“84 pages both romantic, fun and funny”.
That’s how the Starlet editors described the magazine’s first issue, which was published in 1966. For 30 years, the issues were filled with comics as well as fiction and non-fiction.
Ethnologist Kristina Öhman’s doctoral thesis is about Starlet and is called “A girly room”. She believes that the magazine’s popularity is about the fact that it arrived at the right time, and that there was a community between the readers.
– They were described by the editors as editorial members, says Kristina Öhman to SVT Kulturnyheterna.
Readers could submit self-written texts, and also received a forum in the form of the page “Us girls in between” where they could discuss life’s big questions.
– It became like a guide in an elusive teenage universe. Now there are almost no girls’ magazines in Sweden, but you have to turn to the internet, says Kristina Öhman and continues:
– And for many, the newspaper lit a spark. They were allowed to publish their own texts.
“A bit embarrassing to read it”
Kristina Öhman believes that the magazine was also mocked, and reading it was seen as something shameful.
– There was a widespread notion that it was something banal and trivial. You knew that many people looked at the newspaper that way and then it became a bit embarrassing to read it, she says.
Purchased British series
In the early years of publication, British comics were bought and translated. There, the theme usually revolved around romantic relationships, set up according to old gender norms.
– The series almost always ended with a love note, says Kristina Öhman to SVT.
She believes that more serious themes and topics began to take place in the newspaper in the early 70s.
– Above all, the love relationship did not become the most interesting thing, instead the friendship between girls ended up in the center, she says.