- Fashions and manners: the woman represented in women's magazines

Abstract

Women's magazines were, between the 1950s and 1970s, an important reference source for women in the Brazilian middle class. In these periodicals ideas about appearance and behavior circulated, in other words, about the so-called feminine fashions and manners. Lessons on beauty, decorum, marriage, motherhood and cooking stamped the pages, as well as images of women considered beautiful and the advertisements embedded in articles for female domestic life. However, women's lives in that period changed with the already acquired insertion in jobs outside the home, the technical-scientific and educational advances. Magazines needed to be as dynamic, although they had difficulties in identifying only one type of woman as a target audience. To remain interesting for these audiences, more generalist conceptions were needed. In a scenario in which talking about feminine also needed to embrace feminism, magazines supported the cultural links, between changes and permanences, of an era.