[Si] TV

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My niece is turning 11 soon and I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she said she wanted anything “High School Musical” because apparently she has a crush on Zac Efron.  I know that this Disney production has made huge stars out of the main cast members of this movie, now going into its third production.  But honestly, the most I know about it is seeing Vanessa Hudgens bush plastered all over TMZ and PerezHilton and every other website.  That and the fact that she is dating Zac Efron, who to me looks kind of light in the loafers.  But my niece having a crush on a teen idol took me back to my tween years of spending hours pouring over Tiger Beat magazine, pining over Scott Baio, Shaun Cassidy and Donny Osmond and wondering which one of these men I would eventually marry.  I wanted to know if Tiger Beat and Teen Beat still existed.  Lo and behold Tiger Beat is still out there and still looks exactly like it did when I subscribed to it.  It still has the standard “cut and paste” collage of teen celebs plastered all over the cover.  I can’t believe that magazine has been around since 1965.  It is aimed at girls 9-19 and is about “teen idol gossip, movies, music and fashion.”  When I was a young girl I didn’t have the internet and weekly gossip magazines and nightly shows like E.T. and Access Hollywood to get information about stars, so Tiger Beat and Teen Beat were it.  I don’t really remember buying the magazine much past the age of 13 or 14 because then I started being a bit more interested in real boys, not the ones on magazines.  I couldn’t find out much information on Teen Beat though.  According to Wikipedia, in 2001 they went from publishing the magazine monthly to only publishing it quarterly but it doesn’t say much else about it. 

I went onto the Tiger Beat website to see who the hot young talent is these days and apparently Zac Efron and the Jonas Brothers are huge!  There is also some blonde kid named Cody Linley who I have no clue who he is.  I read a list of the “stars” and only knew a handful of them.  I recognized people like Miley Cyrus, Hilary Duff, Johnny Depp (obviously since I want to have his baby and go live in France with him) but most of the guys I didn’t have a clue as to who they are.  And the writing in the magazine is so funny.  The articles are titled  “OMG…is Zac jealous?!” and “What?! Miley was grounded again?”  It really took me back to the days when the most important thing I thought about was a math test, which celeb I might marry and how to keep my little brother and his stupid Star Wars toys out of my room.  I think I almost like the innocence of the writing in these articles.  It certainly isn’t as mean spirited as PerezHilton and you certainly aren’t going to see pictures of Vanessa’s privates in Tiger Beat.  And really, does a 10 or 12 year old need to know that their idol is posing naked?  I don’t think so.  It’s best that these girls continue to live in their little High School Musical fantasy worlds until they reach high school themselves and find out that life isn’t really like that.