The 2008-2009 edition cover of J4G (Just 4 Girls/Just 4 Guys) magazine features a close-up of a smiling girl with a fashionable fur-collared sweater, surrounded by brightly colored headlines like “The Inside Scoop on Guys!” This is a pretty familiar image for teens — no different than what you’d likely see on the cover of Seventeen or YM. But what a young reader may not know is that J4G’s “Inside Scoops on Guys” is really a lesson on dressing modestly. The feature tells the young reader that “guys are visual, so when a girl is dressing to show off (wearing tight pants, low-cut shirts, etc.), it is hard for guys because they are stimulated by what they see.”
The piece continues its urge to readers: “(S)tart respecting yourself and your guy friends by dressing modestly” — equating “respect” with wearing more — and placing all responsibility on girls to tame the wild beast of young men’s sexual desires. The diatribe ends with a suggested clothing Web site so female readers can be fashionable and “still be modest.”
