Elle. Marie Claire. Cosmopolitan. For generations, magazines such as these have informed the world's women, serving as fashion manuals, as well as vestibules between the conventional and taboo.
This hour, we look back on the history of these publications, and talk about the challenges faced by many women's magazines today.
Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
GUESTS:
- Lavanya Ramanathan - Reporter for The Washington Post (@lalamasala)
- Maureen Callahan - Sophia Smith Collection Archivist in the Special Collections Department at Smith College
- Jennifer Romolini - Former editor-in-chief of HelloGiggles, Shondaland.com, and Yahoo Shine; she now works as a digital media strategist (@jennromolini)
- Andrea Rapacz - Director of Exhibitions & Collections at the Connecticut Historical Society
READING LIST:
The Washington Post: Women's magazines are dying. Will we miss them when they're gone? - "The magazine industry as a whole has been belt-tightening for years thanks to a print advertising famine, eliminating costly paper copies while trying to establish a beachhead on the Internet. Yet women’s publications somehow feel much more endangered than the rest, especially now that even the woke online upstarts that once aimed to replace them -- sites such as the Hairpin, Rookie and the Toast -- are themselves turning off the lights."
Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired on January 11, 2019
