What Is Martha Stewart's Magazine?

Since the beginning of time itself, Television has been one the most influential pieces of media that the world has ever encountered. The beginning days of television depicted stereotypical mothers cooking and cleaning their homes for their husbands and children. Yet, as the decades passed, television took a dramatic turn, leaving the days of drama free entertainment as a vast memory. Now a day, however, when one hits the power on button to Bravo, the screen lights expand to ritzy socialites dealing with their everyday lives as “housewives”. Bravo TV’s hit number one reality television show, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, deals with the everyday lives of modern-day housewives. When speaking of these women and their family life, the

They were born in great numbers and as a result became the most powerful group of consumers. Advertisers soon set the guidelines to what material commercial products every girl needed to obtain her status in society. Women’s roles on television gradually changed from perfect housewives to mystical genies and witches with power, but somehow they always subdued their power to please their men. In the background women were fighting for equal rights and equal pay, but the media portrayed these protests as isolated events and acts of extremists. The newscasts attempted to label feminists as women who protested against being exploited and “looked at” by exploiting themselves and secretly wanted men’s attention by these protests. Television did respond by developing a new “tougher” woman, but made her success dependent on her attractiveness and sexuality. The media’s simultaneous promotion and containment of the women’s movement left the young women of the seventies exposed to what Douglas refers to as social schizophrenia (9). Feminist were now rejecting cosmetics and other marketed ploys that contributed to the oppression of women, leaving industries that were primarily focused on women’s “needs” struggling to address this while maintaining their market. Mass media encouraged and exploited commercial androgyny with unisex fashions and Madison Avenue promoted a new “natural look” that was anything but natural. This look promoted a Lolita image that

The most prevalent and popular stereotype of the post World war II era in America is one filled with women abandoning their wartimes jobs and retreating into the home to fulfill their womanly duties. In Joanne Meyerowitz’s Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, she shows how far women departed from this one dimensional image. While Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is reflexive and focused on the mainstream, Meyerowitz’s analysis is a broader and more inclusive exploration of media, as she draws upon multiple sources. Although Friedan effectively unveiled the thought process and reasoning behind society's belief that the message of media was to make women think that their place was to be the happy housewife, Meyerowitz expanded her media archives and found a differing message in analyzing both female responses to media and exploring their stories.

The magazine Ladies Repository: A Monthly Periodical Devoted to Literature, Arts, and Religion is a magazine that was published in 1800 and was targeted towards young women. The magazine was a way to help teach and encourage women of the time on how to properly fit in and behave according to the rules that society had placed on them. It taught them how to be considered an ideal, cultured woman with high morals and spiritual standards. Although many readers today would argue that the teachings and ideas taught by this magazine are extremely outdated and outrageously sexist, one must realize that this was society’s standard for women during the 1800’s.

Martha Stewart is energizing the homemaking marketplace. The home is a key part of the American Dream, Her

Mutually Frankie and Kinfolk magazine set heavy presidents on everything in the home to hold an aesthetic value – particularly one that centers on the minimalist and handcrafted objects. This new popular aesthetic, which has been described as ‘approachable luxury’, is arguably a backlash against corporate America and the oversaturation of consumer based marketing . Much like Kinfolk and Frankie the style, as a Kinfolk contributor describes it; “It’s about going back our roots. People are recognizing beauty in thing made by hand.” Yet, this style is hardly approachable. The style and crafts that Frankie and Kinfolk display hold a high level of privilege that neither publication addresses. For as simplistic and clean as the minimal style looks

In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan defines “The Problem That Has No Name” to be the dissatisfaction and longing in suburban housewives which was not caused by a lack of femininity but an excess of education and awareness. Society defined the suburban housewife as “the dream image of the young American woman and the envy…of women all over the world” (Friedan 60). Women were expected to make a “career” out of being housewives, which Friedan found to be ridiculous. Women should not be confined to the home when they have the same capabilities as men. By failing to speak out, these women allowed this idea of the ideal housewife to become engraved into every American’s mind, and this image of the ideal housewife did not benefit women at all

