As a young artist, one of Norman Rockwell’s fantasies was to have a picture of on the cover of the Post. Rockwell’s awareness of the Post’s aesthetic and method of depicting women is clear, even before he began working for the magazine. All of this took place before Rockwell began working for the Post, however it seems consumerism and female readership are often still associated.(16) Cohn describes the magazine’s progression from simply targeting adds for female consumers, to writing articles about women, but not really directed toward them as readers, to finally writing articles for women to read that were not merely about products that they should buy. Women were the main purchasers of goods in the country, something that the magazine recognized. The Post announced on Jthat the previously young business-man-oriented magazine was “Not for Men Only.” (14) Curtis, owner of both the Post and Ladies Home Journal, explained that the Journal was geared towards women to “give you people who manufacture things that American women want and buy a chance to tell them about your products.” (15) Such was the attitude Curtis directed toward his female readership, and the Post, at first, was no different. In her study of George Horace Lorimer’s time at the Post, Jan Cohn describes the early Post’sattempt at including a female viewership, and notes that their approach relied heavily on advertising and promoting consumerism. Rockwell’s images, in a way, were exactly in line with Lorimer’s desires for the Post.(13)Īttracting a female audience became a goal of the Post in the early 1900’s, and the magazine tried multiple approaches.
In his autobiography, Rockwell says that “ had built the Post it had been nothing and he’d made it a great magazine – his magazine.” (11) An early and prominent editor of the Post, Lorimer, had the conscious goal of creating an American identity, as he felt the country lacked this sense of Americanism (12). Much of the Post’s growth in success is attributed to the young editor that Curtis hired, George Horace Lorimer, who became editor in 1899 (9) and retired in 1937 (10). Magazines were relatively affordable, at five or ten cents apiece, making them an widely accessible source of information and entertainment for a large audience (8). He originally envisioned that the magazine would be for men, however it was eventually realized that while men were purchasing the magazine, the new business-related stories and articles that the new Post now promoted also appealed very much to their wives (7).įigure 1. Cyrus Curtis purchased the magazine, which was essentially dying out, in 1897 for only $1,000, and at the time it had a circulation of only 2,231 (6). By 1929, the Saturday Evening Post had a readership of around 20 million, having far more influence than movies and radio, and even competing magazines (5).
As much as Rockwell is often categorized as conservative and old fashioned, a closer look at the narratives he creates shows subtle, yet undeniable, resistance to old-fashioned gender roles and conventions in art and advertisements.īecause the Saturday Evening Post was so prevalent in the lives of Americans, Rockwell’s images reached a wide audience and carried great cultural influence.
All of these events contributed to a shifting presence of women in society. From the decision of Congress to endorse the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, a great success for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), (2) the flight of Amelia Earhart in 1932, (3) the shifting role of women during World War II era of the 1940s, the prohibition of sex discrimination by employers in the 1964 by the Civil Rights Act, (4) and so many more momentous events leading up to the ever more numerous milestones in the 1960s and 1970s. His career, from his first Saturday Evening Post cover in 1916 and going well into the 1970s, overlapped with almost constant progression in women’s rights. Rockwell seems to take special care to create images defining not only the American identity, but more specifically the experience of women in America. It is widely accepted that Norman Rockwell reflected the American experience and identity through, among other work, his covers for the Saturday Evening Post, (1) however his work also notes the diversity within the American experience. Beyond Objectification: Norman Rockwell’s Depictions of Women for the Saturday Evening Post