A window into a different world

If the array of women's magazines on the newshelves confuse you, imagine seeing a selection of women's magazines dating back to the 1700s...

I'd been meaning to go to this exhibition for months and finally made it yesterday.

I love magazines but filter out all the things I don't like about them. To see the way they've evolved over the centuries was pretty amazing.

Some had free gifts like "3 skeins of wool", another offered a pattern for the must have cape of the year and my friend said she'd read something about how to fix the handle on your well-pail (for drawing water?)

But even the more recent examples felt dated and alien. I picked up a copy of Company from 1982 and it was more like an academic journal than a women's magazine.

In most of the mags, text font sizes were tiny and all in mono (while some advertisers went the whole hog with colour).

I can't imagine modern readers forking out money for them today yet the journalism seemed very interesting.

As far as advice goes (being told what to eat, wear, say, do and so on), it turns out that until the 1850s, they shrank from focusing on fashion and beauty because (how amazing is this) women shouldn't be judged on the way we look.

For more information, visit
http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/thewomenslibrary/whats-on/exhibitions/betweenthecovers.cfm

Definintely worth checking out.

It also makes me wonder what future generations will make of the world reflected back to us in modern magazines.

© Eve Menezes Cunningham / www.applecoaching.com 2009.