Understanding Women's Magazines investigates the changing landscape of women's magazines. Anna Gough-Yates focuses on the successes, failures and shifting fortunes of a number of magazines including Elle, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Frank, New Woman and Red and considers the dramatic developments that have taken place in women's magazine publishing in the last two decades. Understanding Women's Magazines examines the transformation in the production, advertising and marketing practices of women's magazines. Arguing that these changes were driven by political and economic shifts, commercial cultures and the need to get closer to the reader, the book shows how this has led to an increased focus on consumer lifestyles and attempts by publishers to identify and target a 'new woman'.

A study of the more than fifty US and International glossy publications for women. This analysis focuses on the strategies by which the commercial structure shapes the cultural content, the magazines' repetitive attempts to secure a consensus about the feminine that is grounded in consumerism, and the contradictory semiotic structures at work within and between purchased ads, covert ads, and editorial features.

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.

Unlike its British forebears, the early American magazine, or periodical miscellany, functioned in culture as a forum driven by manifold contributions and perpetuated by reader response. Arising in colonial Philadelphia, America's more democratic magazine sustained a range of conflicting ideas, norms, and beliefs—indeed, it promoted their very exchange. It invited and embraced competing voices, particularly during the first 75 years of the Republic. In this first-ever account of the early American magazine as a distinct form, Amy Beth Aronson reveals how such participatory dynamics and public visibility offered special advantages to women, especially to those with sufficient education, access, and financial means, for whom ladies magazines offered unusual opportunities for self-expression, collective discussion, and cultural response. Moreover, the genre opened and sustained dialogue among contributors, whose competing voices played off each other, provoking rebuttal and revision by subsequent contributors and noncontributing readers. This free play of discourse positioned women's words in a uniquely productive way, offering a kind of community of women readers who, together, wrote and revised magazine content and collectively negotiated and authorized new language for a new public's use.

Throughout their history, women's mass circulation journals have played a major role in the lives of millions of American women. Yet the women's magazines of the early 20th century were quite different from those perused by women today. This book looks at changes that occurred in these journals and offers insight into these changes. Business forces formed a key shaping mechanism, tempered by individual editors, readers, advertisers, technology, and cultural and social forces. Founded in the second half of the 19th century, six titles became the largest circulators—Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Pictorial Review, Woman's Home Companion, and Delineator. Capturing the interest of readers and advertisers, these journals published reliable service departments, fiction, and investigative reporting; however, competition eventually bred editorial caution. This, coupled with the depression of the 1930s, led to a narrowing of content and the beginning of Betty Friedan's feminine mystique. After World War II, the journals faced competition from television. The women's liberation movement and women's entry into the work force also brought changes.

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

Anna Gough-Yates considers the rapid shift in women's magazines towards titles aimed at newly-identified 'lifestyle' groups of women readers.

More than twenty superstars from the world of crafting--including Anna Corba, April Cornell, Sandi Genovese, and Andrea Grossman--offer their expert advice on how to design a work space where creativity can blossom. Like the bestselling Business of Bliss, it's practical, inspirational, and beautiful to behold. Research by Craft Trends Magazine reveals that 89% of all crafters are women, and that they want to work in an environment conducive to creating their art. This invaluable and very special guide helps them achieve that goal, whatever their passion. It goes straight to the experts: successful women who have made their mark in more than 10 different creative fields. These top designers and artisans offer insights gleaned from years of experience, reveal how they constructed their own creative spaces, and explain how the reader can make practical use of these decorating, organizational, and inspirational techniques as they go about designing their own work areas. Among the pertinent questions they answer: Where did you like to work as a child? What's the most important thing about having your own place to work? Are women's creative spaces different from men's? How important is it for you to organize your work, and how do you do it? Do you listen to music when you work--and what kind? The featured designers include Wendy Addison, Dena Fishbein, Jill Schwartz, and Suze Weinberg and their fields range from paper crafts to gardening. A Selection of the Crafters Choice Book Club & the Homestyle Book Club.

“In this entertaining academic history of these rival magazines, Mesch . . . explores the emergence of the working woman in France.” —Publishers Weekly At once deeply historical and surprisingly timely, Having It All in the Belle Epoque shows how the debates that continue to captivate high-achieving women in America and Europe can be traced back to the early 1900s in France. The first two photographic magazines aimed at women, Femina and La Vie Heureuse created a female role model who could balance age-old convention with new equalities. Often referred to simply as the “modern woman,” this captivating figure embodied the hopes and dreams as well as the most pressing internal conflicts of large numbers of French women during what was a period of profound change. Full of never-before-studied images of the modern French woman in action, Having It All shows how these early magazines exploited new photographic technologies, artistic currents, and literary trends to create a powerful model of French femininity, one that has exerted a lasting influence on French expression. This book introduces and explores the concept of Belle Epoque literary feminism, a product of the elite milieu from which the magazines emerged. Defined by its refusal of political engagement, this feminism was nevertheless preoccupied with expanding women’s roles, as it worked to construct a collective fantasy of female achievement. Through an astute blend of historical research, literary criticism, and visual analysis, Mesch’s study of women’s magazines and the popular writers associated with them offers an original window onto a bygone era that can serve as a framework for ongoing debates about feminism, femininity, and work-life tensions