Sandra, 16, looks coyly up from the magazine, wearing a black choker and nothing else. Boyfriend Elias, 18, grins from the opposite page Boyfriend Elias, 18, grins from the opposite page, also pictured fully in his natural state. And the young couple tells why — and, explicitly, how. Target reader age: 10 and older. Her spread comes in the same issue as a free sheet of fake tattoos, a feature about Harry Potter and an exclusive report on the German boy band currently making girls swoon. It deals with naked people, but in a very sensitive way.

Germans Too Hot for Sex This Summer


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Ask your German friends where they first learned about the birds and the bees and nine times out of 10 they'll say the same thing: Bravo , that pop-culture, teeny music mag that at first glance looks more like a publicity rag for Tokio Hotel than a periodical for the young and pubescent. But far from merely hinting at sexuality like Tiger Beat or Smash Hits, the German puberty catalyst actually takes its pedagogical prerogatives seriously -- and doesn't shy away from visuals. Lodged between the ads for tampons, zit concealers and mobile phone ring tones is a weekly sex advice column splashed with photos of teenagers, au naturel -- kind of like Penthouse Letters for kids. It's the kind of thing that would land the publishers in jail were it to hit newsstands on the other side of the Atlantic. If the Christian right or America's comb-over Congress got their hands on this, the courts would be busy for months. But this is sex-positive Germany, not the Bible Belt. And here there are few taboos when it comes to telling kids where to insert the dipstick should they need to check the oil. The cultural epicenter of this sex-friendly youth society is "Dr. Sommer," the weekly Bravo column that has been providing teens with sex advice since its birth during the Summer of Love.
A collection of posters and covers in Bravo magazine from the '50s to early '80s.
Bravo is the largest teen magazine within the German-language sphere. The first issue was published in The founder of Bravo was columnist Peter Boenisch.
Her name was Sabrina and we would see each other every day, sit next to each other in school and hold hands all day long. We thought that we were going to get married and have kids one day. In the first grade, during the breaks between classes we would go behind the school and hold hands and kiss. Our school had this disgusting gray, blocky, Russian looking architecture so there were a lot of corners you could hide behind. One day my best friend saw us and asked if he could watch and we said sure. He told another friend, who then told everyone in the school. I was really happy for Sabrina to have the milk that she liked but after a while, I wanted to have money too. I wanted to buy some weird bullshit like weapons, costumes, Spider Man figures, and Nintendo games. My friend Alex became kind of like the bouncer and collected the money for us and in return, we gave him a cut. It grew to about twenty people, sometimes strangers, sometimes friends of ours.