--- title: Teenagers: A 1944 Photo Essay on a New American Phenomenon description: In 1944, LIFE magazine introduced its readers to a strange and fascinating new breed of American citizen: the "teenager." canonical: https://time.com/3639041/the-invention-of-teenagers-life-and-the-triumph-of-youth-culture/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-09-28T21:09:45.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:06:36.329Z og:title: The Invention of Teenagers: LIFE and the Triumph of Youth Culture og:description: In 1944, LIFE magazine introduced its readers to a strange new breed of American citizen: the "teenager" -- specifically, teenage girls -- who would shape Western culture and commerce for decades to come. og:url: https://time.com/3639041/the-invention-of-teenagers-life-and-the-triumph-of-youth-culture/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt29050786bec18129/69876fa6524fc05562deb7f3/141217-teenage-girls-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: Teenage Girls 1944 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Invention of Teenagers: LIFE and the Triumph of Youth Culture twitter:description: In 1944, LIFE magazine introduced its readers to a strange new breed of American citizen: the "teenager" -- specifically, teenage girls -- who would shape Western culture and commerce for decades to come. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt29050786bec18129/69876fa6524fc05562deb7f3/141217-teenage-girls-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Invention of Teenagers: LIFE and the Triumph of Youth Culture > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Sep 28, 2013 9:09 PM UTC  Caption from LIFE. Gang of teen-agers push boyfriend's model T to get it started. Car is 17 years old and can hold 12 boys and girls. Favorite ride is out to football game. Caption from LIFE. Gang of teen-agers push boyfriend's model T to get it started. Car is 17 years old and can hold 12 boys and girls. Favorite ride is out to football game. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Sep 28, 2013 9:09 PM UTC Historians and social critics differ on the specifics of the timeline, but most cultural observers agree that the strange and fascinating creature known as the American teenager — as we now understand the species — came into being sometime in the early 1940s. This is not to say that for millennia human beings had somehow passed from childhood to adulthood without enduring the squalls of adolescence. But the modern notion of the teen years as a recognized, quantifiable life stage, complete with its own fashions, behavior, vernacular and arcane rituals, simply did not exist until the post-Depression era. Here, in the first of a series of galleries on the evolution of LIFE magazine’s — and, by extension, America’s — view of teenagers through the middle part of the 20th century, LIFE.com presents photos that the inimitable Nina Leen shot for a December 1944 article, “Teen-Age Girls: They Live in a Wonderful World of Their Own.” Leen focused on a group of 12 girls, from 15 to 17 years old, living in Webster Groves, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. (Note the hyphenated phrase, “teen-age.” By all accounts, it would be several years before the word as we spell it today, “teenager,” would make an appearance in the pages of LIFE. The word “teen-agers” itself, meanwhile, likely made its debut in print in a 1941 issue of _Popular Science Monthly_.) In its December 1944 feature, LIFE breathlessly discussed the “teen-age” phenomenon in language that, in 2013, somehow feels naive, chauvinistic, celebratory and insightful, all at once. That so many of the article’s impossibly broad, sweeping claims (“Some 6,000,000 U.S. teen-age girls live in a world all their own: a lovely, gay, enthusiastic, funny and blissful society. . . .”) clearly apply to a specific _type_ of teenager — i.e., white, middle-class — tends to blunt some of the more incisive observations. But taken as a whole, the LIFE article and Leen’s photographs constitute a fascinating, early look at a segment of the American populace that, over the ensuing decades, for better and for worse, has assumed an increasingly central role in the shaping of Western culture. As LIFE stated the case to its millions of readers in 1944: --- > “” --- --- > “” --- Some 6,000,000 U.S. teen-age girls live in a world all their own — a lovely, gay, enthusiastic, funny and blissful society almost untouched by the war. It is a world of sweaters and skirts and bobby sox and loafers, of hair worn long, of eye-glass rims painted red with nail polish, of high school boys no yet gone to war. It is world still devoted to parents who are pals even if they use the telephone too much. It is a world of Vergil’s Aeneid, second-year French and plane geometry, of class plays, field hockey, “moron” jokes and put-on accents. It is a world of slumber parties and the Hit Parade, of peanut butter and popcorn and the endless collecting of menus and match covers and little stuffed animals. --- > “” --- --- > “” --- Then again, perhaps that particular discussion is best left to another series on LIFE.com — one looking at, say, LIFE’s portrayal of _women_ through the years? _Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at_ [_@LizabethRonk_](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk)_._  Caption from LIFE. Gang of teen-agers push boyfriend's model T to get it started. Car is 17 years old and can hold 12 boys and girls. Favorite ride is out to football game. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Listening to records at Lemeke's record store occupies at least one afternoon a week. The girls spend one to 2 1/2 hours listening to two dozen records, end up by buying one or, at most, two. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Midwestern teenage girls, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Teenage fashions, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Portrait of an American teen, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Men's pajamas are worn at night. Hair is curled with rags, not bobby pins. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Portrait of an American teen, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Teenage girls, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  American teenagers, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Teenagers ion school, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Teenage girls at a football game, Missouri, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Occasional 'A' coupon makes possible a date at the Toll House a few miles away. Girls like double dates so they can stay with each other afterward and gab all night about the boys. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Necking in movies is absolutely out. Any girl who does is the object of endless catting and is put down as trying to act older or sophisticated, which is highest offense among teen-agers. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "Sandwich Girl' who puts herself in midst of crowd of boys is considered a real crumb. Girls will not invite her to hen parties and will try to act cool toward boys who formed sandwich. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Teenagers, Missouri, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. The evening phone call is ritual, performed here by Nancy Hamel. Most calls are so long that girls squirm into wonderful variety of stances, postures and attitudes while never once losing the thread of conversation. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Portrait of an American teen, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Portrait of an American teen, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. The standard dress for school is a plain shetland sweater and a woolen skirt. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Portrait of an American family, Missouri, 1944. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Pat Woodruff does homework with radio going full blast. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Babysitting is the teen-agers' way to augment their $2-$3 weekly allowance which must cover lunches, movies, sodas, records. Their rates are $.25 an hour before midnight, $.35 an hour after. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. One girl usually stays overnight with hostess after a hen party. No girl can bear to be alone after a gab fest so teen-agers wheedle twin beds for their rooms to accommodate guests. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. At Friday-night hen party Martha Ruddy and Fredna Parker jig around to music. When not dancing, girls sprawl on floor talking, singing, knitting and nibbling endlessly at pretzels. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Initiation to high-school sorority is awesome, serious, secret. Here girls re-enact candle-light ceremony for LIFE's photographer. Nobody but a member has ever seen the real thing. 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