This book focuses on women's magazines, on how they are read and the role they play in their readers' lives.

Analysing major interwar women's magazines - the literary journal 'Ladies' Review', the popular domestic periodical 'Housewife's Friend', and the politically radical magazine 'Women's Arts' - this book considers the central place of representations of women for women in the culture of interwar-era Japan.

Literary and popular culture has often focused its attention on women readers, particularly since early Victorian times. In Reading Women, an esteemed group of new and established scholars provide a close study of the evolution of the woman reader by examining a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century media, including Antebellum scientific treatises, Victorian paintings, and Oprah Winfrey's televised book club, as well as the writings of Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Zora Neale Hurston. Attending especially to what, how, and why women read, Reading Women brings together a rich array of subjects that sheds light on the defining role the woman reader has played in the formation, not only of literary history, but of British and American culture. The contributors break new ground by focusing on the impact representations of women readers have had on understandings of literacy and certain reading practices, the development of books and print culture, and the categorization of texts into high and low cultural forms.

Americans are obsessed with celebrities. While our fascination with fame intensified throughout the twentieth century, the rise of the weekly gossip magazine in the early 2000s confirmed and fueled our popular culture’s celebrity mania. After a decade of diets and dates, breakups and baby bumps, celebrity gossip magazines continue to sell millions of issues each week. Why are readers, especially young women, so attracted to these magazines? What pleasures do they offer us? And why do we read them, even when we disagree with the images of femininity that they splash across their hot-pink covers? Andrea McDonnell answers these questions with the help of interviews from editors and readers, and her own textual and visual analysis. McDonnell’s perspective is multifaceted; she examines the notorious narratives of celebrity gossip magazines as well as the genre’s core features, such as the "Just Like Us" photo montage and the "Who Wore It Best?" poll. McDonnell shows that, despite their trivial reputation, celebrity gossip magazines serve as an important site of engagement for their readers, who use these texts to generate conversation, manage relationships, and consider their own ideas and values.

Bridal magazines have become increasingly popular in Western society, proliferating the idea of a ‘princess bride’ on her ‘big day’. Yet little has been written on how the ever-expanding wedding media and the popular wedding culture constructs gender and affects the ways women live and experience their weddings. Offering a critique of contemporary wedding discourse, this book marries together analyses of media texts and their reception to propose a new approach to media discourse. The analysis richly illustrates how women are invited to embrace not only the stereotypical idea of bridal femininity but also a consumptive way of experiencing it. Through examination of brides’ accounts of their ‘big days’, the book observes the imprints of the popular gender imagery on their self-portraits and self-narratives, and describes the women’s diverse approaches to them. Based on insights from gender and critical discourse studies, sociology and audience research, this exploration illuminates the ongoing debate on ‘media and gender’ and its methodological approaches.

This anthology makes available to students and general readers the rich variety of Victorian magazines for women. The extracts range from fashion magazines to feminist journals, from serious works for Christian mothers to tales of romance and passion for 'sweethearts'. Focusing on the historical development of the British women's magazine, this extensively illustrated work gives access to texts which few readers ever see. The first main section describes and illustrates eight kinds of magazine for women. Though they have common features, the differences between the drawing room journal of the 1830s and 1840s and the cheap domestic magazines of the 1890s are clearly demonstrated. The second section focuses on those elements which made up the magazine's typical mix of ingredients, including fiction, the fashion plate, poetry, political journalism, advice columns and reader's letters. The last section is the most comprehensive listing of British Victorian women's magazines which currently exists. This is a work of scholarship but one which will appeal to students of Cultural, Historical, Literary and Women's Studies, as well as to the general interested reader. Like the magazines it represents, it offers its readers both entertainment and instruction.

Foregrounds the diversity of periodicals, fiction and other printed matter targeted at women in the postwar periodForegrounds the diversity and the significance of print cultures for women in the postwar period across periodicals, fiction and other printed matterExamines changes and continuities as women's magazines have moved into digital formatsHighlights the important cultural and political contexts of women's periodicals including the Women's Liberation Movement and SocialismExplores the significance of women as publishers, printers and editorsWomen's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s-2000s draws attention to the wide range of postwar print cultures for women. The collection spans domestic, cultural and feminist magazines and extends to ephemera, novels and other printed matter as well as digital magazine formats. The range of essays indicates both the history of publishing for women and the diversity of readers and audiences over the mid-late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century in Britain. The collection reflects in detail the important ways in magazines and printed matter contributed to, challenged, or informed British women's culture. A range of approaches, including interview, textual analysis and industry commentary are employed in order to demonstrate the variety of ways in which the impact of postwar print media may be understood.

Media, Gender and Identityis an accessible introduction to the relationship between media and gender identities today. It begins with an assessment of the different ways in which gender and identity have previously been studied and provides new ways for thinking about the media's influence on gender and sexuality. David Gauntlett explores the gender landscape of contemporary media and draws on recent theories of identity negotiation and queer theory to understand the place of popular media in people's lives. Using a range of examples from films, television programs, and men's and women's magazines,Media, Gender and Identityshows how the media are used in the shaping of individual self-identity. The book is supported by a regularly updated website at: www.theoryhead.com/gender.