ABSTRACT
Women’s lifestyle magazines, like chick lit, is seen as a paradigmatic and hence problematic genre of postfeminism. This chapter examines four Australian titles, Cleo, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and The Australian Women’s Weekly, and demonstrates that the prevalent semioscape of Australian women’s magazines is one of material and emotional abundance, taking specific shape as dreamscapes. Although they do contain some of the common narratives and tropes that trouble influential theorists of postfeminism, we contend that Australian magazines’ use of them does not coalesce into a reactionary politics, and instead voices a popular feminism that is testimony to second wave feminism’s success.
