Non-Project Post: 1970s Magazines

I was recently thrifting and came across a stack of 1970s women's magazines, which I  wish I could subscribe to today- for their content, as well as their $3/year price!

I loved perusing old recipes and detailed how-to's (knit a shrug sweater, make a quilted purse) and snickering at dated styles and terms of speech (“a clothespin necklace is sure to be popular with the younger set!”). You might see a few in future posts, and I'll be sure to point them out. The majority of these projects were made with items these women had on hand already, and that's the best kind of project, as far as I'm concerned.

I couldn't help noticing the difference between these magazines and their counterparts of today, such as Good Housekeeping or Simple Living. While the 1970s wasn't that long ago at all, magazines have taken on a completely different focus in those short decades. Today's magazine readers rarely interact with one another, and if they do, it's completely anonymous, arguably for good reason.

These 1970s readers, however, reached out to one another with their full contact information, requesting pen pals,or items to trade.  Mrs. Betty Cupp wrote in the May 1978  issue of Women's Circle that, “I have lots of things to trade: 5 old dolls, a shoe box full of old postcards, an Elvis record, a J.F.K. Album, newspaper clippings on J.F.K's death, recipes, and much more.” One woman, after sharing about her husband's recent tragic death, reported in a subsequent issue that she received over a thousand letters of support from other readers!

Women's lifestyle articles evoked varying reactions. Lady's Circle's March 1977 issue had two related articles: “Do You Want to Go Back To Work- But Don't Know How to Go About it?” and “Whose Job Should Come First...Your Job or Your Husband's?” Overall, these articles gave non-gender polarized advice, which I found more valuable than the average advice column in today's Glamour or Cosmo, at any rate. While a good resume today might hold more points than secretarial skills, cooking for a family, or having a mother who will babysit, anyone should know how to spin their skills to impress a potential employer, regardless of the decade.

But I've got to backtrack a little bit. Women's lib wasn't exactly a new topic by the late 1970s, so the above articles weren't  a surprise.  But after reading a couple other articles, I wasn't entirely convinced at the timelessness of all topics. Take Cindy Ann from Women's Circle's July 1975 issue. She responded to another reader's query, “Are husbands ever justified in spanking their wives?” with the affirmative, “Mine certainly is!”  After a long column arguing her position with her own story, she concludes with, “So if your husband spanks you, remember that he does it because he loves you. Remember to paddle your tots and teens...so that their husbands won't have to.” Not exactly the advice that today's liberated woman would give or accept.

I'd love to write more on any of these topics, but I'm not an historian- just an interested reader. With the possible exception of Cindy Ann, I'd like to be friends with any of these women; their interests seem pretty similar to mine, and I love the community they create within each issue. To me, these magazines are more similar to current internet communities than their printed magazine counterparts today.  After all, if you wanted to trade fridgies for vintage doilies, isn't the internet the first place you'd go?