Not Just A Pretty Face

By Emma Shepperbottom

I remember when I was about 14, I was in the news agents with my mum, browsing though the magazines, aimed at my age group. There wasn’t a lot there that interested me. Dolly and Girlfriend, the mainstream magazines, never had any articles that seemed to hold substance. I found them to be boring and typical.

Just as I was ready to give up and walk away, a magazine I had never seen before caught my eye. It was called Chik. 50 Cent was on the cover and the stories advertised on the front grabbed my attention.
I took the magazine home with me and I read it front to back about half a dozen times. I was in love. Chik wasn’t the typical teenage girl magazine. It contained interesting, funny stories and a little character called “Mr Grassy Head” who had some kind of adventure each month. I never missed an issue after reading the first one. I was an avid reader, eventually upgrading to getting a subscription.

At some point, a Chik website with online message boards added to it was created. I signed up and became a member of an online community, with people who were like-minded and yet at the same time had so many different views and opinions. On the message boards, we had fun and debated and discussed real stuff. We all lived by Chik's slogan "not just a pretty face".

One sad day, the editor of Chik announced that Morrision Media (the publishing house for Chik) was no longer going to be funding the production of Chik and that the next issue would be the last. Because I had a subscription that had not expired yet, I was offered a different magazine to complete it. The only one that interested me was a magazine called Frankie. I like to think of Frankie as Chik’s big sister. I didn’t enjoy Frankie at first, I guess I wasn’t old enough, I wasn’t ready to meet Chik’s older sister. Although having said that, I do love Frankie now. But my love for Frankie is a story for a different day.

It may sound a little far-fetched, but I feel as though reading Chik and using the message boards helped to shape me as a person and pushed me to realise my passion for writing. I’d love to write for a publication like Chik or Frankie. Something that young people can read, that is unique and rich with substance.