How do Indonesian Girls Looks Today?: Indonesian Girls’ Magazines in the Era of Digitalized Media and Its Urban Girls Readers

The Indonesian girls’ and women’s magazine industries have been suffered from the digitalisation of media technology and the plethora of social media use in the country. In terms of economic income and number of subscriptions, the penetration of girls’ and women’s magazine to their urban women’s readers tend to be marginalised compared to the free open access resources that can be easily accessed on the hands of the readers. This paper is part of the ongoing study on the readership of girls magazines and the new trends of the magazine’s contents to be marketed to their urban girls readers, the generation Z female of Indonesia who cannot live without their gadgets and social media. The questions raised here are: Do girls’ magazines still exist in the market? Who are their readers? How do images of Indonesian girls have been represented in the digitalised age? Whilst many studies done have paid attention to the use of social media and the digital content productions, this study attempts to look back what have been overlooked or left behind by researchers in Media Studies, particularly in Indonesia and Asia, about girls’ magazines. Focussing on the existence of two Indonesian girls’ magazines  Gadis and Hijabella, this study further analyses the experience of female youth with the magazines and the meaning making process girls readers while consuming the magazines contents in order to understand whether or not there has been a shifting meaning of the girls readers toward particular issues such as girls’ body and sexualities.