The female Body between Consumer culture and Traditional Roles: Redefining Gender Patterns through the Interwar Croatian Women’s Press

Abstract

In the interwar period, the women’s press served as a venue for displaying various aspects of the female body. The analyzed textual and visual material in Ženski list, Svijet, and Naša žena reveals a juxtaposition of a modern, consumer culture worldview with the patriarchal representation of the female body, which primarily emphasizes its maternal role. This paper aims to explore how media, tradition, modernity, economic progress, and public medicine impacted the shaping, redefinition, and control of the female body in consumer society.