Destructive Women
and Little Men:
Masculinity, the New Woman, and Power in 1910s Popular Media
by Carolyn Kitch
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.
... [continued]
Public opinion surveys and journalism trade magazines
such as Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), and American Journalism
Review (AJR) have documented abundant animosity by readers toward
journalists. For example, a recent CJR cover story suggested many
Americans regard modern journalists as "a generation of vipers." ...
[continued]
Ladies' Home
Erotica:
Reading the Seams Between Home-making
and House Beautiful
by Kim Golombisky
Interior design and decorating magazines equate home
with leisure, a fantasy for female readers with jobs and families.
Women’s magazines typically compel women toward neurotic ideals of
housework and family. But decorating magazines represent an erotic
vision of home wiped clean of the family who makes housework as well
as the reader’s own housekeeping labor. However, this resistant version
of home still encourages domesticity by aligning the female reader’s
identity and influence with the house. ... [continued]
