Consumerism

Abstract

This chapter explores magazines issued during 1958 when, thanks to Britain’s return to economic prosperity, Woman’s Weekly readers are enjoying new opportunities to consume. Although materially better-off than ever before, however, they remain lower middle class in relation to readers of middle-middle-class magazines Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Own, and Woman’s Weekly retains its ambivalence towards consumerism and domestic leisure. For the first time in the period covered by this book, the magazine shows husbands performing domestic labour and entertains the possibility of working wives. Topics discussed are knitting, do-it-yourself (DIY) home renovation, housework and the beginnings of second-wave feminism, and working readers. The chapter closes with a discussion of Woman’s Weekly’s courtship of a teenage audience, engaging with wider concerns about teenage culture and ensuring its own continuation. Key texts are The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedman and fiction by Lyn Reid Banks and John Wyndham.