our body is
“turned on” or sexually aroused. What really shows, for instance, is the fast and
heavy breathing, like a person who’s been out jogging or walking briskly. Then
our face will blush, our body temperature rise and we start sweating. This is the
point where love turns into lust!!! ....At this critical time, we have to get hold of
ourselves and strictly say ‘stop’ before it’s too late. If we don’t want to have an
intimate relationship before the time comes, if we don’t want to get pregnant
when all of our friends are still hanging out, if we don’t want to make our parents
hysterical and ashamed because of what we’ve done, if we don’t want it ... just
say ‘NO’! 328
The discourse of sexual education is designed to be punitive by building up images about
“hysterical parents”. The parents referred to here are basically the girls’ parents, of
course. The punitive discourse continues by blaming premarital sex for being the source
of crimes:
According to research, if someone has been sexually active (has had sexual
intercourse) that person will be addicted. Once he really wants to do it, he would
do anything to be able to do it, even without love! He would easily resort to free
sex... or do something criminal like raping! Eeuuch... 329
This last comment indicates that a sexually active unmarried person is introduced to
female teens as a potential rapist, and in an Indonesian social context that person can only
be male. The above discourse assigns female adolescents with the duty to say “no”,
assuming that they have less or no sexual desire − unlike their boyfriends. Therefore, the
328
Begitu darah kita dialiri oleh berbagai hormon ‘nafsu’ ini. akan muncul tanda-tanda kalau tubuh kita
‘terangsang’ alias mengalami dorongan seksual. Yang paling mononjol misalnya, nafas kita semakin cepat
dan terengah-engah, mirip orang yang habis berlari atau berjalan cepat. Lalu bibir dan wajah kita
memerah, suhu tubuh menghangat dan berkeringat. Inilah titik di mana cinta berubah jadi nafsu....Pada
saat yang kritis ini, kita mesti segera sadar dan dengan tegas mengatakan ‘stop’ sebelum terlambat!
Tentunya kalau kita nggak mau melakukan hubungan intim sebelum saatnya, kalau kita nggak mau hamil
saat teman-teman kita masih asyik bergaul, kalau kita nggak mau bikin ortu kita histeris dan malu karena
perbuatan kita, kalau kita memang nggak mau...Just say ‘NO’ [English words original]. “Sexita” Gadis no.
27/XXX/7-16 October 2003
329
Menurut sebuah penelitian, jika seseorang sudah sexually active [English words original], maka ia akan
ketagihan. Saat keinginannya memuncak, ia akan melakukan apapun untuk melakukannya, bahkan tanpa
cinta ! Dengan mudah ia akan terjebak free sex [English words in original]...atau bahkan melakukan
tindakan kriminal seperti memperkosa ! Hiii...
Gadis no. 27/XXX/7-16 October 2003.
138
female task is made even greater, since their boyfriends are now potential rapists. Not
only do these girls have to be moral guardians, but also they have to redeem their nasty
boyfriends and turn them into good guys.
Sex is a topic the teen magazines treat with great caution. Western teen magazine can
easily publish an article entitled “Can you get birth control without your parents
permission?”. 330 In Indonesia the main theme is always “How not to engage in premarital
sex” as opposed to “how to have safe sex”, a topic that frequently features in western teen
magazines. Licensed international magazines in Indonesia have to be selective in creating
the “local” style of the magazine in order to acknowledge local values in their rhetoric.
For example, CosmoGirl Indonesia published an article about sex education in its
December 2002 issue. It was critized by one of the readers:
I am critizising your article about sex education. You said that beautiful sex is the
one done at the right time with the right person, when you are mature. You should
correct that, sex is beautiful if you’re married. The reason is that when we engage
in a relationship, we all feel mature and think of our partner as the right person,
which leads them to think that it is all right to do the things you’re not supposed
to do and allowed to do. 331
The editor’s response to the above letter was:
If you read the part in the article about the risk of premarital sex, especially the
part about pregnancy, you will realize that CG! is very much against premarital
sex. 332
The ability to get pregnant is one excuse parents use to restrict young girls’ access to the
public sphere. They would say that it is not safe to go out too much or too late and
exercise a strict curfew. This makes the activity of going out socially a precious event,
330
www.gurl.com/more/ads/to_your_health/index.html (date accessed 28 March 2003).
331
aku mau kritik sex edunya CG!. Di situ CG! bilang bahwa sex yang indah adalah sex yang dilakukan
pada saat yang tepat dan dengan orang yang tepat, yaitu saat dewasa. Harusnya diubah, seks itu indah
bila dilakukan dalam ikatan pernikahan. Soalnya setiap orang pacaran pasti merasa sudah dewasa dan
menganggap pasangannya sebagai orang yang tepat, jadi mereka akan merasa sah-sah saja untuk
melakukan hal yang sebenarnya belum pantas dan boleh mereka lakukan. CosmoGirl Indonesia. January
2003. p 14.
332
Kalau kamu baca tulisan di artikel itu tentang resikonya seks di luar nikah, terutama di bagian
kehamilan, di situ kamu akan lihat bahwa CG! sangat menentang seks pranikah. ibid. p. 14.
139
and girls have to prepare for it meticulously. The magazines pick up this cue by
providing information about knick-knacks, tips-and-tricks, and all other details associated
with going out. This explains the elaborate clothing, hair and make-up styles of teenage
girls portrayed by the magazines. They are shown hanging around malls and shopping
centres in order to pose and show off.
However, the girls’ magazines represent the girls looking attractive but not sexual.
Therefore, as I noted earlier, they place the responsibility for not provoking male desire
in female hands, as suggested in an article entitled “Dress Sexy. Why Not?”. In this
article, female and male adolescents are asked for their opinions about wearing sexy out-
fits. Here are some of the responses:
Febryna [female, student of SMUN 105 high school in Jakarta]

