Introduction
A woman is a representative of the fair sex, though she is considered to be a good wife, a loving mother, a wonderful housewife, a passionate lover, moreover, she has to act the parts of a great number of different skilful, intelligent, and gentle people. People always want us, women, to be what they want us to be. They do not think about our real necessities and desires. I do not blame those women who give up the lifestyle they have accustomed to and stay at home. Can children be proud of their mother who had not realised her potential and can husbands be proud of their wives who cannot even go with them to a business dinner? What is wrong with you ladies? What do you want from your life? These questions should be primarily considered and then decide what you want to do.
Portrait of a modern woman
Modern women are independent and intelligent, they are able to take shine out of their male competitors while presentations and meetings. Women can do everything by themselves in contrast to men. Women have learned to combine their duties in the kitchen with politics and marketing, they successfully make bargains with grocers as well as with foreign partners. We are capable of many things which can be neglected by men. Women are strong and delicate creatures and they need something to follow, some icon of perfectness to seek.
Disrespect for women in magazines
Women’s magazines established an original strategy to make us less perfect than we are. Chatelaine has introduced a contest where Canadian women could prove their skills as mothers, wives, and housewives.
It is obvious that the magazine needed some image to follow to, some standard, definite parameters of the ‘real woman’. So, they introduced a “preferred meaning” (Korinek 178) of a real housewife who should be a “stay-at-home wife and mother, who devoted herself to her family, church, and community” (Korinek 179). This means that women who wanted to make a career or had to work because of money shortage could not be considered real women and model wives and mothers.
It is outrageous that women who succeed in maintaining their families (in the financial aspect) and maintaining their homes (being a housewife) cannot be full-fledged members of society. Men think them to be parvenus, while ordinary housewives believe them to be unworthy of being called ‘a woman’. However, the changes provided by the chief editor of the magazine had raised the problem of the working women who successfully do all housework.
Women’s magazines are considered to be a source of knowledge and useful information on home, cooking, upbringing children, and other issues of this sort. It is worth mentioning that “lack of mental stimulation [provided in women’s magazines] or the hegemonic portraits of middle-class life…” (Korinek 186) were transformed with the help of letters from readers. These letters contained critique or positive evaluation of articles, editors, writers, and other readers’ letters.
Conclusion
‘Mental stimulation’ is not exactly what women are expecting to see in their favourite magazine which serves as a diary, a cookery book, and reading matter at the same time.
Women expect women’s magazines to be a kind of source of inspiration and information. They should not write about models and actors only because if one wants to create an image of a real woman, it is necessary to dig deeper than housewives or mothers. Women have a great number of other roles to perform. It would be unfair to develop the action in one way, while life is so many-sided.
Works Cited
Korinek, Valerie. “‘Mrs. Chatelaine’ vs ‘Mrs Slob’: Contestants, Correspondents, and the Chatelaine Community in Action, 1961 – 1969.” Journal of Canadian Studies. 33(3) (1998): 177-187.