Beauty isn't all a matter of looking glamorous

This article analyses representations of glamour in two British magazines during the 1950s: Home and Country and Woman's Outlook, the publications of the National Federation of Women's Institutes (NFWI) and the Women's Co-operative Guild (WCG) respectively. Both publications shared many traits with best-selling women's magazines of the period but they also had certain distinctive characteristics, such as a relative lack of advertising for beauty products, which make them particularly interesting subjects for a study of glamour. Through its exploration of the diverse and even contradictory attitudes towards glamour evidenced in these publications, the article contributes to continuing feminist debates about women and beauty as well as offering fresh insights into the NFWI and WCG. Its findings demonstrate heterogeneous understandings of femininity, thus challenge the stereotypes of 1950s womanhood that continue to abound, and add another case study to the growing body of revisionist literature on women in the post-1945 period. 1 of supplement.2 Cynthia White (1970) Women's Magazines 1693–1968 (London: Michael Joseph), p. 147.3 Carol Dyhouse (2010) Glamour: history, women, feminism (London: Zed Books), p. 4.4 Dyhouse, Glamour, p. 5.5 Jean Allman & Antoinette Burton (Eds) (2008) Bodies, Beauty Cultures, and Self–Making, Journal of Women's History, 20(3); Claire Colebrook (Ed.) (2006) The Feminine and the Beautiful, Feminist Theory, 7(2).6 Jean Allman & Antoinette Burton (Eds) (2008) Editors' Note, Journal of Women's History, 20, pp. 7–9, p. 7.7 ESRC Women in the 1950s Seminar Series. http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/sociology/about/events/esrcseminars/ (accessed 15 April 2010).8 Birmingham Feminist History Group (1979) Feminism as Femininity in the 1950s?, Feminist Review, 3, pp. 48–65; Wendy Webster (1998) Imagining Home: gender, ‘race’ and national identity, 1945–1964 (London: Routledge).9 Dyhouse, Glamour, pp. 1–6, 99–133.10 For an outline of such arguments, see Sarah Dreher (1998) Freudian Slips and Blue Jeans, in Kirsty Dunseath (Eds) A Second Skin: women write about clothes (London: The Women's Press), p. 68; Linda M. Scott (2006) Fresh Lipstick: redressing fashion and feminism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 1–10.11 Naomi Wolf (1990) The Beauty Myth: how images of beauty are used against women (London: Vintage).12 Claire Colebrook (2006) Introduction, Feminist Theory, 7, pp. 131–142, p. 131.13 For a discussion of this, see for example, Maggie Andrews & Mary M. Talbot (2000) Introduction, in Maggie Andrews & Mary M. Talbot (Eds) All the World and Her Husband: women in twentieth-century consumer culture (London: Cassell), pp. 1–9.14 Colebrook, ‘Introduction’, p. 132.15 Breanne Fahs (2011) Dreaded ‘Otherness’: heteronormative patrolling in women's body hair rebellions, Gender and Society, 25, pp. 451–472, p. 466.16 Colebrook, ‘Introduction’, p. 141.17 Maggie Andrews (1997) The Acceptable Face of Feminism: the Women's Institute as a social movement (London: Lawrence & Wishart), pp. xi, xiv, 22–30, 146; Caitriona Beaumont (2009) Housewives, Workers and Citizens: voluntary women's organisations and the campaign for women's rights in England and Wales in the post-war period, in Matthew Hilton, Nick Crowson & James McKay (Eds) NGOs in Contemporary Britain: non-state actors in society and politics since 1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 59–76, pp. 60, 68, 72, 73; Caitriona Beaumont (2000) Citizens Not Feminists: the boundary negotiated between citizenship and feminism by mainstream