It doesn’t suit our culture. Guys’ eyes will strip you off....
Yudra [male, student of SMUN 2 in Depok]

That’s western culture, man! Well, you’ll look unique, but it’s so overdoing it
and inappropriate. Why would you want to flaunt your body. I don’t think I
would ever have a crush on a girl like that.
Putri [female, student of SMU Hangtuah]

I don’t like girls who wear sexy outfits, it’s just showing your body too much, not
to mention how that would make guys have nasty thoughts. 333
The article acknowledges that only females are sexually desirable and only males have
the power to look. Girls cannot look back at boys. Western culture is seen as the bad
influence in abusing female sexuality by entertaining the male gaze. The comments seem
333
Febryna, SMUN 105, Jakarta.
“Nggak sesuai sama budaya deh. Bisa bikin mata cowok jelalatan....
Yudra, SMUN 2 Depok
“Itu mah budaya barat! Memang terlihat beda sih, tapi terlalu berlebihan dan nggak pantas. Badan kok
diobral. Kayaknya, gue nggak bakalan deh, naksir cewek yang pakai baju seperti itu.”
Putri, SMU Hangtuah I
“Saya nggak suka tuh ngelihat cewek-cewek yang pakai baju seksi, kesannya menunjukkan aurat banget,
apalagi cowok-cowok pasti pikirannya sudah macem-macem.”
“Tampil Sexy. Kenapa Nggak?” [Dress sexy. Why Not] Aneka Yess! no. 21. 9-22 October 2003, p. 28.
140
to forget the fact that some of Indonesia’s traditional costumes are see-through, tight and
revealing. The point is that public discourse on sexuality and sexiness is often associated
with western culture and frequently seen as a reason to give it a negative label. Although
beauty ideals are guided by western influences, local discourse still plays an important
role as a defence of, and justification for or normalizing control in the display of feminine
beauty. In the above article, the practice of wearing skimpy and tight outfits by female
adolescents is counteracted with the discourse that a too-revealing outfit is not “our”
culture (as opposed to “their” western culture).
Public discourse demands modesty from females and regulates displays of beauty in the
public space. Most discourse claims that this modesty is inherent in Indonesian culture.
Any divergence from standard of modesty must be a bad foreign influence. An article
about beauty contests (which originated in America in 1921) 334 made lots of encouraging
comments and provided interesting facts and glamorous images of winners of beauty
pageants. The article then slipped in comments about Indonesia’s stand with regards to
beauty contests:
Hmm ... you know, don’t you, that Indonesia is one of the countries that
consistently does not want to be involved in any international beauty pageants.
The reason is that it is not in line with our country’s cultural values. 335
A lot of discourse in the media is against the swimsuit competition in beauty pageants,
saying that it breaks the eastern rule of modesty in public displays of beauty. However,
the article goes on to explain Indonesia’s own version of the beauty contest:
Putri Indonesia [the name of the pageant, meaning “Indonesian princess”] requires
the 3Bs, which is the combination of Brains, Beauty and Behaviour. This year’s
334
Gadis, no. 25/XXX/16 - 25 September 2003, p. 61.
335
Hmm..tahu sendiri dong, Indonesia adalah salah satu negara yang konsisten nggak mengikuti kontes
kecantikan dengan alasan ngak sesuai dengan nilai-nilai budaya bangsa. “Mencari Yang Tercantik”
[Searching for the Most Beautiful] Gadis, no. 25/XXX/16 - 25 September 2003, p. 61.
141
pageant has recorded that 3 percent of the finalists are postgraduate students. 336
So Indonesia’s non-participation in international beauty contests is compensated for by
holding its own local pageants which do not objectify women in swimsuits, but do judge
women in other traditional costumes. This example shows how fluid and yet, at the same
time, how rigid gender constructions can be. It is fluid in practice but rigid in discourse.
And, in both cases, western influence exists as a yardstick in the background.
It is interesting to see how sexuality is used as a mental partition board in differentiating
the west and the local in the magazines.. It is not only used to separate asexual female
adolescents from sexual male adolescents, it is also used to establish an eastern identity
