Page 580 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

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woMen’s Magazines

Women’s magazines are among the most popular forms of print media in Amer-
ica, yet ever since the 1830s, when they began to succeed commercially, there
has been heated debate surrounding their impact on women. Still in play today
is the critique spearheaded by Betty Friedan in her groundbreaking best-seller,
The Feminine Mystique (1963). Friedan charged that women’s magazines make
women miserable by telling them their only success in life lies in fulfilling their
femininity. At the same time, other critics have castigated women’s magazines
as proto-feminist, claiming that they divert women from their true sources of
satisfaction—hearth, family, home. Still others have criticized women’s magazines
for their many contradictions. Of these, some argue that competing visions offer
women valuable life choices, while others say mixed messages ensnare women
in anxiety and self-doubt. What’s really going on? Do popular women’s maga-
zines harm and oppress women?
A scathing critique of women’s magazines was the fulcrum on which Friedan’s
book turned. Friedan named the “problem that has no name,” the consistent, co-
ercive rendering of women as weak and passive, devoid of worldly ambition, and
dependent upon men for both personal identity and fulfillment. And the central
culprit in the creation and maintenance of this, the feminine mystique, was the
popular women’s magazine.
A long line of criticism has echoed Friedan. Contemporary commentators
decry popular women’s magazines for debilitating women, making them depen-
dent on men (and on the magazines themselves), preventing self-realization,
promoting self-denial, and creating the woman reader as little more than con-
sumer, ornament, maid, or baby machine. These arguments remain strong across

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