美国国家公共电台 NPR Christian Teen Magazine 'Brio' Returns With A 'Biblical Worldview'

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

An evangelical Christian 1 group is trying again to offer an alternative girls magazine. The group Focus on the Family once published Brio. It positioned itself as a more wholesome 2 alternative to magazines like Seventeen and Teen Vogue 3, which offer tips on fashion and dating. Now Brio is coming back. NPR's Sarah McCammon reports.

SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE 4: In some ways, Brio was like a lot of other teen magazines in the 1990s. Debbie Fischer remembers devouring 5 articles like "How To Give Yourself A Manicure," something she definitely wasn't learning from her older brothers.

DEBBIE FISCHER: I was in middle school, and I didn't really know. You know, I wanted to take care of myself, you know, and look more like a grown-up girl. I just didn't really know how to do it.

MCCAMMON: But other sections were different, like music reviews. Fischer is now 34 and lives in Madison, Wis. She remembers a review of a super popular Boyz II Men album from 1994.

FISCHER: And the reviewer said, you know, "On Bended Knee," this song is good because it's about praying. And that's all well and good. But there's another song on the album, which was "I'll Make Love To You." And that was about premarital sex and not OK.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'LL MAKE LOVE TO YOU")

BOYZ II MEN: (Singing) I'll make love to you, like you want me to.

MCCAMMON: But Fischer, who grew up Methodist and attended a public school, kept listening to the music she liked. For girls like Hayley DeRoche, now 30 and a librarian in Richmond, Va., the conservative point of view made Brio acceptable to her homeschooling evangelical parents.

HAYLEY DEROCHE: It was like the wholesome answer to Seventeen or something like that. So me reading it was never a - a concern.

MCCAMMON: Even Brio, though, seemed like too much for Alissa Wilkinson's parents, who homeschooled her as a teenager in upstate New York. So she snuck home copies from her church library. Wilkinson is now 33 and living in Brooklyn, where she writes for Vox.

ALISSA WILKINSON: I felt like I - you know, I was kind of getting away with something and learning something about what my peers were experiencing. So Brio was sort of my bridge into what I thought teenagers were like.

MCCAMMON: After an eight-year hiatus, Focus on the Family is reviving Brio. Bob DeMoss, vice 6 president of content development, says it will once again put forward what he describes as a biblical worldview, including opposition 7 to LGBT relationships, abortion 8 and premarital sex.

BOB DEMOSS: The heart and soul of the advice does have its roots in what the Bible says about, you know, various things, from everything from peer pressure and, you know, proper dress to sexual purity.

MCCAMMON: Sorcha Brophy, a sociology fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, also read Brio as a teenager and later researched Christian teen magazines as part of her master's thesis. Brophy says she wonders how the new Brio will navigate 9 the culture of 2017.

SORCHA BROPHY: I think it'll be interesting to see these things play out in a moment where these teenagers are probably less sheltered than possibly the teenagers who were reading the magazine in the early '90s.

MCCAMMON: Officials at Focus on the Family acknowledge it may seem like a strange time to bring back a print publication, but they think there's a market for it among conservative Christian teenage girls, as it begins showing up in subscribers' mailboxes this week. Sarah McCammon, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF FLXXX'S "ZOMBIE LAND - STEVE COOK REMIX")