Beauty Ideals in Ladies Home Journal

Established in 1883, the Ladies Home Journal remained a popular and successful women's magazine throughout the 20th century.[1]  Certainly, the magazine was popular in the decade following World War II, when its combination of fashion, advice literature, social commentary, and romance fiction made it appealing to white, middle-class women. The postwar trend toward earlier marriage and higher fertility can be seen in the magazine's emphasis on domesticity and parenting.  But the Journal also offered beauty and fashion tips to the single woman eager to attract a man, and to the housewife eager to remain attractive to her husband.  As the items in this collection reveal, beauty was idealized in many ways in the pages of Ladies Home Journal in 1954 - in advice columns, in features on apparel and home fashions, in advertisements for cosmetics, personal hygiene products, clothing, and other products, and in romance stories such as Marnie Ellingson's "The Real You," which is the centerpiece of this exhibit.

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1. “Ladies’ Home Journal | American Magazine | Britannica.com.” Accessed October 26, 2016. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ladies-Home-Journal.