Originally launched in 1928, by the 1950s and 1960s nearly two
million readers every month sampled "Chatelaine" magazine's
eclectic mixture of traditional and surprisingly unconventional
articles and editorials. At a time when the American women's
magazine market began to flounder thanks to the advent of
television, "Chatelaine's" subscriptions expanded, as did the
lively debate between its pages.
Why?
In this exhilarating study of Canada's foremost women's
publication in the 50s and 60s, Valerie Korinek shows that while
the magazine was certainly filled with advertisements that promoted
domestic perfection through the endless expansion of consumer
spending, a number of its sections - including fiction, features,
letters, and the editor's column - began to contain material that
subversively complicated the simple consumer recipes for affluent
domesticity. Articles on abortion, spousal abuse, and poverty
proliferated alongside explicitly feminist editorials. It was a
potent mixture and the mail poured in - both praising and
criticizing the new directions at the magazine.
It was "Chatelaine's" highly interactive and participatory
nature that encouraged what Korinek calls "a community of readers"
- readers that in their very response to the magazine led to its
success. "Chatelaine" did not cling to the stereotypical images of
the era, instead it forged ahead providing women with a variety of
images, ideas, and critiques of women's role in society.
Chatelaine's dissemination of feminist ideas laid the foundation
for feminism in Canada in the 1970s and after.
Comprehensive, fascinating, and full of lively debate and
history, "Roughing it in the Suburbs" provides a cultural study
that weaves together a history of "Chatelaine's" producer's,
consumers, and text. It illustrates how the structure of the
magazine's production, and the composition of its editorial and
business offices allowed for feminist material to infiltrate a
mass-market women's monthly. In doing so it offers a detailed
analysis of the times, the issues, and the national cross section
of the women and, sometimes, men, who participated in the success
of a Canadian cultural landmark.
Winner of the Laura Jamieson Prize, awarded by the Canadian
Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
General
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