women's organisations in England, 1928–39, Women's History Review, 90, pp. 411–429, p. 417.18 Gillian Scott (1998) Feminism and the Politics of Working Women: the Women's Co-operative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War (London: Routledge), pp. 2–4, 244, 264.19 Ibid., p. xii.20 Their influence is widely recognised. For example, see Lorna Gibson (2008) Beyond Jerusalem: music in the Women's Institute, 1919–1969 (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 42–44.21 Andrews, The Acceptable Face of Feminism, p. 9.22 Ibid., p. 11.23 Ibid., p. 66.24 Beaumont, ‘Housewives, Workers and Citizens’, p. 61.25 Caitriona Beaumont (2001) The Women's Movement, Politics and Citizenship, 1918–1950s, in Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (Ed.) Women in Twentieth-Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson), p. 274.26 Andrews, The Acceptable Face of Feminism, p. xiii.27 Scott, Feminism and the Politics of Working Women, pp. 273–274.28 Andrews, for instance, discusses seventy-eight issues from 1919 to 1992 alongside various other NFWI documentation, while Lorna Gibson examines seventy-one music articles published between 1919 and 1970. Andrews, The Acceptable Face of Feminism; Gibson, Beyond Jerusalem.29 White, Women's Magazines, p. 18.30 Co-operative Press minutes, 5 November 1955, 2 November 1957, GB1499 PRES/1/1/1/20, National Co-operative Archives; White, Women's Magazines, appendix iv.31 Home and Country sub-committee minutes, 6 January 1954 and 23 January 1958, 5FWI/G/2/1/2 boxes 250 and 251, NFWI Collection held at The Women's Library.32 Home and Country sub-committee minutes, 23 January 1958.33 Ibid.34 Woman's Outlook, October 1966, p. 1.35 Woman's Outlook, April 1958, Journals and Periodicals Collection, National Co-operative Archives.36 Home and Country, April 1958, 5/FWI/G/2/3/51 box 263.37 Home and Country, September 1954, p. 313; April 1955, pp. 126–127, 5/FWI/G/2/3/49 box 262.38 Home and Country, May 1954, p. 185; September 1954, pp. 335–336, 5/FWI/G/2/3/49 box 262.39 Co-operative Press minutes, 4 May 1963, GB1499 PRES/1/1/1/20.40 Woman's Outlook, 13 March 1954, p. 6; 11 September 1954, pp. 6, 20; 6 November 1954, p. 12; 12 January 1957, p. 12; 6 April 1957, p. 4; Woman, 29 September 1956, pp. 4, 9, 22, 42, 48, 56, 58, 59, 68, 70.41 Mary M. Talbot (2000) Strange Bedfellows: feminism in advertising, in Andrews & Talbot (Eds), All the World and Her Husband, pp. 177–191, p. 181; White, Women's Magazines, p. 147.42 Dyhouse, Glamour, p. 1.43 Woman's Outlook, October 1959, pp. 8, 10, 12.44 Home and Country, October 1955, pp. 369, 371, 5/FWI/G/2/3/49 box 262.45 Home and Country, September 1954, p. 337.46 Woman's Outlook, 6 November 1954, p. 13.47 White, Women's Magazines, pp. 147–148.48 Woman's Outlook, 12 January 1957, p. 15.49 Woman's Outlook, 2 July 1955, pp. 14–15, 18, 25, 31.50 Woman's Outlook, 14 July 1956, p. 11.51 Dyhouse, Glamour, pp. 114–119.52 Penny Tinkler (1995) Constructing Girlhood: popular magazines for girls growing up in England, 1920–1950 (London: Taylor & Francis), p. 186.53 Margaret Beetham (1996) A Magazine of Her Own? Domesticity and Desire in the Woman's Magazine, 1800–1914 (London: Routledge), p. 12.54 Woman's Outlook, 13 March 1954, pp. 9–10.55 Woman's Outlook, 1 January 1955, pp. 8–9.56 Dyhouse, Glamour, p. 3.57 Home and Country, April 1959, p. 134, 5/FWI/G/2/3/51 box 263; Dyhouse, Glamour, pp. 40–46, 120.58 Home and Country, October 1961, p. 351, 5/FWI/G/2/3/51 box 263.59 Woman's Outlook, 8 October 1955, pp. 19–20; Home and Country, October 1960, p. 373, 5/FWI/G/2/3/51 box 263.60 Ann J. Cahill (2003) Feminist Pleasure and