City Journal used changes in women's magazines to compare then, and now.
Kinda makes me wish I had been around a little earlier....
1. "....magazines like Good Housekeeping,Ladies Home Journal, and Redbook have been reflecting womens lives for decades. From one month to the next, little seems to vary; the celebrity interviews and fashion spreads blend into one another, creating the impression of a seamless, unchanging world. Yet if you compare the womens magazines of today with their counterparts of 50 years ago, youll find it impossible to miss how dramatically different they are
2. Given current obesity rates, the readers of womens magazines were probably thinner in 1963. But their magazines werent. Flip through the weighty 50-year-old issues, and youll soon feel, literally, a massive cultural shift in what women expect from their periodicals. In 1963, consuming a magazine could take days. Early that year, Good Housekeeping serialized Daphne du Mauriers novel .... There is verse, too... letting Good Housekeeping readers experience poetry and prose at the same time. ... That erudition is all the more surprising when you consider that womens magazines reached a far larger fraction of the population in 1963 than they do now..... those women also wanted to read serious nonfiction.
3. In March 1963, Redbook covered a doctors agonizing decision to leave Castros Cuba after becoming disillusioned with the socialist revolution. GHs May 1963 issue ran A Negro Father Speaks, in which Luther Jackson, a Washington Post reporter, described the racism that his family had experienced and tried to dispel some myths that the magazines mostly white readers might have believed about their black fellow citizens. Luther recalled being angry and humiliated when a little girl, seeing him on the street, shouted, Theres a colored man, theres a colored man! But he also noted that his own four-year-old had once shouted, Theres a man with no legs! when encountering an amputee. What is hatred, and what is merely unfamiliarity? ... Keep in mind that this was in the spring of 1963before the March on Washington, before the Civil Rights Act, before the Freedom Summer.
4. .... editors of womens magazines felt no fear of controversial topics.... Redbooks top cover line, HOW THALIDOMIDE TURNED A PREGNANCY INTO A NIGHTMARE.... discussed efforts to legalize abortionfollowing up, the editors noted, on a report in Redbooks August 1959 issue about how many doctors broke abortion laws. The magazine was trying to shape the national conversation. Even its story about counseling parishioners delved into big issues. Our modern knowledge of psychology and psychiatry, wrote Ardis Whitman, is no obstacle to religion but has in fact driven the minister to inquire more deeply into the meaning of human personality than ever before. What is sin, the article asked, and what is mental illness? Are ministers trained to treat both?
5. .... married American mothers spent close to 35 hours per week on housework in 1965. (One of Friedans stories for Ladies Home Journal was Have American Housewives Traded Brains for Brooms?) The magazines assumed that their readers were competent at sewing and needlework; the February 1963 GHfeatured instructions for knitting a coat that was a weightless classic of mohair, matchless for the bright-lights mood of a night on the town, just as stunning by day..... In March 1963,Good Housekeeping ran 500 words on how to wax a floor.
6. Not long ago, a WorkingMother.com poll asked readers when theyd last had me time. About 50 percent of respondents claimed that they couldnt remember.... thats one reason that todays womens magazines are so short. The February 2013 Ladies Home Journal runs just 104 pages. The longest features top out at six pages, and theyre graphics-heavy. No longer do editors view their product as something that youll curl up with for hours over the course of a month. Instead, a magazine is something that a woman-on-the-go can grab to fill those scarce snatches of me time: 15 minutes of waiting for the kids at soccer practice, or 20 minutes on the bus to work. The articles in todays womens magazines seem to be written explicitly for this me timethat is, centered on the reader herself and not on the larger world. After reading through the 1963 magazines, one cant help finding the modern ones a bit shallow.
7. The February 2013 issue looks at sexual health from a different perspective. One of its longest stories, hawked on the cover as BIRTH CONTROL THAT BOOSTS METABOLISM? SIGN US UP!, features women discussing why they switched contraceptive methods, with such headlines as SHE LOST THE EXTRA WEIGHT and HER LIBIDO IS BACK IN BUSINESS! Redbook writer Erin Zammett Ruddy reports that as with so many things (sex life, hair, marriage), you dont have to settle for so-so birth control. Even the staid Good Housekeeping has gone you-you-you. It has recently published a book called 7 Years Younger, turning the resources of its product-testing Good Housekeeping Research Institute to the pressing question of the most effective moisturizers. The longest piece in the magazines February 2013 issue may sound less fluffy: its news hook is some thought-provoking research from the Templeton Foundation about gratitude. But the piece emphasizes what being grateful can do for you: New research shows why gratitude is a crucial tool for health and happiness, the headline promises.
8. In all this self-obsession, something has surely been lost. Still, what the modern woman finds in todays Redbook isnt entirely superficial. Consider the time budget that the February issue of the magazine proposes for her day. Her morning should feature an intense work project; she should blog after work because if you dont block out time for personal projects and dreams, theyll never happen; her evening can be devoted to family game night! The point, Redbook notes, is to prioritize time for activities you lovewhich no longer seems to include spending all day reading a magazine."