by using sex as difference, as if to draw the line between good Indonesians and bad
westerners. Notice in the above quotation how dressing sexy is attributed to the west,
and how in the following quote the term “free-sex” keeps coming up as a western
attribute as well:
Stuff that we don’t have to copy [from the westerners]: their free culture and
lifestyle (like free sex, etc.). For this kind of stuff, we have our own culture,
lifestyle and personality, which I think is way cool. (Dilla Pratiwi) [female high
school student of SMUN 6 in Surabaya]
But I think we don’t have to imitate the way they [westerners] dress which is too
revealing, or do drugs and free sex. (Nopriagis Cipta Ayu). [female high school
student of SLTPN I in Gresik]
Things that we really shouldn’t copy [from the westerners] are: Free sex, the way
they dress, and their individualist attitude. (Arum Citra Lukitasari). [female high
school student of SMU Ta’miriyah in Surabaya]. 337
336
Putri Indonesia, diharuskan memiliki kriteria 3B, yaitu kombinasi antara Brain, Beauty dan Behavior.
Pada pemilihan tahun ini, tercatat sebanyak 3 persen dari seluruh finalis punya titel S2. “Mencari Yang
Tercantik” [Searching for the Most Beautiful] Gadis, no. 25/XXX/16 - 25 September 2003, p. 61.
337
Yang nggak perlu ditiru: Budaya dan gaya hidup mereka yang serba bebas (seperti seks bebas, dll)
Untuk yang ini kita sudah punya, kok, budaya dan gaya hidup serta kepribadian yang menurutku oke
banget. (Dilla Pratiwi, SMUN 6 Surabaya).
Tapi menurutku kita nggak perlu mencontoh pakaian mereka yang terlalu terbuka, atau juga nge-drugs &
free sex. (Nopriagis Cipta Ayu, SLTPN 1 Gresik).
Yang jangan banget ditiru adalah: Free sex, gaya pakaiannya, dan sikap individualis. (Arum Citra
Lukitasari, SMU Ta’miriyah, Surabaya). Gadis. no. 27/XXX/7-16 October 2003.
142
When the magazines discuss female appearance, the west symbolizes progress and
sophistication. In this case the west is constructed as an opposition, a difference or a bad
example in order to fulfill the magazines’ duty to uphold a public discourse that respects
an invented traditional gender ideology.
To define local gender ideology, the west is posited as the “other”, which is somewhat
morally disagreeable but still understandable. “They” are behaving just the way they are
because they are westerners. An article about Simon Webbe, a member of an English
boyband called Blue, exemplifies this. In a gossip column it is revealed that Simon posed
nude for a book:
Oops, you would never have thought that Simon Webbe posed in the nude for a
book entitled ‘How to Behave in Bed’. Hmmm, from the title you can guess that
this is an adult book. Especially with Simon’s pose and athletic dark body. But
this is an educative book, though. Through Blue’s spokesperson, Simon admitted
that he used to model before he was in the boyband with Duncan, Lee and
Anthony. ‘It was a long time before he found fame in Blue,’ said the
spokesperson. Regardless of how long ago he modelled for the book, Simon’s
sexy pose is still a shock. 338
The tone of the article does not express concern or disdain for the nude picture scandal. It
treats the information lightly because the person involved is not Indonesian. Indonesian
celebrities with this kind of scandal attached to their name would not be featured in the
magazines. To do so would risk ruining the innocent and naive images of Indonesian
female adolescents that the magazines try consistently to portray.
338
Ups, beneran nggak nyangka deh kalau Simon Webbe ternyata pernah jadi model “blue” dalam buku
How to Behave in Bed. Hmm, dari judulnya saja sudah ketahuan kalau buku ini buat konsumsi orang
dewasa. Apalagi pose cowok keling bertubuh atletis ini asli sexy banget! Meski isi bukunya sendiri
sebetulnya bersifat edukatif. Melalui juru bicara (jubir) Blue, Simon mengakui kalau dulu memang pernah
jadi model sebelum gabung sama boy band beken ini, bareng Duncan, Lee, dan Anthony. “It was a long
time before he found fame in Blue” [English words original] kata sang jubir. Tapi terlepas dari lama atau
nggaknya pemotretan foto-foto dalam buku itu, pose sexy Simon tetap bikin shock! [English word original].
“Miss Gosip” Gadis no. 34/XXX/27 December 2002 - 6 January 2003, p. 118.
