I have to agree with Kim Voss about the women's pages of the 1950s and '60s, and would go her one better. The truth is all women's magazines, not just women's pages, have offered multiple, and sometimes conflicting, images and ideas about women and gender. Those competing discourses, in fact, have been a hallmark of the women's magazine as a media form, and a lynchpin of its social identity, from the very start of the tradition (in the U.S., in the 1790s). It's built into the form itself -- and so tensions can still be found, even in the sophisticated, highly professionalized magazines of today. Read any Glamour, Redbook, O, Self, Marie Claire... Monolithic ideas of gender identity Ì¢âÂÛÏ traditionalist, careerist, feminist, consumerist, and more Ì¢âÂÛÏ continue to be both constructed and questioned in their pages. I think that's a major reason women's magazines have remained so popular with readers for over two centuries -- despite dramatic changes in middle class women's lives and media options over that time. WomenÌ¢âÂã¢s magazines give audiences a chance to see and create for themselves more than one gender identity, more than one story. And the prerogative to select from among the elements; to critique, adopt, dismiss and build at will; to develop our own narratives and meanings; this is fun -- and, within limits of course, can be self-actualizing.
I have to agree with Kim Voss about the women's pages of the 1950s and '60s, and would go her one better. The truth is all women's magazines, not just women's pages, have offered multiple, and sometimes conflicting, images and ideas about women and gender. Those competing discourses, in fact, have been a hallmark of the women's magazine as a media form, and a lynchpin of its social identity, from the very start of the tradition (in the U.S., in the 1790s). It's built into the form itself -- and so tensions can still be found, even in the sophisticated, highly professionalized magazines of today. Read any Glamour, Redbook, O, Self, Marie Claire... Monolithic ideas of gender identity Ì¢âÂÛÏ traditionalist, careerist, feminist, consumerist, and more Ì¢âÂÛÏ continue to be both constructed and questioned in their pages. I think that's a major reason women's magazines have remained so popular with readers for over two centuries -- despite dramatic changes in middle class women's lives and media options over that time. WomenÌ¢âÂã¢s magazines give audiences a chance to see and create for themselves more than one gender identity, more than one story. And the prerogative to select from among the elements; to critique, adopt, dismiss and build at will; to develop our own narratives and meanings; this is fun -- and, within limits of course, can be self-actualizing.