turning on the spit. And to his wife, without whom (sometimes) the barbecue could never be the smashing summer success it undoubtedly is . . .â
There were also the regular front-of-the-book âserviceâ columns on new drug and medicine developments, child-care facts, columns by Clare Luce and by Eleanor Roosevelt, and âPats and Pans,â a column of readersâ letters.
The image of woman that emerges from this big, pretty magazine is young and frivolous, almost childlike; fluffy and feminine; passive; gaily content in a world of bedroom and kitchen, sex, babies, and home. The magazine surely does not leave out sex; the only passion, the only pursuit, the only goal a woman is permitted is the pursuit of a man. It is crammed full of food, clothing, cosmetics, furniture, and the physical bodies of young women, but where is the world of thought and ideas, the life of the mind and spirit? In the magazine image, women do no work except housework and work to keep their bodies beautiful and to get and keep a man.
This was the image of the American woman in the year Castro led a revolution in Cuba and men were trained to travel into outer space; the year that the African continent brought forth new nations, and a plane whose speed is greater than the speed of sound broke up a Summit Conference; the year artists picketed a great museum in protest against the hegemony of abstract art; physicists explored the concept of anti-matter; astronomers, because of new radio telescopes, had to alter their concepts of the expanding universe; biologists made a breakthrough in the fundamental chemistry of life; and Negro youth in Southern schools forced the United States, for the first time since the Civil War, to face a moment of democratic truth. But this magazine, published for over 5,000,000 American women, almost all of whom have been through high school and nearly half to college, contained almost no mention of the world beyond the home. In the second half of the twentieth century in America, womanâs world was confined to her own body and beauty, the charming of man, the bearing of babies, and the physical care and serving of husband, children, and home. And this was no anomaly of a single issue of a single womenâs magazine.
I sat one night at a meeting of magazine writers, mostly men, who work for all kinds of magazines, including womenâs magazines. The main speaker was a leader of the desegregation battle. Before he spoke, another man outlined the needs of the large womenâs magazine he edited:
Our readers are housewives, full time. Theyâre not interested in the broad public issues of the day. They are not interested in national or international affairs. They are only interested in the family and the home. They arenât interested in politics, unless itâs related to an immediate need in the home, like the price of coffee. Humor? Has to be gentle, they donât get satire. Travel? We have almost completely dropped it. Education? Thatâs a problem. Their own education level is going up. Theyâve generally all had a high-school education and many, college. Theyâre tremendously interested in education for their childrenâfourth-grade arithmetic. You just canât write about ideas or broad issues of the day for women. Thatâs why weâre publishing 90 per cent service now and 10 per cent general interest.
Another editor agreed, adding plaintively: âCanât you give us something else besides âthereâs death in your medicine cabinetâ? Canât any of you dream up a new crisis for women? Weâre always interested in sex, of course.â
At this point, the writers and editors spent an hour listening to Thurgood Marshall on the inside story of the desegregation battle, and its possible effect on the presidential election. âToo bad I canât run that story,â one editor said. âBut you just canât link it to
Harry Fisch, Karen Moline