143
The discourse on sexuality presented in the magazines is rarely about the physical aspects
of sex. In fact, the cultural package on sex is much denser than the biological knowledge.
In addition to being punitive, sex education in the magazines also aims to instil shame
and fear: fear of God, fear of parents and fear of social ostracism. The east and west that
seem to merge in discourses about pop culture and pop appearance are detached and
separated in the discourses on sex and sexuality. The separation of “east” and “west”
serves as a character and identity builder by opposing Indonesian asexuality and morality
to western sexuality and moral degeneracy. The result is a discourse of sexuality that is
about anything but sex itself.
144
Chapter 7
A WORLD OF THEIR OWN
Indonesian female teen magazines are a business before they are anything else. Their
marketing targets are advertisers and readers. The magazines have to fulfil the needs of
these two groups simultaneously. Although the advertisers and readers may seem to want
different things, these two groups influence each other’s demands in similar ways.
To appeal to the advertisers the magazines construct modernity as a way of life. Products
advertised are introduced as paraphernalia essential to the enjoyment of a modern life-
style. In order to sell, the magazines have to integrate social norms in their content. By
acknowledging the local norms, as reinforced by parents and other moral guardians
(politicians and Islamic leaders, for example), the magazines gain approval from society
with regards to the moral suitability of the content for Indonesian girls. However, these
different needs do not belong exclusively to advertisers or to the magazines’ audience.
The advertisers want the magazines to gain social approval so that their products will
reach the readers. The young readers presumably want the magazines to be their bridge to
modernity so that they can transcend their Indonesian locality. They want, in other words,
to belong to the clique of modern westernized adolescents.
The magazines suggest that modernity is the pathway to membership of the global
community, and that to be modernized is to be westernised. This means that, in terms of
content, westerners are used as standards of ideal beauty and sophistication. Indonesian
social norms, however, teach that western morality brought by globalization is a source
of moral degeneracy. The state through its authorities expresses its concern about the
vices associated with globalization. As we have seen, Suyono, the former head of the
145
Indonesian Family Planning Board, advised the young generation not to be carried away
by the euphoria of freedom promised by globalization. Suyono accused globalization of
bringing in the “enemy” through promises of “individualism, independence, freedom and
human rights”. 339
To acknowledge the discourse of globalization as a potential threat, the magazines try to
demonstrate that they are not going against any local values in their representations of
modernity. The magazines want to show that they do not subscribe uncritically to
westernization as outlined in the public discourse on globalization. One topic that the
magazines choose to represent as negative western influence is sex and sexuality. As one
article puts it, the thing “that we really shouldn’t copy [from the westerners is]: Free
sex”. 340 In this way articles on sexuality are rooted in the discourse of local gender
ideology. The magazines maintain that girls should be sexually inactive, morally asexual
and be on guard against any sexual temptation from the opposite sex.
Even though modernity and innocence do not always go hand-in-hand, the magazines
negotiate the contradictory messages of a sophisticated western modernity and an
innocent local identity by separating the discourses into fashion and entertainment on the
one hand, and morality on the other. These contradictory messages may occur in a single
339
Generasi muda harus dengan jujur melihat proses globalisasi sekarang ini sebagai tantangan baru
yang perlu dihadapi dengan meningkatkan kualitas diri dan masyarakat yang mendukungnya....Dalam
proses globalisasi yang sangat mengagungkan promis individualisme, kemerdekaan, kebebasan, dan hak-
