The New Lady's Magazine

This was a Power Point slide that was part of a group presentation for one of my college English classes. We compared the ladies' magazines of the Eighteenth Century with modern day women's mags.
The slide is a satiric representation of what the cover of an Eighteenth Century magazine might look like if the teasers for the publication were written in the breathless, urgent style of today's women's magazines.
From the Essay:

Peter Miller notes that the women’s periodicals of the eighteenth-century show “not the slightest interest … in the important social and political issues of the day” (283). Their concerns were mostly of fashion, comportment and how to attract the right kind of man and how to keep him interested. Does any of this sound familiar? Miller sums it up for us. He says “The similarity of these early ladies’ magazines to women’s periodicals today is striking” (283).

I have to chuckle every time I think about this picture, especially when I'm standing in front of the magazine racks at the local bookstore or supermarket. Who says we've come a long way, baby?

***And because I'm still an obessive-compulsive English Major at heart, here's the work cited:
Miller, Peter John. “Eighteenth-Century Periodicals for Women.” History of Education Quarterly 11.3 (1971): 279-286. JSTOR 3 Nov. 2005. .