2842 Do your eyes get misty

when you meet an old friend, especially one you thought was dead? That's a bit how I felt when leafing through the premiere issue of Hallmark Magazine, September/October 2006, Vol. 1, no.1, at the coffee shop today. My friend Bev, who loves to surprise people with little personal gifts, passed it along to me, knowing I collect premiere issues. It will have strong ties to its products and expects to have 550,000 out there for the next issue. There are many delightful articles in this beautifully designed magazine, but when I got to the end there was an excerpt from Alice McDermott's new novel, After This, with soft watercolor illustrations.

I was immediately transported back to an era of women's magazines when you eagerly picked up the latest issue because of the serialized fiction, or short fiction, sometimes on different colored, or textured paper. There I was, for a moment, back in my parents' home on Hannah Ave., stretched out on the living room sofa on a steamy summer afternoon, no air-conditioning or fan, magazine propped up on my then very flat belly, trying to ignore my mother's call to come and snap the green beans before they got tough.

I've confessed here before that I am not much of a fiction reader, having discovered non-fiction in graduate school. But when I did read it in the 60s or 70s, it was most likely in a woman's magazine, perhaps while waiting in the doctor's office or business lobby. Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan (before all the cleavage and sex articles changed it), Redbook, Woman's Home Companion--they all gave many women writers their start. I thought fiction had pretty much disappeared from the traditional woman's magazine, but when I Googled the topic, I learned that isn't so. At least feminists are still writing articles about how it rots women's brains and doesn't reflect real women's lives and somebody somewhere absolutely must do something about it. I don't know what. Force women to write and read about lesbian sex? Women scientists who discover malaria is best controlled by DDT and lose their jobs? Women pols based on Nancy Pelosi's character? Who would read that drivel?

The mother of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Elizabeth, wrote unkindly about women's fiction in the New Republic in March 1946. Although it wouldn't get her a PhD in women's studies, it harks back to a 1933 study about how trivial the 5 most widely read ladies' magazines were. Actually, she only included one line about fiction, ["boy and girl tales, generally with happy endings consumed endless space"], but we know fiction doesn't consume "endless space" these days. It's been replaced by diet and exercise articles, like we needed to learn that we should eat less and move more.

In March 1949 Ann Griffin in American Mercury blasted women's fiction--out of 100, she said, maybe 10 would be concerned with a genuine, recognizable problem. The settings were "never-never land inhabited by disembodied spirits completely free of entangling environments." And everybody lived in New York, Florida or San Francisco (just like today's mainstream media slant), nobody worked, and no one had problems with housing, the high cost of living (1949?) or elections.

Then came the feminists roaring through in the 1970s, so magazines had to have the obligatory push for women to all be working and worrying about day care, wardrobes for the office, and additional education. I'm not convinced that feminists didn't kill a very nice market for women writers and illustrators. So if you're looking for a thesis topic, I've just given you one.

So truly, I can't be blamed for thinking there was no longer any fiction in the ladies' magazines. It's apparently out there, but I've been reading the Wall Street Journal, or Weekly Standard, or JAMA, or New Republic, or American Artist. And my doctor's office just seems to have golf and boating magazines.

fiction writers
women's magazines
women and media, Hallmark