hak asasi manusia, generasi muda harus mampu melihat dengan rasional musuh-musuh baru yang
menyerang generasi muda, anak muda dan remaja, yang dipaket indah dengan pajangan yang menarik,
yang menyenangkan dan nempaknya memberikan promis yang menjanjikan.The writer of the article is
former head of BKKBN (Badan Koordinasi Keluarga Berencana Nasional, National Coordinator of
Family Planning) during the New Order . Haryono Suyono, “Dengan Sumpah Pemuda Kita Bersatu untuk
Maju.” Suara Karya, Friday, 31 October 2003. http://www.suarakarya-online.com/news.html?id=73747
340
Yang jangan banget ditiru adalah: Free sex, gaya pakaiannya, dan sikap individualis. (Arum Citra
Lukitasari, SMU Ta’miriyah, Surabaya). Gadis. no. 27/XXX/7-16 October 2003.
146
issue although the anomaly is apparently lost on the readers. For example, in the article
“Dress Sexy, Why Not”, the magazines chose responses from the readers that are mostly
against wearing revealing outfits, despite the fact that the models in the magazines are
presented in those kinds of outfits. The magazines do a good job of switching between
the two discourses, embracing the west on the one hand, and upholding the local gender
ideology without leaving a trace of treachery on the other. When the magazines are
selling modernity they do not criticize local identity. However, when the magazines are
fulfilling their task of upholding local identity, they are quick to vilify western influence
as evil.
The dichotomy between the west and the east in the magazines creates two separate role
models for adolescents to follow, each with a different function. The “western” physical
appearance is the model performance and appearance for ideal Indonesian adolescent
bodies; the “eastern” sets the ideal for social values that should be followed when it
comes to morality and sexuality. The west is thus valorized as the ultimate global trend-
setter without representing the local trends as examples of inferiority. The local eastern
values on morality and sexuality are thus commended in explicit contrast to those of the
immoral west. As a result, the adolescents in the magazines become homogeneous
because their values follows the pattern of western modernity “guided” by local norms.
These representations lump the adolescents into one homogeneous group. Any
representation that differs from the standard presented in the magazines is not treated as
the norm but as deviance.
The representation of normalized adolescent social behaviours in the magazines has a
social, physical and moral standard. The social standard of the magazines constructs
147
teenagers as affluent images of girls in the magazines are predominantly of urban middle-
to-upper class girls. Adolescents in the magazines are assigned an Indonesian ethnicity −
there are no individual regional identities such as Javanese or Papuan in these magazines.
They are represented as citizens of the nation without stressing their ethnicity unless they
are Eurasians. These teenagers are also very well educated. The magazines use every
opportunity to mention the educational background of the adolescents depicted,
especially when they are educated overseas. Whether they go to a foreign institution or
not, the ability to speak English is a barometer of modernity.
The physical standard for Indonesian adolescents is a chic urban style that is followed by
both the teen celebrities and the “everyday” teenagers featured in the magazines. Both
groups are relatively good looking, which suggests the availability of funds for grooming
and fashion. Both groups also wear western attire comfortably in public places with no
awkwardness in revealing their flesh or showing off their figures. Islamic attire is not
worn by models or in the advertisements. Moreover, it is not portrayed in its religious
context but as a clothing choice for adolescents participating in teen events. Apart from
fashion trends, the magazines promote changes to the natural colour and natural build of
the adolescent body through advertisements and their own editorial content. The
magazines condone physical changes such as having whiter skin, being taller and
modifying the colours of eyes to emulate the physical appearance of westerners.
