Re’Nesha Weston
Blog #3
Feminist approached magazines as artifacts in many different ways. For example Betty Freiedan, Joanna Meyerowitz, and
Nowlie Rooks wrote about feminism and literature. They did research for many years and used different types of literature
for explaining their thoughts about how the magazines and people in the magazines were being portrayed. Each author
explained their perception on the matter at hand in different ways.
Betty Friedan analyzed four major women’s magazines (Ladies’ Home Journal, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping, and Woman’s
Home Companion). The magazines showed the domestic side of the women and how they clean the house, etc. However, the
magazines also portrayed the women to be heroines. They were independent, went after their goals, worked, etc. (these were
the “new” women of the era). When it came to these women housekeeping and being “stay at home” moms were not the
case. The way the article portrayed these women were as if they did not want to be housewives but they really wanted to be
these heroines that were spoke of in these articles. On the other hand the housewives and stay at home mom articles
outweighed the heroine articles in these magazines. So even though some of the articles may have looked as if every woman
had that heroine lifestyle that was not the case at all, obviously the magazines tell the story of heroines but show the lifestyle
of housewives/stay at home moms.
Meyerowitz’s article talked about some of the same magazine articles and how the post war era affected the views of women.
She stated that many famous women were involved/ featured in the magazines and their story was told. The magazines
showed the lifestyle that not every woman lives. By showing the lifestyle of the famous people it made more women desire to
have that type of life. It showed a false way that not every woman lives. It make s it seem as if the fancy way to live was the
only way to live and being a housewife or something similar to that is outdated and judged by everyone else.
In Nowlie Rooks’ book the magazines she researched showed how African American s were treated when it came to social
class and how to act. Rooks had a very difficult time getting evidence and other historical evidence to find out information
about this topic. The artifacts that Rooks talked about discussed racial uplift a lot, it also showed how most of what seemed
to be upper class African American women were still working class. The upper class appearance was solely for the outside
people looking in. The book talks about how African American women were instructed to act in these ways/ to dress and act
in an upper class manner.
All of the analysis of magazines and other artifacts talked about how the article showed at least two different lifestyles. The
two lifestyles being: the desired lifestyle and the lifestyle actually lived. These magazines were approached as artifacts
because they were gateways to finding out historical evidence on how women lived in the past and how when the times
changed the women’s lifestyle changed as well. The feminists took different approaches and looked at various articles/
magazines to get to the conclusions that they reached. The strange thing about all of the feminists was that some of their
findings were very similar. For example how times changed, the lifestyles, and how people (including women) reacted to
these changes.
Resources:
Rooks, Noliwe M. Ladies’ Pages: African American Women’s Magazines and the Culture That Made
Them. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2004
Friedan, Betty. “Chapter 2, The Happy Housewife Heroine” 33-68. The Feminine Mystique. New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1963.
Meyewrowitz, Joanne (1993). “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass
Culture, 1946-1958,” The Journal of American History, VOl. 79, No. 4 (Mar., 1993), pp. 1455-1482.
Thomas-Williams, Critical Terms in Gender Studies, accessed January 27, 2011:
http://g205atiu.wordpress.com/critical-terms