FROM FEMINISM TO POSTFEMINISM - WOMENS-LIBERATION IN FASHION MAGAZINES

During the past few decades, fashion magazines have increasingly targeted young women as a specialty audience. Despite a large amount of theoretical work by feminists on women's magazines as socializing agents, very little research has been published on adolescent magazines. In this article we address this gap through an analysis of Seventeen published between 1951 and 1991. Although we find that the content of Seventeen emphasizes beauty and fashion, we also find feminist subtext. Here we document the appearance of feminist messages and then draw upon semiotics in order to understand how the meanings which sustain this subtext are constructed in advertisements for beauty products. In summary, we find that tensions between traditional and feminist messages are resolved through the construction of meanings which support the notion of postfeminism. We conclude with considerations which our analysis raises for feminist criticism of commercial media.