While the social and physical ideals in the magazines are dominated by constructions of
western performance, the standard of morality on the other hand is governed by
constructions of local norms. The magazines do not cover morality as a whole but tend to
choose discourses on sex and sexuality that symbolically indicate that the magazines
148
uphold local eastern morals and values. This serves to counter any public insinuation that
the adolescents are being brainwashed by the west through the global pop culture they are
exposed to in the magazines. To counter any criticism, the topics chosen by the
magazines to represent their adherence to national identity deal with curbing the sexuality
of female adolescents. As long as the magazines’ stand with regards to sex and sexuality
follows the local standard of modesty, the magazines are free to endorse any western life-
style introduced by the advertisers.
The local norms on sexuality dictate that girls are the guardians of morality. This is
manifested in articles warning the girls about the “bad” boys out there. This kind of
discourse does not acknowledge that young girls are sexual beings with sexual needs.
The magazines’ representation of adolescents tries to hide girls’ sexuality behind
innocent and childish poses. Facial expression and body language are directed towards
creating a girlish and childlike impression. The cheerful façade and countenance of the
girls’ magazines forms a “cultural fence” 341 that serves to hide the sexual beings lurking
inside the girls. It functions as a cover to the girls’ sexual potential. In short, young girls
in the magazines may wear revealing, tight and sexy outfits, but the virginal
unsophisticated look cancels any sexual allusions suggested by the outfits. The common
way to create a naïve image is by posing the girls with wide smiles on their faces. The
smiles, apart from suggesting innocence, also imply the carefree-ness and cheerfulness of
the girls. This confident cheerfulness eventually ties up with the western urban look
promoted in the magazines, because happy teens are well-provided-for teens.
341
A term from Ichiro Numazaki’s “(De-) Sexualizing Gender Relationships: Sexual Harassment as
Modern and as a Critique of Modernity”, in Gender and Modernity. Perspectives from Asia and the Pacific,
Hayami Yoko, Tanabe Akio and Tokita-Tanabe Yumiko, eds., (Kyoto, Japan; Melbourne: Kyoto
University Press and Trans Pacific Press, 2003), p. 230.
149
The adolescents represented in the magazines are, therefore, a unique species that exists
in a different world from that outside the magazines. The adolescents are shielded and
contained in a world of their own. The homogeneity in the representation of adolescents
turns a blind eye to a lot of things outside the teen magazine bubble. It is selectively blind
to the social dynamics that result from difference. The bubble acts as a barrier, shutting
off from the harsh realities of life. Analogous to this, are the soap operas on Indonesian
television that portray a glamorous way of life that hides the sad realities of society.
Since the bubble of adolescents is dominated by representations of wealth and prosperity,
representations of poverty and deprivation are treated as deviant “others”. 342 In these
magazines, adolescents are never the victims. The reality of underprivileged adolescents
− dropping out of school, suffering poverty, sexual abuse, discrimination, violence and
other forms of hardships − are non-existent in the magazines. One could argue that
poverty and hardship do not sell. However, samples from western teen magazines show
that adolescents as victims are a regular feature and, furthermore, this does not affect
sales. Presumably because Indonesia is a third world country, poverty is not treated as
news because it is a way of life. Opulence and abundance, on the other hand, are rare and
therefore are treated as news or entertainment because of their selling power. Eventually,
the lack of alternative representations diminishes the possibilities for adolescents to
develop the attitudes necessary to tolerate difference on all levels.
In spite of the magazines’ empowering mission statement in their profiles (“we want to
inspire adolescents to be creative”), the resulting marratives are not ultimately