Feminine Beautification, Hypatia, 18, pp. 42–64, pp. 44, 46.61 Beetham, A Magazine of Her Own?, p. 1.62 Woman's Outlook, 14 July 1956, p. 29.63 Home and Country, September 1954, pp. 335–336.64 Woman's Outlook, 6 October 1956, p. 5.65 Pat Kirkham (1996) Fashioning the Feminine: dress, appearance and femininity in wartime Britain, in Christine Gledhill & Gillian Swanson (Eds) Nationalising Femininity: culture, sexuality and British cinema in the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp. 152–174, pp. 156–158. See also Janice Winship (2000) New Disciplines for Women and the Rise of the Chain Store in the 1930s, in Andrews & Talbot (Eds), All the World and Her Husband, pp. 23–45, pp. 29–33.66 Zillah Halls (2000) Mrs Exeter—the Rise and Fall of the Older Woman, Costume, 34, pp. 105–112, p. 108. Many thanks too to Charlotte Greenlagh for sharing her knowledge of Mrs Exeter with me.67 Home and Country, April 1956, p. 143.68 Judy Giles (2004) The Parlour and the Suburb: domestic identities, class, femininity and modernity (Oxford: Berg), pp. 69–70.69 Woman's Outlook, 8 October 1995, p. 9.70 Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (2010) Managing the Body: beauty, health and fitness in Britain, 1880–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 244.71 Ibid., pp. 253–254, 278.72 Halls, ‘Mrs Exeter’, p. 111.73 Rachel Moseley (2002) Growing up with Audrey Hepburn (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 57.74 Home and Country, April 1956, pp. 129, 131; Moseley, Growing up with Audrey Hepburn, p. 45.75 Woman's Outlook, 12 January 1957, p. 12; 6 April 1957, p. 5.76 Woman's Outlook, April 1959, pp. 24–25, 45; Moseley, Growing up with Audrey Hepburn, p. 116.77 Dyhouse, Glamour, pp. 35–59.78 Woman's Outlook, 4 December 1954, pp. 16–18.79 Andrews & Talbot, ‘Introduction’, p. 6; Becky Conekin, Frank Mort & Chris Waters (1999) Introduction, in Becky Conekin, Frank Mort & Christ Waters (Eds) Moments of Modernity: reconstructing Britain 1945–1964 (London: Rivers Oram Press), pp. 1–21, p. 19.80 Becky Conekin (2003) ‘The Autobiography of a Nation’: the 1951 Festival of Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 214.81 Lawrence Black (2003), The Political Culture of the Left in Affluent Britain, 1951–64: Old Labour, New Britain? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), p. 87.82 Dyhouse, Glamour, pp. 61–98.83 Home and Country, October 1955, pp. 377–378.84 Andrews, The Acceptable Face of Feminism, p. 157.85 Home and Country sub-committee minutes, 5 January 1966; 5 April 1967, 5FWI/G/2/1/2 box 251; Home and Country, April 1968, p. 154; October 1968, p. 390; April 1969, p. 170, 5/FWI/G/2/3/59-62 box 265.86 Home and Country sub-committee minutes, 15 July 1968, 5FWI/G/2/1/2 box 251.87 Home and Country, April 1959, p. 129.88 Dyhouse, Glamour, p. 2.89 Black, The Political Culture of the Left, pp. 1–5.90 Woman's Outlook, October 1962, p. 31.91 Woman's Outlook, June 1967, p. 1; Co-operative Press minutes, 5 November 1966, 17 December 1966, 18 March 1967, 6 May 1967, GB1499 PRES/1/1/1/20.92 Woman's Outlook, 2 July 1955, p. 1.93 The Co-operative Women's Guild. http://www.coopwomensguild.co.uk/index.html (accessed 3 August 2010).94 The National Federation of Women's Institutes. http://www.thewi.org.uk/index.aspx?id=1 (accessed 3 August 2010)

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Beauty · Femininity · Feminism · Sociology · The arts · Visual arts · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes

• Redefining ‘the woman with the basket’

  Open Access•Peter Gurney•Gender & History•2019

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