Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture and Consumerism through the “Ladies Home Journal” and “Amerika.”

Diana Cucuz’s Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture and Consumerism through the “Ladies Home Journal” and “Amerika” (2023) is an exciting study about the intersection of gender, geopolitics, and print culture. Focused on the ways in which magazines were used both in the U.S. and in the U.S.S.R. to sell a particular idea of American womanhood, and by extension, democracy, the book convincingly argues that gender was a key front on which the Cold War was waged in the post-Stalin era. This book adds to the University of Toronto Press’s impressive catalogue of Cold War scholarship and puts archival research into conversation with key concepts from Cold War, gender, and print culture studies. Specifically, the book focuses on the U.S. Information Agency women’s magazine Amerika as a tool of “public diplomacy.” Cucuz draws her understanding of “public diplomacy” from Cold War diplomat Edmund Gullion, who defined it as an international informational process that involved the government “communicating directly with foreign publics in order to bring about an understanding of a nation’s ideas and ideals, its institutions and culture, as well as its national goals and policies” (7). Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds details how Cold War American leaders sought to distinguish their work from the Soviet propaganda machine, highlighting their efforts to disseminate accurate and dependable, but never heavy-handed, information. As part of this program, Amerika’s creators mimicked the content of the best-selling American women’s magazine Ladies Home Journal to communicate “American values” (freedom, family, femininity, and abundance), counter Soviet propaganda of materialistic American “glamor girls” (115), and convince women in Soviet Russia that there was much to be gained from an American life.The first two chapters of Cucuz’s book set the historical and conceptual stage for her study. Chapter 1 examines the domestic front of the Cold War, exploring how women’s magazines pursued dual, seemingly contradictory aims: first, perpetuating conservative gender norms that prized femininity, marriage, maternity, and housewifery above all else; and second, encouraging postwar American women’s political participation. Cucuz does a deep dive into a decade’s worth of one of the most popular women’s and American magazines, Ladies Home Journal, and maps out how it sold heteronormative gender as the key to personal happiness and national security. The magazine framed domestic work as one’s civic duty and political participation as an extension of one’s domestic work. Articles on marriage, child rearing, fashion, and home management were not only juxtaposed to articles on civic involvement but also discussed how those very domestic skills could be translated into the public sphere to support freedom at home and abroad. LHJ argued the Cold War American home was the front line in the U.S.’s geopolitical struggle with the U.S.S.R. Chapter 2 then explores a central focus of the magazine’s political articles: representations of downtrodden Soviet women. Cucuz demonstrates how these LHJ articles were part of a larger national informational strategy that depicted Soviet women’s struggles in order to underscore the limits of Communism. LHJ’s readers read about the “unhappy” condition of Soviet women who were “forced” into nontraditional roles, lacked time to be a “good mother” (78), and were unable to consume (87). These articles were then juxtaposed with pieces on the latest kitchen gadget, marital success story, or dress pattern to remind American women of how good they had it as wives and mothers in the U.S.A.Chapters 3–5 detail the rise of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and its public diplomacy strategies targeting women in Russia specifically. Chapter 3 provides a history of U.S. information services from their origins in the Office of War Information (OWI) to operations such as “Voice of America” and the magazine Amerika. The book contends that while President Truman failed to see the value of a centralized, peace-time propaganda machine, President Eisenhower was “aware of the power of public opinion” (110) and fortified USIA, moving its operations to the National Security Council, hiring powerful media experts to run the network, and placing the USIA director permanently on the executive branch’s Operations Coordinating Board. Eisenhower tasked the USIA with creating programs like Amerika to educate foreign peoples about America’s position on geopolitical issues while also persuading allies and enemies alike that their interests aligned with those of the United States. However, whereas other operations like “Voice of America” targeted all peoples regardless of gender, Amerika was a glossy women’s magazine specifically addressing Soviet women.Chapters 4 and 5 deploy a focused reading of Amerika to demonstrating how it worked to tell a particular “story of the American people” (125)—a story of abundance, freedom of choice, strong work ethic, and feminine bliss. This second incarnation of Amerika appeared in 1956 and echoed