Ladies’ Home Journal was launched in 1883 by the Philadelphia-based Curtis Publishing Group; over its lifetime, it straddled three centuries. But it’s a monthly publication no more—the staff has been gutted and it’ll survive as nothing more than a “special interest publication” sold only on newsstands. I.e., a ghost.
Meredith pulled the plug back in April, and the July issue was the magazine’s last. It’s reaching to call it the end of an era, because the glory days of the Seven Sisters are long since gone, but it’s still a milestone. So in commemoration, I took myself uptown to the New York Public Library, randomly selected an issue from each decade of Journal‘s history, and read them cover-to-cover. Here are 21 things I learned from the experience:
Don’t worry, wage-taking gals: You can support yourself AND retain your social position
Allow the Ladies’ Home Journal of December 1897 to reassure you:
Just don’t you forget who runs the parlors in this town: “The girl who works sometimes makes one social mistake which is greatly to be regretted. She forgets the value of the woman in society, and caters only to the men. With a party of women she is dull, uninteresting and impatient, but when the men appear she grows bright, witty and attractive. Perhaps she does not stop to think, but she ought to. The girl who tries to please only the men will find, in a short time, that she no longer gets invitations to pleasant houses, where girls less attractive are invited everywhere.”
You cannot use lemon juice as Nair
Whoever told you otherwise was misinformed.
Women once aimed to harden, rather than soften, their feet
Better go slow on the tea if you’re the nervous sort
This is what ads for Chiclets used to look like
History is just a long parade of weird ways to represent boobs
What is even happening with that woman on the bottom right?
Ladymags used to be far more practical
How often do you receive real, practical financial advice from a women’s magazine? Sure, you might get some basic front-of-book budget guidance or a guest column from a personal finance expert, but one of the most fascinating things I found in several issues of LHJ were the in-depth articles on how different families managed their money. The February 1943 issue followed the Bogarts as the head of the household took a wartime job and a major pay cut; the March 1962 issue follows a couple from engagement to first baby. We’re not just talking “they put 10 percent of their take-home pay into a savings account,” either:
As it worked out, Jim’s final hospital bill was $37.74. He wrote one more $15 check to the grocery store, this one spent entirely on stocking the refrigerator for Lynn’s homecoming, and made the fifteenth of the month with $17.28 to spare. Buried among the groceries was one more purchase that had been made directly for Jeff, a 37-cent bottle of corn syrup for a sugar-water supplement to Lynne’s nursing.
It’s like finding the Billfold smack in the middle of Glamour.
But D.I.Y wedding nonsense has always been with us
Check this “mock-orange dessert,” with which you can announce an engagement at a luncheon (as long as the luncheon color is yellow). From 1912:
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