You've Got a Long Way to Go, Baby - women's magazines

Washington Monthly, Oct, 1999 by Alexandra Starr

Women's magazines continue to create--and exploit--women's anxiety

THE TEST MONITORS HAD WARNED that removing anything from the Advanced Placement English Exam book was strictly off-limits. But when I read the opening paragraph of Joan Didion's essay On Self Respect, I knew I had to smuggle it home. I was not the type to risk the opprobrium of my superiors (and I would have been mortified if I had been caught carefully ripping my test booklet apart), but I suppose that's why I found Didion's wry wisdom so compelling. At the awkward age of 17, I had bought the line that good manners, high SAT scores, and a small dress size would assure a lifetime's worth of happiness. Didion, however, delivered a very different message. Those accomplishments might earn praise from other people, she allowed, but impressing parents, teachers, boyfriends, et al. would never secure approval from the most important audience of all: yourself. Pin your sense of self-worth on opinions of others, Didion warned, and one day you will face yourself "with the apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand"

Overshadowing that insight is a curious irony: On Self Respect first appeared in the pages of Vogue. While Didion's essay explained that a sense of self-worth had nothing to do with the perceptions of others, the magazine insinuated that external image was everything. For the young women who picked up that 1961 edition of the glossy, it was a particularly potent message. Back then, women were shut out of all but a handful of professional careers, and their economic security hinged on the fortunes of the men they married. Attracting Mr. Right and keeping him happy was of paramount importance, and Vogue and sister publications like Glamour and Mademoiselle implicitly promised the battle plan to landing the gold ring. Cosmetics and clothes comprised the bulk of the weaponry, and it's hard to think of more fertile ground for ads hawking "indispensable" products like eyeliner and pantyhose than in their pages. But women's magazines didn't just sell ad space to cosmetics companies and clothing retailers--they actively plugged their advertisers' products in their articles, too. The proverbial wall between ads and editorial was never very high in these magazines, if it was ever erected to begin with.

Now, a logical legacy of the women's rights movement should have been the demise of these publications. Once women were free to navigate the shoals of corporate America or trailblaze in genetic research, their futures no longer depended on being attractive to the opposite sex. And as women's magazines had essentially made "how to land a man" their organizing principle, you would think emancipated females would have junked those glossies along with their Hoovers and Betty Crocker aprons. But the market didn't exactly dry up: An estimated 40 million women read these magazines each month. And while the women's movement preached autonomy and independence, that message didn't prompt women's magazine editors to rethink their promiscuous relationship with their advertisers; these publications still enthusiastically flog their advertisers' products.

Of course, those plugs are just an added bonus to an already lucrative forum for advertisers. While these slicks profess to help women "be all they can be," their photographs of anorexic models, innumerable diets, and fashion tips all raise the bar of what a woman "should" be to ridiculous (and unhealthy) heights. What better place than in their pages to peddle products that promise to close the gap between what women are and this unattainable ideal?

Stepford's little helper

"You ask--what am I really like?" reads a Glamour spread from October 1960. "We answer--we know you. You're spirited and witty, trying pretty valiantly to practice what we preach: that regardless of age or circumstance, it's your obligation as a woman to look attractive." The message wasn't always laid out that explicitly, but it's certainly the subtext on every page of these magazines. How women's publications honed that pitch depended on their target audience. Redbook and Ladies' Home Journal were must-reads for older suburban housewives, while Mademoiselle and Glamour aimed for college girls and middle class "young marrieds." Harper's Bazaar and Vogue's niche was the moneyed couture set. So while photo layouts of leggy lookers was the norm in all these magazines, Glamour would paste a heading proclaiming "He says he'll eat soup for a year, if I'll just buy something great" across the top of one layout; you'd never find that phrasing in the snootier Vogue.

Still, the bottom line in all of these publications was the same: Women's raison d'etre revolved around sporting wedding bands. To a '90s reader, poring over these magazines gives a whole new appreciation for Adrienne Rich's line from the 1963 poem Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: "A thinking woman sleeps with monsters." Thinking, apparently, wasn't part of the plan. "Man is a romantic and needs illusion," cautions a 1949 Glamour article. "Part of this illusion (which should be reality) is that a woman needs him ... If a woman is too self-sufficient, either in ... intelligence or in her competence--this illusion withers." Aside from coyly dumbing themselves down, women would also do well to meticulously monitor their appearance, Glamour advised in its 1960's feature "Fifty Ways to Charm a Man" Men "come out four square against stocking seams crooked, slips showing, heels run down, nail polish chipped, and lipstick where it doesn't belong," reported the editors. And forget about asking hubby to help out around the house or take care of junior. "Babies prefer their mothers to take care of them rather than their fathers," a 1961 Redbook article dubiously reported. Women, furthermore, had better continue the after-work cocktail hour with their husbands, lest the new dad begin to feel neglected. And under no circumstances should the man of the family come home to a "half-baked dinner"!