Cosmopolitan
Dawn was eleven when she first stole a copy of her mother's Cosmopolitan; she'd wanted to get rid of her freckles in exchange for Buffy's flawless complexion. The resulting makeup experiment did not go well, and Joyce had not been pleased to find her youngest thumbing through a magazine that had the phrase "sexual positions" written in three separate places in the Table of Context.
As Buffy blossomed into a homecoming queen, Cosmo became kin to the Bible, and covertly stealing old issues became to Dawn something like trying on her sister's clothing while Buffy was at cheerleading practice. And even though she was too young – and somewhat too timid, she admitted to herself when she got tired of blaming her mother for clipping her wings – to dye her hair the coveted California baby blonde, or to wear grownup makeup, she had still grown up with Cosmo and a part of her idolized the Cosmo girls.
Moving to Sunnydale had cut Dawn off from the constant parade of Buffy's other Cosmo girl clones. Her new friends weren't like that. First there was Xander, who – well, was Xander, and then Willow, who was awesome, but she had her own Willow style, and she was more Dawn than she was a Cosmo girl.
And then Buffy brought Cordelia over one day to work on a class project. Cordelia was the queen of all Cosmo girls. She put all of the Hemory girls to shame; they were imitations, copies of the fashion and beauty tips the magazine prescribed: Cordelia lived Cosmo. Dawn watched the girl breathlessly from the stairs: it was like watching a glossy magazine spread come to life. She was so glamorous, so perfectly made up and dressed; she even smelled like a magazine, enveloped in expensive perfume.
Dawn stayed on the stairs watching Cordelia's languorous, haughty cover girl movements, her exquisite beauty, her dazzling smile, until the girl drove off in her beautiful red convertible. Then she ran up to her room and threw away all of her old copies of Cosmopolitan.
She had a new role model now.