The Naked Truth: Why European teen ’zines are racier than ours from the <a href="www.nyrm.org"New York Review of Magazines. is a nice article about he german teen magazine Bavo.

Bravo is a dual-gender magazine, with a readership that is about 58 percent female among the 1.75 million copies it sells across Europe. Butthe unique and startling thing about it, for a publication whose readership includes kids as young as 10, is its rather candid approach to sex.

While I was a teen I dind't read Bravo very often, because the Heavy Metal content was close to zero, but I bought all the issues which contained Star Wars poster.

The article is actually a good read, the article argues about the aproach to teenage sex in the USA and Germany.

This is because the culture in Germany promotes a kind of openness about teen sexuality — rather than being gratuitous, it’s educational. In America, teen magazines are also training manuals for most aspects of adolescent life, from one’s first kiss to choosing the right outfit to wear to dazzle your college interviewer. But anything in the bedroom — we don’t go there [...] In the US, attitudes are often ambivalent and contradictory. “US magazines send mixed messages about sexuality — it’s good to be sexy, but best not to have sex; it’s fine to be sexually active (especially if you’re dating, in love, use safer sex), but better if you’re not,”

Read the whole article PDF file