Archive for December 4th, 2008
I have an article on Culture11.com today called “Ghosts of Christmas Past.” The teaser? “The evolution of Good Housekeeping shows that much has changed for women over the past 50 years — but not always in the way people imagine.”
For the article, I compared Good Housekeeping magazines from 1958 and 2008. The article is based on the December issues, but I also looked through the November issues just to make sure my thesis still held. Here’s the gist: “Reading the [1958 issue] is like visiting a lost civilization, in which women were obsessed with domesticity, but less so with their children, and time really didn’t matter — an equation that, fifty years later, has been thoroughly reversed.” Give it a read and let me know what you think!
New York City-based writer Laura Vanderkam is the author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career without Paying Your Dues (McGraw-Hill, 2007). She is a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors, and her work has appeared in Reader's Digest, Scientific American, Wired, The American, Portfolio and other publications.
Write to her at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com.