the idealized depiction of womanhood found in U.S. women’s magazines, stressing that while American women possessed vast choices in how they might live their lives, they ultimately chose the best choice: femininity and family (120). This sixty-four page glossy magazine mimicked the format of Life and the content of LHJ, focusing primarily on four central themes: 1) fashion and femininity; 2) marriage, motherhood, and family; 3) homemaking; and 4) responsible consumption. Some articles were reprints from women’s magazines and others were crafted to be “accurate but appealing” looks into the life of American women (123). The magazine extolled the joys of being an American woman and generally avoided topics that put the US in a bad light (such as articles on racial or gender inequality), instead focusing on how to make the world better and more beautiful. The magazine depicted the abundant life while also stressing frugality and mindful consumption. Yet, as Cucuz points out, the magazine’s makers failed to recognize that much of what they marketed was not practical in the bleak economic condition in which postwar Russian women found themselves. It would be difficult for Russian women to buy into an idea of shared interests when the interest sold could never be purchased. Nevertheless, Amerika persisted with an idyllic image of American womanhood that at times neglected to consider how it might make real connections with Russian women.Chapter 6 examines how Amerika’s content changed in the 1960s in response to the social movements for equality in the U.S. The magazine evidenced greater diversity in its representations of womanhood (working women appeared more frequently, for instance), but articles praising marriage, motherhood, and housewifery remained an important content foundation. Cucuz asserts that the magazine’s position on gender equality remained purposefully ambiguous, avoiding explicit address of feminism until a 1971 issue that featured perspectives both for and against it. As in Chapters 3–5, Cucuz points out the limits of change: the feminism issue failed to include equal numbers of articles by Black, Indigenous, or Women of Color; the magazine tended to blame women’s social struggle on individual failings as opposed to structural oppression; it failed to take a stand on women’s rights beyond recognizing the women’s movement was happening; and Amerika strategically framed the civil rights movement as proof of America’s dedication to freedom and equality rather than as a movement to correct America’s failed promise of equality.Winning Women’s Hearts concludes with a discussion of Amerika’s impact on Cold War public diplomacy. Cucuz admits that it is difficult to assess the magazine’s direct influence on Russian women, but she does offer evidence that suggests it made significant progress in “winning women’s hearts.” The magazine’s high circulation numbers coupled with the 2.7 million visitors to the USIA’s 1959 exhibit in Moscow signal that the “American way of life” as sold by public diplomacy intrigued Soviet citizens. Furthermore, Cucuz points to Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s creation of a single-family dwelling program (Khrushchevka), as well as his tour of America’s grocery and department stores (which prompted changes in Soviet stores), as evidence that the “story of the American people” was a seductive one and that waging the Cold War on the battlefield of gender was a successful strategy.Winning Women’s Hearts is meticulously researched and engagingly written, making it a welcome contribution to Cold War, gender, and print culture studies. Cucuz has built an impressive archive from which she draws her ideas and with which she contributes to conversations begun by Elaine Tyler May, Karl Ann Marling, Laura Shapiro, Elizabeth Cohen, Mary Dudziak, Kenneth Osgood, and others. Cucuz’s gift is her focused reading of LHJ and Amerika, drawing broader conclusions about gender and foreign policy from an exhaustive examination of particulars. She does not fall into the trap of merely describing the phenomenon about which she writes but takes care to point out the limits of and blindspots in these primary texts and their purveyors. Perhaps most refreshing is that she does not merely repackage the now tired “containment culture” approach to anything Cold War, instead allowing the women’s magazines themselves to identify the central question at issue. I have two minor critiques. First, the early chapters have huge paragraphs that could benefit from breaking up into smaller, more focused units. Second, unless one catches the footnote clarifying that the author is focusing on the Russian women’s reception within the Soviet Union, one might think that she is using “Russian” and “Soviet” interchangeably. Including that in the text proper would have been helpful. Yet, these minor quibbles do not detract from this remarkable study and book. Readers of Reception will be impressed by Cucuz’s dedication to print culture, careful analytical methods, and accessible storytelling. Indeed, she has taken a page out of the USIA’s book in that she has written a tale that is informative, truthful, and appealing.

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