ABSTRACT
Changing patterns of female role models constituted one of the most widely – and controversially – discussed topics in modern popular magazines which, particularly between 1890 and 1910, established themselves as an institutionalized expression of the diversifying tendencies of American social, economic and cultural life. Some periodicals favourably appreciated the fact that American women gradually conquered the public arena; others emphasized their consistent American style of dressing by rejecting any fashionable French influence. But whether they encouraged selfconfident young females or reminded them of a woman’s domestic responsibilities for her family and her home – the multivalent participation of the magazines played an important role in the discursive construction and reconstruction of the image of the New Woman at the turn of the twentieth century.
