ABSTRACT
In the 1950s, while mainstream magazines like Collier’s, Saturday Evening Post, Look, and Life all struggled with subscription numbers, magazines aimed at a white male readership flourished. In numerous and critical ways, the “ideal woman” presented in men’s magazines departed dramatically from the beauty goals promoted in women’s magazines. The Godfather of men’s magazines in the twentieth century was Esquire. Men’s magazines similarly reveal that their readership was more interested in a woman’s proportions than her actual weight. Women’s fashion magazines urged their readers to exercise and diet to obtain an ideal form that would help them catch or keep a husband. Men’s magazines lamented that American women were squandering their femininity with such slenderizing tactics. Excessive dieting and the sheep-like following of the newest fashions irked the readers of men’s magazines because it also reminded them of how inauthentic the female form could be. For men, the importance of high-fashion models stopped at the newsstands; they desired the girl-next-door.
