Women’s Magazines, 1940–1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press

This is the first volume to use women's magazines as a window into the experience of women living in the 1940s and 1950s. The book chronicles the debate over women's domestic and public roles during two decades of enormous social change in America. Organized into 7 topics, the 60 compelling articles and 10 advertisements, taken primarily from Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Woman's Home Companion, Better Homes and Gardens, Harper's Bazaar and McCall's, provide a fun and fascinating look at the place of women in American society during the 1940s and 1950s and what their goals were (or were perceived to be). The selections effectively illustrate how feminine culture has (and has not) changed in the second half of the twentieth century. A general introduction places women's magazines in the context of World War II and postwar America, and chapter introductions provide historical background on the themes.