342
See Solvay Gerke for the way pop culture treats other culture in Solvay Gerke, “Global Lifestyles under
Local Conditions: the New Indonesian Middle Class” Comsumption in Asia. Chua Beng-Huat ed., London;
New York: Routledge, 2000, 135-158 and Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural
Identity. London: Sage, 1996, p. 5.
150
empowering. The magazines sequester the adolescents’ existence in a frame of mind that
infantilizes teenagers. The ubiquity of the childish countenance in the magazines secures
the ideal that Indonesian adolescents do not have problems that need serious attention
from the state. The adolescents are cheerful teenagers that do not render the state any
social cost as a result of their growing numbers or their heterogeneous social background.
Their childlike portrayal denies the practice of premarital sex among Indonesian
teenagers, and the infantile representation ignores potential problems awaiting
adolescents, such as rising unemployment, the expense of continuing education, drug
abuse and sexual pressure. 343
For thirty-two years, the New Order political atmosphere did not encourage critical
observation of society or the questioning of the state’s policy of handling social problems
associated with youth. This has not changed dramatically since the collapse of the New
Order. Indonesia’s teen media just followed the legacy of the top-down tacit agreement
already in place about not being too critical of adolescents. This self-censoring attitude
on the part of the teen media has resulted in content that does not provide true images of
social problems or provoke perceptions of social injustice. We could argue that portrayals
of injustice may put the state under scrutiny because social problems should be the
responsibility of the state.
The result of this attitude of not wanting to be critical of evident social gaps and social
injustice is a group of teen magazines that takes advantage of the socio-political
background of Indonesian society and capitalizes on the adolescents’ consumptive power.
With the rise of the middle class and the growing number of Indonesian adolescents,
343
See Iwu Dwisetyani Utomo, “Reproductive Health Education in Indonesia: School Versus Parents’ Roles
in Providing Sexuality Information” Review of Indonesian and Review of Indonesian and Malaysian
Affairs. 37.1. (2003), pp. 107-134.
151
young people are an important element in the demographic chart of the country. Since
homogeneous consumers are easier to manage, the magazines do not challenge the
aspirations of the readers by providing alternative and varying images. What the
magazines provide is “lifestyling” for Indonesian adolescents. Lifestyling here means that
adolescents are invited to share the pop life-style to be able to claim modernity.344 In teen
magazines lifestyling suggests that adolescents do not have to be rich but they have to be
able to “look rich” in order to fit in. In the magazines wealth is the norm and poverty is
the deviation. Even though the adolescents featured in Indonesian female teen magazines
reflect the influx of global pop culture, this representation captures only a small fraction
of the local realities of Indonesian teenagers.
344
“Lifestyling” is a term coined by Solvay Gerke. It is used to refer to a person’s effort to appear higher
than her/his social class, by performing the correct life style through clothing and appearance at a
superficial level. See Solvay Gerke, “Global Lifestyles under Local Conditions: the New Indonesian
Middle Class”, Consumption in Asia, Chua Beng-Huat ed., (London; New York: Routledge, 2000), pp.
135-158.
152
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Globalizing Local Girls:

