The Ladies Home Journal: Gender Stereotypes

The Ladies’ Home Journal is a magazine with a long history in America. As one of the leading women’s magazines in the United States, it has for decades continued to succeed in advertising and maintaining a solid audience who continue to keep the journal afloat. But which types of people comprise this audience? By analyzing the gender of contributors, the content of articles, advertisements, and letters from the readers themselves, we can see that the Ladies’ Home Journal of 1945 marketed itself to female housewives and had an ever-growing global presence.

The magazine contains both male and female editors. At the time, Ladies’ Home Journal had 32 associate and assistant editors. 22 were female and 10 were male. Bruce and Beatrice Gould were

“On the Italian front our editors not only visited with Gen. Mark Clark, but hobnobbed with numerous G.I.’s such as the one below, who let them see his latest foxhole. Earlier, in Rheims, gathering material for How France Lives, Mrs. G. and Mrs. C. first considered a family whose home had been bombed to a hole in the ground”(Ladies’ Home Journal, p.15). This article showcases women editors in a pioneering role as they traveled and were adventurous in a way many women were not able to be in the 1940’s. Louise Paine Benjamin, the beauty editor, speaks directly to her readers in her article, “Any Woman Can Be Beautiful: Says Paul Hesse, and Proves His Claim With His Camera”. She writes about a male photographer who believes that inner beauty is the key to taking a good picture of a woman. Benjamin advises the reader to cultivate beauty through confidence. While saying all women have the right to be lovely despite outward appearance, she also writes that

The editorship is majorly female, the authorship is majorly female, and the majority of readers’ letters published by the magazine are from female subscribers. Short stories are often written from a woman’s perspective. There are ten articles about fashion, beauty, and homemaking, subjects that are traditionally an integral part of women’s magazines. But what kind of woman was the Ladies’ Home Journal hoping to attract? From the direct responses of readers, we see many women refer to themselves as “Mrs” and mention their children. Many advertisements mention brides, showcase illustrations of women cleaning the kitchen or whipping up a meal, and mention food that will please the kids. There are plenty of articles written on what to feed the family, and there is even a piece on how to inform small children about childbirth and when/how to start giving sympathetic sex education. One reader even calls the journal the “best representative of American home life” (Ladies’ Home Journal, 136). From this evidence, we can draw the conclusion that the average reader of the Ladies’ Home Journal is a stay-at-home wife, in charge of cleaning, cooking, and childcare for the household. But that was not the entirety of the journal’s readership. The magazine had a global audience that came to light in the war. Found in the readers’ letters, one man from England writes, “In England, today, you can’t go to bed until the