As a form of popular culture, magazines provide a lens through which historians can examine the dominant attitudes and values of a society. This article examines the portrayal of young American women in the popular teen magazine, "Seventeen" magazine, during the period 1955-1965. The study documents and analyses the messages conveyed…

The authors investigate the nearly ubiquitous cultural icon for girls' play, the princess. They survey historical instances of princess play from the beginning of the American republic to the New Millennium, look at the literature concerning princesses in various periods, and discuss the individual recollections about princess play of a number of…

Much American popular culture has often been criticized for its negative portrayals of females and its potentially harmful influence on young children. However, there are insufficient studies about American young girls' actual understanding of these female representations. Specifically, the perspectives of young immigrant girls have hardly been…

More than 400 women have been murdered in and around Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, over the past decade. As the murders continue unabated and unsolved, and with the likely complicity of state authorities, they have triggered a dynamic cultural response from writers, filmmakers, singers, and others who deplore the murders while suggesting the underlying…

Anticipatory organizational socialization begins in childhood as girls and boys are exposed to various messages from a range of sources. One of these sources is the film. The following study examines eighteen films, released between 2000 and early 2004, targeting teenage girls to explore messages that they receive about gender and possible…

Uses in-depth interviews with girls who own American Girl dolls and their mothers. Links representations, consumption, and identity, examining how girls create identity through consumption of American Girl texts and products. Considers how girls integrate Pleasant Company's products into their everyday lives and their construction of an American…

Traces the roots of the popular culture "commodity confessional" by examining the first five years of the magazine "True Story." Finds the stories fulfilled three functions for the women readers: (1) providing therapeutic messages; (2) providing didactic instruction on proper behavior and modern ways; and (3) serving as interrogative texts which…

Examines the representation of women in Vietnam War literature and films within a context of changing gender relationships in American society. Argues that critical attention needs to be given to the structure of masculinity and its relationship to warfare. (MS)

Suggests that L.T. Meade, a writer of books for adolescent girls in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, shifted from writing pious and didactic novels to novels that challenged the traditional role of women, in order to meet the continually changing interests and needs of her readers. (JC)

Contributes to (and draws on) journalism history, mass-culture studies, and women's history in a rhetorical analysis of a series of six full-page illustrations titled "The American Woman" run in 1897 in "The Ladies' Home Journal." Reveals how class and gender issues intersected and underscored the role of the mass media in…

This book examines the many popular representations of student life at women's colleges produced in the United States during the Progressive Era. According to the book, in hundreds of college novels, newspaper accounts, popular periodical essays, and scientific treatises, the "college woman" was described and defined in a period when…