Second Wave Feminist Magazines
The "second-wave" of the Women's Movement refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the 1970s. The ideology of the 60’s and 70’s second wave movement included the wish to raise consciousness of the subordinate position of women in the political and social hierarchy, women’s rights to manage their bodies in terms of the pill and reproductive rights, women no longer accepting roles as passive objects of desire and enjoying and asserting their right to sexual independence.
Nova/ Spare Rib / Working Woman
The names of these magazines Nova (suggesting an explosion) , Spare Rib (an ironic reference to classical sexism) and Working Woman (positioning women out of the home and into the workplace) present an immediate contrast with the connotative meanings of previous magazines such as Home Chat/ Woman at Home.
Nova and Spare Rib were created in the 60s, both having long since closed down. Nova’s tagline ‘For women who think magazines don’t understand’ immediately asserts its ideological difference to earlier magazines, suggesting that these magazines are ideologically outdated and irrelevant to the modern woman.
The content of these publications was radically different, considering politics and feminist issues such as rights within the workplace and male violence towards women. It avoided articles about appearance and the happy housewife. They also refused to pander to the powerful cosmetics and fashion industries, losing a good deal of advertising revenue as a result. Other magazines we have seen may be accused of commodifying gender, i.e, creating gender characteristics (women being appearance conscious/ men liking gadgets) that create consumers.
Its style was also radically different , spurning the more ‘feminine’ elaborate fonts and typeface, and idealised images of the happy housewife. Instead, they would feature less glamorous women on the covers, such as striking miners’ wives or use bold capitalised fonts as well as radical and unconventional designs.
Despite their socio-historical relevance in an era characterised by social change and the questioning of social roles it has to be questioned exactly how many women were influenced by these magazines and to what extent society and women’s aspirations were changing. Both magazines had relatively small readerships, Nova had approximately 20,000 per issue and closed in the 70s. In each case the ideological stance and opposition to encouraging women to concentrate on traditional beauty regimes impacted on advertising from cosmetics and fashion industries which only made survival harder. It is also crucial to recognise that although society was changing the major seller in the women’s market was Woman’s Realm, a very traditional magazine and certainly not a feminist one which continued to feature articles on house/home and appearance; thereby suggesting that the second wave movement was not universally popular and what might be required was somewhere in between Home Chat and Spare Rib. Some might consider Cosmopolitan and similar publications to have successfully filled this gap in the market. What else could we make from this? Had women’s collective identity been so successfully nurtured and controlled by the media industry or Adorno’s culture industry that most women , or the mass collective could not relate to these messages and these magazines or was there a need for a new kind of magazine for the newly evolved woman? It could be argued that there is some truth in both statements and what magazines such as Spare Rib represented was the media reacting to sociological changes as part of a Foucault prescribed resistance.
The "second-wave" of the Women's Movement refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the 1970s. The ideology of the 60’s and 70’s second wave movement included the wish to raise consciousness of the subordinate position of women in the political and social hierarchy, women’s rights to manage their bodies in terms of the pill and reproductive rights, women no longer accepting roles as passive objects of desire and enjoying and asserting their right to sexual independence.
Nova/ Spare Rib / Working Woman
The names of these magazines Nova (suggesting an explosion) , Spare Rib (an ironic reference to classical sexism) and Working Woman (positioning women out of the home and into the workplace) present an immediate contrast with the connotative meanings of previous magazines such as Home Chat/ Woman at Home.
Nova and Spare Rib were created in the 60s, both having long since closed down. Nova’s tagline ‘For women who think magazines don’t understand’ immediately asserts its ideological difference to earlier magazines, suggesting that these magazines are ideologically outdated and irrelevant to the modern woman.
The content of these publications was radically different, considering politics and feminist issues such as rights within the workplace and male violence towards women. It avoided articles about appearance and the happy housewife. They also refused to pander to the powerful cosmetics and fashion industries, losing a good deal of advertising revenue as a result. Other magazines we have seen may be accused of commodifying gender, i.e, creating gender characteristics (women being appearance conscious/ men liking gadgets) that create consumers.
Its style was also radically different , spurning the more ‘feminine’ elaborate fonts and typeface, and idealised images of the happy housewife. Instead, they would feature less glamorous women on the covers, such as striking miners’ wives or use bold capitalised fonts as well as radical and unconventional designs.
Despite their socio-historical relevance in an era characterised by social change and the questioning of social roles it has to be questioned exactly how many women were influenced by these magazines and to what extent society and women’s aspirations were changing. Both magazines had relatively small readerships, Nova had approximately 20,000 per issue and closed in the 70s. In each case the ideological stance and opposition to encouraging women to concentrate on traditional beauty regimes impacted on advertising from cosmetics and fashion industries which only made survival harder. It is also crucial to recognise that although society was changing the major seller in the women’s market was Woman’s Realm, a very traditional magazine and certainly not a feminist one which continued to feature articles on house/home and appearance; thereby suggesting that the second wave movement was not universally popular and what might be required was somewhere in between Home Chat and Spare Rib. Some might consider Cosmopolitan and similar publications to have successfully filled this gap in the market. What else could we make from this? Had women’s collective identity been so successfully nurtured and controlled by the media industry or Adorno’s culture industry that most women , or the mass collective could not relate to these messages and these magazines or was there a need for a new kind of magazine for the newly evolved woman? It could be argued that there is some truth in both statements and what magazines such as Spare Rib represented was the media reacting to sociological changes as part of a Foucault prescribed resistance.