Gendering of the “ideal user” in 1990s-era internet magazines

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This project responds to calls by scholars to interrogate how gender was depicted on the early commercial internet. More broadly, it examines how the idea of “users” was and is constructed in different times and places. Specifically, it examines images—advertisements, photos, and other illustrations—and how they depicted gender norms and user behaviors on the internet—in their “idealized” forms. Our study looks at how magazines, such as Internet World and Yahoo! Internet Life shaped internet culture from the beginning. They differed from webzines in their crossover appeal to women, men, power users, and casual fans. We utilize a close reading of these primary sources and deploy a feminist historical approach to help understand how these images were constructed and received. In this, we are inspired by Megan Sapnar Ankerson and Jesse Lingel, with their research on the early civilian internet.