Written by the former senior editor of Good Housekeeping Carolyn Kitch, this books offers an intimate look at various representations of womanhood in illustrated magazines and mass culture from 1895 to 1930. The subject of her study are magazine covers and advertising images. Kitch discusses the distinct feminine types depicted in each decade. These include various portrayals of the modern woman of the time – the Gibson Girl, the Fisher's Girl, The Christy's Girl, the Vamp, the Flapper. Taken together, and considered chronologically, they represent a system of icons. Kitch explains that these feminine ideals symbolize the zeitgeist of particular eras, and they are a way of making sense of societal change as well as serving to impose norms on

Angela Missoni is a woman's woman and with her intensely patterned but coolly controlled collection, the designer came into her own. She neither shrugged off the heritage of knit and pattern, nor was trapped by it. And there was an easy, breezy elegance to the way that Missoni played with volumes, from the print-lined black parka that opened the show, to its later chevron fur

The 1990s saw the continued success of magazines illustrated with wood engravings from the prior decade. However, with better printing technology magazine companies were able to evolve even further. “Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper” changed its name to “Leslie’s Weekly”. “McClure’s” and “The Century branched to accommodate the growing women and children demographic. “Once-A-Week” became “Collier’s Weekly” and the “The Saturday Evening Post” updated its look, evolving into country’s most popular magazine. In addition, “The Saturday Evening Post” transformed its Sunday women’s supplement into the “The Ladies Home Journal”. As a result, magazine’s shifted their attention to the female demographic, leading to the creations of “Cosmopolitan,

According to Friedan, in the 1950-1960s magazines portrayed images of happy women, content at being homemakers and mothers, thus creating the "feminine mystique"- the idea that women can find no greater purpose but the fulfilment of their own femininity. Friedan claims that men, the writers and editors of women’s magazines, who often dictated the media message, constructed this feminine ideal. It was the root of the discontent of suburban women. She juxtaposed this with the 1930s when mass circulation magazines featured strong and independent women involved in successful careers.

Previously, women had been considered only housewives, catering to needs of their children, cleaning, and the overall maintenance of their homes. They were not able to pursue jobs outside their homes as this was unacceptable in society. However, there is a perpetual pattern of the change in fashion as women gain more rights and step out of their boundaries. In a sense, women became bold and fearless. The 1920’s along with the 1960’s are also periods that emphasize the changes in fashion due to major societal changes.

I read the prompt for this paper and began to ponder what I was going to choose to write it on, and then I went to the grocery store and stumbled upon this piece of gold. I decided to take a positive approach on this assignment and point out that there is positive changes happening for women. We have discussed previously in class how women and men are often portrayed on magazine covers according to their ideal gender roles in society. When I picked up this empowering magazine in the grocery store it spoke to me and really emphasized how far the women's movement has come. The theme of this particular Glamour magazine is bold; it is women empowerment by defying social norms, it is women making a statement by expressing a greater message of resistance,

The final magazine I will be examining is Marie Claire. This is another publication aimed at a more mature audience, with a deeper focus on beauty through materialism. Like Complete Woman, it contains more explicit sexual detail and a more serious focus on relationships. Also, because of its abundance of advertisements of expensive cosmetics and clothing, we may assume that this magazine is class-specific to a wealthier consumer. Marie Claire’s cover stories include “What Your Style Says About You”, “How to Get Perfect Skin: 44 Products that Really Work”, “How Often Do You Have Sex?”, “Men: What They Don’t Want You To Do”, and “428 Fashion and Beauty Ideas”.

The era of the housewife usually paints a rosy mental picture; a white picket fence, a large house with a big yard, a beautiful family, and homemade goods. However, as seen in Betty Friedan’s article “The Problem That Has No Name”, describes the turmoil experienced by housewives of the 1960s. The problem was described and become popularized in a variety of ways by media outlets, such as ungrateful housewives that had too much education to realize “how lucky she is” (52). The women who experienced the problem described the feelings of inadequacy and frustration such as “I feel empty some how” or “I feel as if I don’t exist” (50). Although Friedan does not clearly state what the exact problem is it is apperant that these women want more from