Abstract: During the 1910s, the final decade of the suffrage drive,
women's social, economic, and professional opportunities seemed to broaden
dramatically at the same time that political leaders and psychologists
decried the "feminization" of manhood. The spectre of a world in which
domineering women emasculated powerless men inspired a visual motif
that ran throughout popular culture: the pairing of large women and
tiny men. Through humor, explosive notions were discussed but then dismissed.
This rhetorical analysis, which draws on hegemony theory, explores the
symbolic cultural work of such imagery in mass media, especially magazines,
at a pivotal moment in American gender relations.
Full Article
Also in this issue:
Scanning
the Decades:
Magazine Letters
to the Editor Discuss Journalism 1962-1992
by Brian Thornton
Ladies'
Home Erotica: Reading the Seams Between Home-making and House Beautiful
by Kim Golombisky
