Table Of ContentDECODING WOMEN'S MAGAZINES
Decoding WOOlen's
Magazines
From Mademoiselle to Ms.
Ellen McCracken
Associate Prifessor of Comparative Literature
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA
M
MACMILLAN
© Ellen McCracken 1993
Softcoverreprint ofthe bardeover Istedition 1993 978-0-333-53589-9
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liab1e to crimina1 prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
First published 1993 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
andLondon
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-53590-5 ISBN 978-1-349-22381-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22381-7
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
For my parents, Clare and William McCracken,
whose generosity, support and encouragement
are boundless
Contents
List of Illustrations
lX
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
Part One: Advertising Texts
1 The Cover: Window to the Future Self 13
2 Covert Advertisements 38
3 Critical Approaches to Purchased Advertising 64
4 The Codes of Overt Advertisements 96
Part Two: Editorial Texts: The Continuum of
Commodity-Based Culture
5 Fashion and Beauty: Transgression, Utopia,
and Containment 135
6 Service and Home: The Seven Sisters Adapt to
the 1980s 173
7 New Workers and Career Women: Tapping a
New Generation of Spenders 196
8 Reaching Minority Women: Language, Culture,
and Politics in the Service of Consumerism 223
9 Class Not Mass: Special-Interest Publications
and Pseudo-Individualized Consumption 257
10 Acquisitions, New Launches, and Adaptations:
Women's Magazines Enter the 1990s 284
Conclusion 299
Appendix: Advertising Volume, Rates, Revenue 302
Notes 305
Index 333
Vll
List of Illustrations
1.1 Savl!Y 25
1.2 Working Woman 26
1.3 Town & Country 30
1.4 Harper's Bazaar 32
4.1 Solarian Supreme flooring 97
4.2 Tiffany flooring 97
4.3 European Collagen Complex 103
4.4 Maybelline cosmetics 103
4.5 Aunt Jemima pancake mix 106
4.6 Weight Watchers frozen pizza 110
4.7 Hanes hosiery 114
4.8 Hanes hosiery 115
4.9 Candie's footwear 118
4.10 Candie's footwear 119
4.11 Mombasa mosquito netting 120
4.12 Zip Wax depilatory 121
4.13 L'Oreal Creme Riche lipstick 123
4.14 Jovan lipstick and nail polish 128
4.15 Teint Dior makeup 130
4.16 TCB hairdressing products 131
5.1 Self magazine 155
IX
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities,
under the Directorship of Joseph Duffey, for a year-long
fellowship that enabled me to begin this study. I am grateful as
well to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for granting
me a sabbatical leave for the project.
Jean Franco, Gaye Tuchman, and Herbert Schiller offered
important support for this study in its early stages. The staff
and researchers at the Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios
Transnacionales (ILET) in Mexico City generously allowed
me to research in their excellent library; Noreene Janus and
Viviana Erazo discussed crucial aspects of the project with me
during my stay at ILET.
I very much appreciate the encouragement of family and
friends, especially Daphne Patai whose careful critical reading
of the chapters and insightful discussion of the issues are an
essential component of the book. Mario Garda's continued
support, encouragement, and intellectual interchange were
invaluable in completing this project.
Agradezco especialmente a Luda Troncoso por haber cui
dado a mis ninos con tanto amor y carino mientras yo escribla
este libro. Giuliana and Giancarlo deserve special thanks for
enduring my long absences while I wrote this book.
I wish to thank Belinda Holdsworth of Macmillan for her
enthusiastic support for this project and Anne Rafique for
copyediting the typescript. Carol Dobson of Bloomington and
Lilla Burgess of Santa Barbara spent long hours wordprocess
ing the chapters with extreme care and professionalism.
A vital component of the ideas put forth in this book are the
photographic reproductions of advertisements and magazine
covers that appear here. Because a number of corporations
refused to grant permission for their images to be reprinted, I
am especially grateful to those that cooperated in this regard,
thereby facilitating the free flow of information and inter
change of ideas. The following have kindly given permission to
reprint the covers and ads listed below:
Harper's Bazaar and the Hearst Corporation, January 1981
front cover; Town & Country and the Hearst Corporation,
December 1981 front cover, Joel Baldwin, photographer;
x
Acknowledgements
Xl
Working Woman and Hal Publications, Inc., June 1981 front
cover; SavlY and Family Media Inc., February 1981 front
cover; Armstrong World Industries, ads for Solarian Supreme
and Tiffany flooring; Lee Pharmaceuticals, ad for Zip Wax
depilatory; Yungjohann Hillman Inc., ad for Mombasa mos
quito netting; Revlon, Inc., ad for European Collagen Com
plex; Christian Dior Perfumes Inc., ad for Teint Dior; New
Retail Concepts, two ads for Candie's footwear; Sara Lee
Hosiery, two ads for Hanes hosiery; Maybelline Inc., ad for
Maybelline cosmetics; Weight Watchers Food Company, ad
for Weight Watchers Pizza; Alberto Culver USA Inc., ad for
TCB hairdressing products; Cosmair Inc., ad for L'Oreal
Creme Riche lipstick; The Quaker Oats Company, ad for Aunt
Jemima Pancake Mix; Conde Nast Publications, Inc., ad for
Self; and Quintessence, Inc., ad for Jovan products.
Introduction
Traditionally, critical textual analysis has focused on selected
literary works that those trained in the academy have deemed
worthy of exegesis. Delineating the special linguistic techniques
that writers use to communicate unique perceptions about re
ality, critical analysis privileges a certain body of texts which has
come to be termed high culture. The choices critics have made
about the objects they study - justified ideologically as the
attention due inherently great works - have frequently excluded
from serious analysis the important artifacts of mass culture. In
fact, however, the value judgments that privilege elite forms over
the more widely consumed ones have constricted the under
standing of culture and left vast areas of cultural production
unexamined.
In contrast, a number of critics, among them Fredric Jameson
and Roland Barthes, have argued in theory and in practice for a
relaxing of the traditionally strict barriers between the study of
high and mass culture, paralleling the changes in postmoderri
cultural production. Jameson views the elite and the popular as
dialectical elements of a single cultural continuum, as "twin and
inseparable forms of the fission of aesthetic production under
late capitalism" with a profound structural interrelatedness.l
Barthes' semiotic method expands the notion of the text to visual
as well as verbal communicative systems; the critical tools
previously reserved for the study of literature can increase one's
understanding of the photographic food displays in a women's
magazine, for example, or the verbal captions in a fashion
feature.2 These broader definitions are especially necessary in an
age when technological advances and increased opportunities for
financial gain through the production of commodified culture
have greatly widened the scope and audience of mass culture.
Critical techniques refined through years ofliterary analysis offer
models for decoding the familiar, naturalized texts of mass
culture.3
Magazines addressed to women are one such mass cultural
form - a multi-million dollar business which presents pleasur
able, value-laden semiotic systems to immense numbers of
women. The largest of magazine categories, this group contains
1
