THE BEDFORD SERIES IN HISTORY AND CULTURE

Women's Magazines 1940-1960

Gender Roles and the Popular Press

Edited with an Introduction by

Nancy A. Walker Vanderbilt University

Palgrave Macmillan

For Bedford/St. Martin's

History Editor: Katherine E. Kurzman Developmental Editor: Kate Sheehan Roach Production Editor: Stasia Zomkowski Marketing Manager: Charles Cavaliere Production Assistants: Melissa Cook, Beth Remmes Copyeditor: Barbara G. Flanagan Text Design: Claire Seng-Niemoeller Indexer: Steve Csipke Cover Design: Richard Emery Design, Inc. Cover Art: Women under hairdryers reading. UPI photo, 1961. UPI/Corbis-Bettmann. Composition: ComCom Printing and Binding: Haddon Craftsmen, Inc.

President: Charles H. Christensen Editorial Director: Joan E. Feinberg Director of Editing, Design, and Production: Marcia Cohen Managing Editor: Elizabeth M. Schaaf

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-74972

Copyright© 1998 by Bedford/St. Martin's

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, record­ing, or otherwise, except as may be expressly pennitted by the applicable copyright statutes or in writing by the Publisher.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

2 1 0 9 8 fedcba

For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin's, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116 (617-426-7440)

Acknowledgments

Figure 1. KLEENEX® and DELSEY® Tissue Products are registered trademarks of and used with permission of the Kimberly-Clark Corporation.

Figure 3. Listerine is a trademark of and used with pennission of the Warner-Lambert Company.

Figure 4. Used with pennission of the Singer Sewing Company. Figure 5. Used with permission of Star-Kist Foods, Inc. Figure 6. Used with permission ofWearever/Mirro. Figure 7. FO RMFIT is a trademark of and used with pennission of] ockey International,

Inc.

ISBN: 978-0-312-10201-2 (paperback)ISBN 978-1-349-61484-3DOI 10. 1007/978-1-137-05068-7

ISBN 978-1-137-05068-7 (eBook)

Foreword

The Bedford Series in History and Culture is designed so that readers can study the past as historians do.

The historian's first task is finding the evidence. Documents, letters, memoirs, interviews, pictures, movies, novels, or poems can provide facts and clues. Then the historian questions and compares the sources. There is more to do than in a courtroom, for hearsay evidence is welcome, and the historian is usually looking for answers beyond act and motive. Different views of an event may be as important as a single verdict. How a story is told may yield as much information as what it says.

Along the way the historian seeks help from other historians and per­haps from specialists in other disciplines. Finally, it is time to write, to decide on an interpretation and how to arrange the evidence for readers.

Each book in this series contains an important historical document or group of documents, each document a witness from the past and open to interpretation in different ways. The documents are combined with some element of historical narrative - an introduction or a biographical essay, for example - that provides students with an analysis of the primary source material and important background information about the world in which it was produced.

Each book in the series focuses on a specific topic within a specific his­torical period. Each provides a basis for lively thought and discussion about several aspects of the topic and the historian's role. Each is short enough (and inexpensive enough) to be a reasonable one-week assign­ment in a college course. Whether as classroom or personal reading, each book in the series provides firsthand experience of the challenge - and fun - of discovering, re-creating, and interpreting the past.

iii

Natalie lemon Davis EmestRMay

Preface

Designed primarily for college courses in American history, American studies, women's studies, and popular culture, Women's Magazines brings together selections from mass-circulation magazines for women pub­lished between 1940 and 1960. By focusing on the World War II and post­war periods, this reader provides documents that participate in the debates about woman's role as homemaker and citizen, wife and worker, mother and consumer during two decades of enormous social change. With circulations numbering in the millions each month, the major women's magazines- through their editorial content, fiction, and adver­tising- served as advice manuals, guides to fashion and home decor, cookbooks, marriage counselors, and catalogs of goods and services. A sampling of their contents thus provides a resource for understanding how a pervasive segment of the popular press perceived and attempted to influence women's values, goals, and behavior.

The period that this volume addresses has been the subject of a great deal of recent reassessment by cultural historians, who have pointed out that American culture in the 1940s and 1950s was far more diverse eco­nomically, politically, and culturally than early television situation come­dies would lead us to believe. On one level, the content of the women's magazines contributes to, rather than disturbs, stereotypical notions of the period: The overwhelming ideal in the magazines is the white, middle­class nuclear family. Yet a careful look at this material reveals glimpses of a world well beyond the tranquil suburbs. Advertisers' portrayals of African Americans almost exclusively as railroad porters and mammies expose the racial prejudice that was the target of the civil rights move­ment of the 1950s; the fiction published in the magazines frequently shows people coming perilously close to adultery or other illicit behav­ior; and the very fact that so many articles give advice on remedying troubled marriages suggests that Beaver Cleaver's family was not the norm in real life.