CJ Mobile: Journey Through the Checkout Racks
Kinda makes me wish I had been around a little earlier....
1. "....magazines like Good Housekeeping,Ladies Home Journal, and Redbook have been reflecting womens lives for decades. From one month to the next, little seems to vary; the celebrity interviews and fashion spreads blend into one another, creating the impression of a seamless, unchanging world. Yet if you compare the womens magazines of today with their counterparts of 50 years ago, youll find it impossible to miss how dramatically different they are
2. Given current obesity rates, the readers of womens magazines were probably thinner in 1963. But their magazines werent. Flip through the weighty 50-year-old issues, and youll soon feel, literally, a massive cultural shift in what women expect from their periodicals. In 1963, consuming a magazine could take days. Early that year, Good Housekeeping serialized Daphne du Mauriers novel .... There is verse, too... letting Good Housekeeping readers experience poetry and prose at the same time. ... That erudition is all the more surprising when you consider that womens magazines reached a far larger fraction of the population in 1963 than they do now..... those women also wanted to read serious nonfiction.
3. In March 1963, Redbook covered a doctors agonizing decision to leave Castros Cuba after becoming disillusioned with the socialist revolution. GHs May 1963 issue ran A Negro Father Speaks, in which Luther Jackson, a Washington Post reporter, described the racism that his family had experienced and tried to dispel some myths that the magazines mostly white readers might have believed about their black fellow citizens. Luther recalled being angry and humiliated when a little girl, seeing him on the street, shouted, Theres a colored man, theres a colored man! But he also noted that his own four-year-old had once shouted, Theres a man with no legs! when encountering an amputee. What is hatred, and what is merely unfamiliarity? ... Keep in mind that this was in the spring of 1963before the March on Washington, before the Civil Rights Act, before the Freedom Summer.
4. .... editors of womens magazines felt no fear of controversial topics.... Redbooks top cover line, HOW THALIDOMIDE TURNED A PREGNANCY INTO A NIGHTMARE.... discussed efforts to legalize abortionfollowing up, the editors noted, on a report in Redbooks August 1959 issue about how many doctors broke abortion laws. The magazine was trying to shape the national conversation. Even its story about counseling parishioners delved into big issues. Our modern knowledge of psychology and psychiatry, wrote Ardis Whitman, is no obstacle to religion but has in fact driven the minister to inquire more deeply into the meaning of human personality than ever before. What is sin, the article asked, and what is mental illness? Are ministers trained to treat both?
5. .... married American mothers spent close to 35 hours per week on housework in 1965. (One of Friedans stories for Ladies Home Journal was Have American Housewives Traded Brains for Brooms?) The magazines assumed that their readers were competent at sewing and needlework; the February 1963 GHfeatured instructions for knitting a coat that was a weightless classic of mohair, matchless for the bright-lights mood of a night on the town, just as stunning by day..... In March 1963,Good Housekeeping ran 500 words on how to wax a floor.
6. Not long ago, a WorkingMother.com poll asked readers when theyd last had me time. About 50 percent of respondents claimed that they couldnt remember.... thats one reason that todays womens magazines are so short. The February 2013 Ladies Home Journal runs just 104 pages. The longest features top out at six pages, and theyre graphics-heavy. No longer do editors view their product as something that youll curl up with for hours over the course of a month. Instead, a magazine is something that a woman-on-the-go can grab to fill those scarce snatches of me time: 15 minutes of waiting for the kids at soccer practice, or 20 minutes on the bus to work. The articles in todays womens magazines seem to be written explicitly for this me timethat is, centered on the reader herself and not on the larger world. After reading through the 1963 magazines, one cant help finding the modern ones a bit shallow.
7. The February 2013 issue looks at sexual health from a different perspective. One of its longest stories, hawked on the cover as BIRTH CONTROL THAT BOOSTS METABOLISM? SIGN US UP!, features women discussing why they switched contraceptive methods, with such headlines as SHE LOST THE EXTRA WEIGHT and HER LIBIDO IS BACK IN BUSINESS! Redbook writer Erin Zammett Ruddy reports that as with so many things (sex life, hair, marriage), you dont have to settle for so-so birth control. Even the staid Good Housekeeping has gone you-you-you. It has recently published a book called 7 Years Younger, turning the resources of its product-testing Good Housekeeping Research Institute to the pressing question of the most effective moisturizers. The longest piece in the magazines February 2013 issue may sound less fluffy: its news hook is some thought-provoking research from the Templeton Foundation about gratitude. But the piece emphasizes what being grateful can do for you: New research shows why gratitude is a crucial tool for health and happiness, the headline promises.
8. In all this self-obsession, something has surely been lost. Still, what the modern woman finds in todays Redbook isnt entirely superficial. Consider the time budget that the February issue of the magazine proposes for her day. Her morning should feature an intense work project; she should blog after work because if you dont block out time for personal projects and dreams, theyll never happen; her evening can be devoted to family game night! The point, Redbook notes, is to prioritize time for activities you lovewhich no longer seems to include spending all day reading a magazine."
CJ Mobile: Journey Through the Checkout Racks