The Representation of Adolescents in

Indonesian Female Teen Magazines

A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree

been made in the text.

Submitted 28 February 2005

represent Indonesian adolescents. Female teen magazines are an important source of

information on how gender is constructed in Indonesia. The thesis will contribute

relationships. Consequently, I place my discussion of how adolescents are presented in

Indonesian female teen magazines within a larger context of global-local interaction at

the national level.

women’s magazines. Most of the research on female magazines is focused on women

of expression that reflects gender and power relations in society.

adolescents emerged as a significant social group because of the course of national

group. Modernity in the magazines is associated with a globalized western popular

influences (as the standard of modernity) are employed to construct representations of

However, Indonesian female adolescents are represented conservatively when the

The result of this contradictory representation is a unique group of female adolescents

that capitalizes on “modern” western body images.

Chapter 2: Female magazines: meanings and ideologies 10

Chapter 3: The social background of Indonesian adolescents 40

Chapter 4: The magazines 69

Chapter 5: Globalizing the bodies of Indonesian adolescents 82

Chapter 6: Shaping Attitudes and values 116

Chapter 7: A World of their Own 145

sophisticated look on boys’ magazines (after page 115)

Figure 6.1: Let’s talk like a teenager 1 (after page 122)

Figure 6.2: Let’s talk like a teenager 2 (after page 122)

Figure 6.6: Explaining the vagina (after page 135)

tolerating my mood swings and my emotional outburst.

lucky I was to be part of a tough but excellent academic environment.

me feel at ease with my new academic environment.

enough for your continuing moral support during my stay in Perth.

I believe the sun should never set upon an argument

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned

I believe you can’t control or choose your sexuality

I believe the struggle for financial freedom is unfair

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned

I believe forgiveness is the key to your unhappiness

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned

This research on the representation of adolescents in Indonesian female teen magazines

was precipitated by my earlier thesis about children’s magazines in Indonesia. 1 That

background, played a dominant role in forming the magazine’s message on gender

oppositions of male-female, public-private, culture-nature, and dominant-submissive. 2

paternalistic state bureaucracy.

best consumers. As Susan Faludi writes:

chosen by Habibie to be his Minister of Information, made a significant change by

political situation to provide news material to the general public.

stations that broadcast regionally. The proliferation of private television stations

intensified the development of other forms of media, particularly entertainment

interdependency among the media.

Previously, research about gender in Indonesian media in general, and in female

source of information on how gender is constructed in Indonesia in the midst of

burgeoning media attention on women.

representations in the media resulting from rapid progress in communication and

Gender construction of the adolescents in public space, as introduced in the teen

magazine, is an intricate web of globalization, patriarchy and capitalism. Patriarchy tries

inheritance of traditional society. As a result of the development of the mass-

communication and computer technology, patriarchy has become a globalized and a

widely institutionalized phenomenon. 14 In addition, capitalism has enhanced

advantage of women’s position in the economy. In capitalism, modernity is introduced as

women’s empowerment. However, due to male domination in the media and