Imagining Gender, Nation, and Consumerism in Magazines of the 1920s by Rachael Alexander (review)

Reviewed by: Imagining Gender, Nation, and Consumerism in Magazines of the 1920s by Rachael Alexander Louise Kane Imagining Gender, Nation, and Consumerism in Magazines of the 1920s. By Rachael Alexander. London: Anthem Press, 2021. iv + 243 pp. $125.00 cloth/ $30.00 e-book. A comparative study of two leading North American periodicals, the Ladies' Home Journal and Canadian Home Journal, this book will appeal not only to periodical studies scholars but also to anyone interested in why magazines from the 1920s still matter in the 2020s. The book's four chapters provide an in-depth analysis of these two important journals as well as their place and context in the early-twentieth-century American magazine scene. Rachael Alexander's introduction to her book sets its clever and capacious tone: she asserts the fundamental need to consider magazines as objects—"considering the periodical in this manner broadens our understanding of its value," she argues (2)—while [End Page 275] weaving an array of methodological approaches, cultural contexts, and formal concerns such as the magazine's collaborative nature and portability, and the distinct qualities of "ephemerality and self-renewal" into her initial discussions of each title (5). The organization and breadth of the volume is superb; it presents us with the feeling that we are at once concentrating and expanding our understanding of these two complex magazines and their largely middle-class, white, female readerships. Each chapter unfolds seamlessly into the next, combining the cautious examination and detailed context that will ensure this volume's success not only with scholars and periodical studies enthusiasts but also with students. Alexander aims to answer a few key but difficult questions through her comparative examination of the Ladies' Home Journal and Canadian Home Journal: What were their functions, and how did they differ in two, rather different, cultural contexts? To what extent are the titles, their content and concerns constructed in a national framework? What did they mean to the women that read them, and how did they challenge or confirm constructions of gender and femininity? And how did they shape the burgeoning consumer cultures in which they were produced? (3) The first chapter begins to answer these questions, using "a combination of formal and contextual analysis" that "challenges hierarchical value-based assumptions" to explore the two periodicals (17). This version of Franco Moretti's distant reading approach involves reading a magazine's entire contents over several years' worth of issues. Highlights of Alexander's opening chapter include a fine examination of mass-market magazines and the roles producers, as well as readers, play in their construction. This discussion is of particular use to scholars of women writers, because it reasserts the increasing dominance of female contributors and editors in the burgeoning network of turn-of-the-century commercial magazines. The material relating to the journals themselves feels somewhat limited, however; a few primary examples would further develop this chapter's discussion of the gender, nation, and consumerism categories in the book's title. Chapter 2 explores how the Ladies' Home Journal and Canadian Home Journal represented the flapper through editorials and fictional pieces that alluded to this figure, along with insights into how female readers of both journals responded to her. Alexander's focus on how advertisements also contributed to this construction is one of the most compelling sections of the book, and its illustrations provide a visual element that enables readers to appreciate the impact of those ads on their female readers, invariably under the careful direction [End Page 276] of their male editors. Chapter 3 offers a detailed analysis of who, exactly, these readers were, successfully drawing together both cultural contexts and marketing statistics. Alexander expertly combines this qualitative information with quantitative analysis of both magazines' implied and actual readers. The focus on visual elements in magazines begun in chapter 2 resumes in chapter 4, "Fashionable, Beautiful, Moral: Idealised Images of Femininity." This chapter offers readings of how the visual contents of both magazines—elaborate cover images; fashion columns complete with multiple illustrations of care-free flappers dressed in low-hemmed, ankle-baring skirts and loose-cut blazers; and advertisements for beauty products and cosmetics—reflected and constructed trends and topics...

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