Nearly five years of research in the magazines themselves have con-

v

vi PREFACE

vinced me of the centrality and continuing relevance of the following the­matic groups, into which the nonfiction articles are organized in this book: World War II, women and the workplace, marriage and motherhood, homemaking and consumerism, and fashion and beauty. It will quickly become obvious to readers that these are not mutually exclusive cate­gories. The material for this volume has been drawn from a dozen maga­zines, including Ladies' Home journal, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Woman's Home Companion, Harper's Bazaar, Mademoiselle, Seventeen, Better Homes and Gardens, Redbook, Coronet, and Parents. The first four periodicals in this list are represented most frequently in the volume for several reasons: They had the largest circulations during the period (although Woman's Home Companion ceased publication in 1957) and therefore had the greatest potential to both reflect and influence women's lives; because of their large subscriber and advertiser base, the magazines could afford to attract well-known writers to their pages; and they published articles on a wider variety of topics than did more specialized periodicals.

The book's final section, "Critiques of the Women's Magazines, 1946-1960," provides a different perspective on the content of the women's magazines of the period; it is composed of a group of articles critical of the women's magazines published in other periodicals during the period. Such critiques testify to the significance the magazines had assumed in mid century American culture and can serve as starting points for discussion of the magazines' philosophies and contents.

Most of the authors whose names are not footnoted with their selec­tions were members of the editorial staffs of the magazines; a few were apparently freelance writers who did not achieve sufficient stature as writers to have biographical information included in standard reference works and computer databases. Although some of these authors pub­lished fiction and/ or nonfiction in the magazines with some regularity, the fact that they published work primarily in mass-circulation periodi­cals has prevented their careers from being documented in the same way as have those of other writers. I take sole responsibility for errors or omis­sions in the documentation provided.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the editorial staff at Bedford Books - especially Louise Townsend, Kate Sheehan Roach, Fred Courtright, and Stasia Zomkowski - for their assistance and their patience with what has turned out to be a much more complex project than any of us knew at

PREFACE vii

the start. And my special thanks go to the staff in the bound periodicals department of the Ben West Public Library in Nashville, Tennessee, par­ticularly Lawanda Smith, who made me welcome, assisted with the loca­tion of materials, and saw me through many an ordeal with copy machines and microfilm. Finally, the manuscript benefited from the thoughtful comments and constructive criticisms of Lois Banner at the University of Southern California, James Gilbert at the University of Maryland, Col­lege Park, Joanne Meyerowitz at the University of Cincinnati, Eva Moskowitz, and Ellen Schrecker at the National Humanities Center.

Nancy A Walker

Contents

Foreword iii

Preface v

list of Illustrations xiii

PARr ONE

Introduction: Women's Magazines and Women's Roles 1

The Role of the Women's Magazines 1 Women and Society 11

PARr1WO

The Documents 21

1. World War II 23

1. ''What Do the Women of America Think about War?" Ladies' Home journal, February 1940 24

2. PearlS. Buck, ''Women and War," Ladies' Home journal, May1940 26

3. Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, ''Women Work for Their Country," Woman's Home Companion, December 1941 34

4. "How a Woman Should Wear a Uniform," Good Housekeeping, August 1942 35

5. "Meet the Berckmans: The Story of a Mother Working on Two Fronts," Ladies' Home journal, October 1942 37

6.]. Edgar Hoover, "Mothers ... Our Only Hope," Woman's Home Companion, January 1944 44

ix

X CONTENTS

7. James Madison Wood, "Should We Draft Mothers?" Woman~ Home Companion, January 1944 48

8. Alfred Toombs, 'War Babies," Woman's Home Companion, April1944 50

9. ''When Your Soldier Comes Home," Ladies' Home journal, October 1945 56

2. Women and the Workplace 63

10. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 'Women in Politics," Good Housekeeping, April1940 65

11. ''You Can't Have a Career and Be a Good Wife," Ladies' Home journal, January 1944 71

12. Alice Hamilton, M.D., ''Why I Am against the Equal Rights Amendment," Ladies' Home journal, July 1945 76

13. Jennifer Colton, ''Why I Quit Working," Good Housekeeping, September 1951 82

14. 'Women in Flight," Mademoiselle, December 1952 86 15. 'The Married Woman Goes Back to Work," Woman's

Home Companion, October 1956 87

3. Marriage and Motherhood 97

16. Helen Welshimer, "My Husband Says-," Good Housekeeping, February 1940 100

17. Wainwright Evans, "Are Good Mothers 'Unfaithful' Wives?" Better Homes and Gardens, July 1941 102

18. ''What's on Your Mind?" Redbook, July 1945 106 19. Amram Scheinfeld, "Are American Moms a Menace?"

