Women in battle / Women in fashion: Clothing practices in the post-war period in socialist Yugoslavia in the case of journals “Women in Battle” and “Our Fashion”

Abstract

The research is based on the reviewing the ideological construction of the concept of saving up in the context of the struggle for women’s emancipation in early socialism of the post-war period. AFŽ (Antifašistička fronta žena – women’s antifascist front) as the main platform of women’s emancipation, promoted the New woman (emancipated, a political and socially aware worker) through direct propaganda in the magazine Žena u borbi (Woman in battle). At the same time, the AFŽ published a very popular magazine called Naša moda (Our fashion). It was a magazine which constructed a completely different media model of women whose interests are tied to fashion and family, emphasizing the role of the woman as housewife, mother and frivolous consumer. This dichotomy is important for the further reading of the public and media construction of modest/economic dressing which was seemingly embodied by the new woman, seeing as there as a simultaneous emergence of an opposite tendency and an alternative everyday practice. Faced with the ideological construction of emancipation, women continue performing the role of housewife who is now forced to rationalize her dressing practices and adapt to new political and economic conditions.