Marie-Claire, co-founded by Marcelle Auclair, a journalist, and Jean Prouvost, media titan, created the modern women’s magazine format. I own some pre-war issues, 1937-1940. They had to stop publishing when Paris was invaded by the Germans and you can read all about it in Auclair’s autobiography Memoire a Deux Voix.
Hmm. Today, the New York Times has an harrowing article about Afghan ‘women’ killing themselves rather than living their lives of abuse.For Afghan Wives, a Desperate Fiery Way Out.
I read it just as I was about to write about how War affects Women, or more aptly, how major 20th century wars affected Western Women. I have just blogged about Edith and Marion and Flo in WWI, using their letters. WWI affected them, but not that much. WWII a little more as their relations went to war. Edith Nicholson headed the Quebec Red Cross. That certainly was something.
I had just watched some of those March of Times on Turner Classic Movies. The War Propaganda Ones are especially interesting and very educational. (There’s one on Hitler Youth, describing how the young German men are cruelly forced to do exercises in large groups and to work for nothing in community projects… then there’s another about an American program that promotes athletics to young men and teaches them about the importance of community service. (Sort of like this torture business: when they do it is it very bad, when you do it, it is good or at least a necessary evil.) The problem was, in both countries, many young men, even then, were appallingly unfit, not from overeating but from poor nutrition as children. Too out of shape to be sent out to be killed.)
But the one I found most fascinating, in the context of Flo in the City, my novel in progress, was the POST War piece about American Women. The film shows a couple of American sailors on their way home, comparing notes about their ‘girls’ in Europe and their ‘girls’ back home. Then it cuts to the preparations American women are making to receive their heroes: they are spending like crazy on their looks!! Billions in fact. I can’t remember if there’s any allusion to the war work they did (I erased the piece) but it is made clear that the new duty of the American female is to look beautiful at any cost for their men.
This episode shows a married woman, too, her two kids looking on, doing some silly exercise, flat on her back in the living room, the kind the women’s magazines showcased.
I’ve been reading Nella Last’s 1950′s, and I read Nella Last’s Peace a couple of years ago. Even in the 50′s, Nella has to economise and in the so-called austerity period, she had to render miracles with fishheads. British women didn’t have it so good after the war. Britain won the war, but lost the peace, as my husband is fond of saying. American factories, set up for the war effort, just kept pumping out stuff after the war and the returning soldiers had jobs ready for them because the gals were all sent back home, to make babies and polish their kitchen floors until they blinded you and buy, buy, buy. Consumer Woman (as described by Marion Talbot in 1910) was into a massive second phase. (And then came the soap operas turning cleaning products into sacred femininity potions rivalling perfume and making certain corps the global goliaths they are today.)
