When I was thirteen, I started reading "teen magazines". Partly because they appeared to be "juicy reading", partly because my mother didn't approve. And in the beginning, I was hooked.

Here in Britain, there is no "Seventeen" or "YM", but from what I've gathered, our magazines - "Just Seventeen" and "It's Bliss" and so forth - don't differ much from magazines from other parts of the world. Anyone with half a brain cell would tire of them quickly. After a year, I was fed up.

I liked the quizzes and the problem page, mainly for laughing at. The "real life" stories I liked too - the "My Grandad Was Abducted By Aliens" and "I Can't Stop Spying On My Neighbour" type of thing. I remember one about about a girl who kept calling horoscope hotlines, to find out how to impress the boy she liked. The boy was impressed, but then the phonebill came, she was promptly grounded, and the boy found someone else.

But there was a lot of junk in them. As well as pages of adverts and clothes no one would wear, there was masses of celebrity "goss" - "Kate Moss Ate A Cake!" and "astrology specials". Then there were the "What Boys REALLY Think About Whatever" articles. That is, the "What The Select Number Of Boys Who Would Agree To Appear In This Magazine Think About Whatever" articles. The other articles took the form of "50 Reasons Why It's GREAT To Be A Girl" (in case we're thinking about a sex change operation). I also remember that the members of Take That (one of the first boy bands) were five of the reasons. And then there was the information about sex. At first I was eager to shock myself, but when I took the "How Much Do YOU Know About Sex" quiz, I got full marks.

The general tone of the magazines annoyed me as well. I hated all the cringe-making slang, and the attitude of "We're girlies, hehehe, let boys take Physics and change tyres" they took. Although there was an ocassional reference to the fact that teenage girls are more intelligent than our male counterparts (by university, it apparently balances it out), they certainly didn't act like it.

And so I stopped wasting my money and never regretted the decision.

A few weeks ago, on a train on my way home from London, I read "Company" - a magazine aimed at the 18-25 market. "Well, it's got to be better than the teen ones," I thought. Ha.

According to the quizzes, the day of the month on which you were born determined your personality, and if you liked wearing jeans and a t-shirt, didn't go out six nights a week, didn't chat up strangers (ax-murderers or otherwise) and wouldn't yell, "Stop crying, you're wrecking the party!" to an upset friend, you were a total freak of nature.

The cheaper dresses were way nicer than the more expensive ones. There was the usual celebrity junk, with plenty of flirting on the part of the interviewers. They scorned originality and quirkiness. Much more about sex, things that made me instinctively hold the magazine vertically upright (my history teacher was sitting opposite me). There were letters from people saying, "Guess what? I've got seven years worth of copies of your mag [sic/sick] and when I moved house, I had to get my hunky man to lift them for me!" I remember reading similar claims made by 8-year-olds in "Bunty". And for something so thick (in more than one sense of the word), there was a distinct lack of content - so many adverts, of course.

But it's the story I really must complain about. Now, I've read my fair share of stories in magazines. The stuff in "Bunty" was pretty flippin good actually. The stories in "It's Bliss" made me insanely jealous of its teenage creators, because, while sappy, they were original, heart-warming and had neat twists at the end. The stuff in my mother's magazines is immensely cring, but nevertheless, skilfully crafted. But this was just awful.

The main character was an unemployed actress who "hasn't had a bonk in aeons". On reading this, all hopes of beautiful language flew out of the window. And I asked myself, is the average reader meant to thing, "Gosh, poor thing!"? Maybe it's just me that thinks, "Ok, how about I get to be an unemployed actress while you do my A Levels, mate? (Not that you're capable of them.)"

The character goes swimming, then into the steam room. In there, she meets a man (although she can't see him). They exchange a couple of sentences, and have a "bonk". This says to the readers: "Go on, shag anyone, even if you've only known him for two seconds and haven't actually seen him yet. Who cares about the consequences?"

And what are the possible consequences?

1. Someone walks in on them, and they're hauled to the nearest police station before they even have a chance to get dressed.
2. After they "bonk" he strangles her. Or maybe he knives her and dumps her bloody body in the swimming pool.
3. She gets AIDS.
4. She gets pregnant and hasn't a clue what the guy's name is.
5. She never sees him again and gets manically depressed because he's just another one night stand. (Or one-afternoon-stand as the case was.)

But nooooo . . . not only do they have great sex, but guess who turns up to be her next potential employer? And guess whether she gets the job or not? And guess how the story ends? With them making revolting innuendoes.

BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARG!!!!!!!!!

Not only was it totally unrealistic, but as a writer, I found myself examining the actual plot. She starts off with a problem which is fine, unsympathetic as I may be to that problem. But here is one of the most fundamental rules for writing fiction: characters overcome these problems using their own, intelligent, brave and nifty solutions. In order to find employment and sex (why does she want sex, not love, anyway?) you search the newspapers and trek to job interviews, and go out of your way to find suitable men and impress them with your wit and charm. You do not go into a steam room in the hope of meeting a horny but caring stranger. What effort was there on the part of the main character? Zero.

Maybe I'm just analysing it too much, maybe the reader is meant to ignore the useless plot and have fantasies about amazing sex in a steam room. But even taking that point of view, it wasn't great. There was no detail of the actual event, certainly nothing emotional, and there was no tension. Maybe I've just read too much slash. I can't believe that the general public is satisfied by such rot, though.

Further, the language of the magazine made me wince. It's as if there's someone who scours the country looking for all the cringe-worthy slang they can find, and then using it relentlessly. Nobody real talks that way.

And it's not just teen and post-teen magazines. Naively, as a learner driver, I purchased a copy of "Pass First Time". "Hey," I thought, "boys are more obsessed with cars than girls are, so it should be relatively suitable for both." But while it was helpful, but the tone was identical to that of teen magazines. With driving as the subject, there were even more opportunities for cring titles. There were even horoscopes! And a problem page including "I fancy my driving instructor." (The response to which was, "Put the brakes on, girl!")

There is no escape. The magazine industry will never believe the average IQ is 100. ("Wot, we thought it was zero?") What hope is there?