Ladies' Home journal, November 1945 108 20. "Are You Too Educated to Be a Mother?" Ladies' Home

journal, June 1946 114 21. ''What Makes Wives Dissatisfied?" Woman's Home

Companion, April1947 116 22. Clifford R. Adams, "Making Marriage Work," Ladies'

Home journal, January 1948 121 23. Mrs. Dale Carnegie, "How to Help Your Husband Get

Ahead," Coronet, January 1954 126 24. Paul H. Landis, ''What Is 'Normal' Married Love?" Coronet,

October 1957 136

CONTENTS xi

25. Beryl Pfizer, "Six Rude Answers to One Rude Question," McCall's, July 1960 141

4. Homemaking 145 26: Grace L. Pennock, "Starting from Scratch," Ladies' Home

journal, April1940 146 27. Dorothy Canfield Fisher, "Housekeeping Need Not Be

Dull," Ladies' Home journal, October 1941 149 28. Dr. Carl P. Sherwin, 'The Question-Box," Good

Housekeeping, January 1944 152 29. M. F. K Fisher, 'The lively Art of Eating," Harper's

Bazaar, November 1944 156 30. Dorothy Thompson, "Occupation - Housewife," Ladies'

Home journal, March 1949 161 31. Helen W. Kendall, "Electric Mixers- Strong Right Arms,"

Good Housekeeping, January 1950 165 32. Jane Whitbread and Vivian Cadden, "Granny's on the Pan,"

Redbook, November 1951 166 33. Robert J. Knowlton, ''Your Wife Has an Easy Racket!"

American Magazine, November 1951 170 34. Paul Jones, "Is There a Plot against Women?" Ladies'

Home journal, July 1954 180 35. Selma Robinson, "103 Women Sound Off!" McCall's,

February 1959 182 36. Joyce Lubold, "My Love Affair with the Washing-Machine

Man," McCall's, June 1960 189

5. Fashion and Beauty 193 37. Ruth Anna Read, 'Those Simple little Exercises," Good

Housekeeping, July 1940 196 38. 'The Mood Has Changed," Harper's Bazaar, September

1944 198 39. "Can You Date These Fashions?" Harper's Bazaar,

October 1944 199 40. Sally Berry, "Do You Make These Beauty Blunders?"

Good Housekeeping, April1944 202 41. Elizabeth Pope, "What Is a 'Well-Dressed' Woman?"

Redbook, July 1945 204

xii CONTENTS

42. Janet Engel, 'The Fattest Girl in the Class," Seventeen, January1948 211

43. 'The Lass with the Delicate Air," Mademoiselle, July 1949 215 44. "At My Age," Harper's Bazaar, December 1949 220 45. 'The Line Forms Here," Mademoiselle, July 1952 221 46. Bernice Peck, "Accessory after the Body," Mademoiselle,

October 1952 223 47. "Making Less of Yourself," Harper's Bazaar, September

1955 224 48. Elinor Goulding Smith, "How to Look Halfway Decent,"

McCall's, February 1959 225

6. Critiques of the Women's Magazines, 1946-1960 228 49. Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger, 'The Women's

Magazines," New Republic, March 1946 229 50. Ann Griffith, 'The Magazines Women Read," American

Mercury, March 1949 234 51. Marghanita Laski, "What Every Woman Knows by Now,"

Atlantic Monthly, May 1950 242 52. Mary McCarthy, "Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue,"

Reporter, July 1950 247 53. Katharine M. Byrne, "Happy Little Wives and Mothers,"

America, January 1956 2!14 54. Joan Didion, "Marriage ala Mode," National Review,

August 1960 258

APPENDICES

Questions for Consideration 262 Suggestions for Further Reading 263

Index 267

Illustrations

1. Delsey toilet paper advertisement from Woman's Home Companion xiv

2. Cocomalt advertisement from Ladies' Home journal, May 1940 61

3. Listerine advertisement from Good Housekeeping, i\ugust1949 98

4. Singer advertisement from Woman's Home Companion, December 1956 144

5. Star-Kist tuna advertisement from American Home, September 1950 155

6. Wear-Ever advertisement from Ladies' Home journal, ~~1~ 1~

7. Formfit advertisement from Woman's Home Companion, i\pril1942 194

8. "Can you date these fashions?" from Harper's Bazaar, October 1944 200

9. "Do you make these beauty blunders?" from Good Housekeeping, i\pril1944 203

10. ''What is a 'Well-Dressed' woman?" from Redbook, July 1945 208

Figure 1. Delsey toilet paper advertisement from Woman's Home Companion.