With Halloween as the next holiday on my mind, my apartment has a witch’s boot filed with candy and pumpkins scattered around, I choose the October issue from 1950’s. To choose something a little bit different, I went with the Ladies’ Home Journal. Flipping through the magazine, I realized that it has much of the same concerns that women today worry about. How do I look good, balance my family life, and get everything done for a reasonable amount of time without spending too much money. There are many advertisements for making recipes homemade, but with fewer ingredients.
There is an entire article about “going steady,” with advice for women and girls on what is and is not appropriate. The biggest difference I noticed between now and then was their suggestion of what “your age should be…” They say that there is no point in dating a boy before you are 18. This is interesting, since not that long before this many women were married before they were 18, and now most kids start dating in elementary school or junior high. A lot of the advice talks about getting hurt when you break up. It assumes that most people cannot handle it if they get their heart broken too young. I think that this is ridiculous, because getting your heart broken is part of growing up and maturing. If you never take the risk, you will never gain anything. This takes the opposite approach of the old maxim: It is better to have loved, and lost than to never have loved at all. Also, there is a section on how to walk in high heels. This was entertaining to me, since their heels are only one or two inches high, and incredibly stable to walk in. My closet is full of heels at least twice that high, and I have learned to walk in them all on my own without ever reading about it in a journal.
The journal also has many fictional stories, or perhaps they are true experiences, of what it means to be a lady. There are several stories of young girls and their experiences, along with watercolor pictures depicting them. These stories tell of what girls should be feeling about their everyday experiences and how they should react to them. These stories help me to imagine what it was like to be a young woman 60 years ago. They give more detail into the thoughts and feelings of these women, rather than just advice on the things that they are struggling with, which just happens to be the same things that I am struggling with and my friends are. Does he like me? What do I wear to this? Etc.
Another main focus of the journal is help from appliances and modern day conveniences. These are electric rangers, toasters, pre-packaged food, Aunt Jemima pancake mixes, dri-polish mixes. Everything is about easier and faster and better than before. There is even a letter to the editors “modern mothers have cinch” that says “instead of asking all the young women conveniences how they manage (and pretty poorly, seems to me), ask my mother-in-law, who is now eighty-three. She has had fifteen children, no modern conveniences and little money.” Lots of social opinions seem to focus on how a woman acts in the home, and how she utilizes her time. The advertisements are all encouraging the use of their helpers and such, but there seems to be a faction of older readers who do not agree with this method of cutting corners in the home.
Some of the advertisements are no different than current advertisements. Paper towels tout their strength, and how you can re-use them. This is no different than paper towel commercials on TV today. Obviously some things never change.
For the October issue, there is no mention of Halloween. No cute Halloween cupcake recipes, no tips on making costumes, or any other mention of the upcoming holiday. Since I was curious about the difference, I went to the Ladies Home Journal website today, and the very first picture that I was greeted with was of cute ghost Halloween cupcakes. Many of the overall stories are still the same. There are topics of beauty, relationships and women’s hygiene. Other top topics are community and do-good. I’m sure that these are topics that the 1950’s readers of LHJ would approve of.
The price of the journal has not increased as consistently as the products advertised in the magazine. The issue in 1950 cost 25 cents and issue, and now you can get an entire year for $6.00. That’s 50 cents and issue now, so it has only doubled in over 60 years. Not a bad bargain if you ask me. I wish that you could say the same about groceries and the price of cars. My budget would be in much better shape if that were true.
There is a much bigger focus in these journals on cleaning the house and cooking quickly. Also, the 1950’s LHJ focuses more on parenting than the current version does, but I think that is because women then spent more time in the home raising their kids, and less time out and in the offices like modern women do. Lots of the daughters described in the magazine are the perfect daughters. They are popular and well liked, beautiful and do well in school.
Overall, the general issues discussed have not changed, but how the women go about them have changed. Women focus less on the home, and just accept modern conveniences as a way of life. The way of life in general is the same. Women still want to do well in their relationships, although the emphasis has shifted from husbands to boyfriends, and cook good food. Looking through the magazine has been very interesting, but taught me that as much as things change, people in general still stay the same.
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