Jennifer Schaefer

Journal of Undergraduate Research
Volume 6, Issue 2 - October 2004

Changing Times: Tracing American Sexuality Through Magazine Cover Lines on Redbook and Glamour Magazines

Our views of sexuality have changed over the course of history. Sometimes society is very open to sex, as the ancient Romans saw nothing wrong with an elite male taking a lower class male lover, or bathhouse orgies among the elite. “’To pursue sex was a good thing—not a shameful thing.’” [6] Other times society hides sex, though it is one of the strongest human instincts, and expects its members to limit sexuality to the strictest of circumstances. In the 60s The American Psychiatric Association went so far as to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder. [8] In that same decade, Americans attempted to monitor how people lived their sex lives by maintaining such restrictions as leasing apartments only to married couples. [4]

This paper seeks to examine the changes in attitudes toward sex in America by looking at the change in the sexual content of cover lines from Redbook and Glamour magazines from the 1960s to present. Redbook and Glamour's cover lines serve as historical documents, which paint a picture, tracing the sexual climate in American society. Both magazines are heavy with sexual content. The articles the cover lines advertise discuss ways women relate to their minds and bodies while dealing with marriage, family, and sex. Alexandra Start, an editor of the Washington Monthly offers insight about how such magazines reflect changes in society: “In 1961 Redbook ran an article cautioning young women that premarital hanky-panky could mean giving up any chance of walking down the aisle; today the magazine advises readers on how to drive men wild.” [10]

Popular trends of the 60s include the sexual revolution. Helen Gurley Brown, a pioneer of women’s magazines and sexual freedom for women encouraged women to remain single and have many sexual encounters before finding a mate. Ideas like Brown’s are what started melting the icy layer American society had preserved sex in [2]:

I think marriage is insurance for the worst years of your life. During your best years you don’t need a husband. You do need a man of course every step of the way, and they are often cheaper emotionally and a lot more fun by the dozen. . . . There is an important truth that magazines never deal with, that single women are too brainwashed to figure out and, that married women know but won’t admit, that married men and single men endorse in a body, and that is that the single woman, far from being a creature to be pitied and patronized, is emerging as the newest Glamour girl of our times. [3]

These passages are taken from Brown’s book Sex and the Single Girl, written in 1965. With her book, Brown sent a message to single women everywhere that they could stay single and be free with their sexuality. Brown is important to magazines because she moved on to transmit her ideas about sexual freedom onto the covers of Cosmopolitan.

In November 1967, Redbook published the cover line Sex before Marriage: A Young Wife’s Story. This cover line seems to contradict Brown’s belief that women should get “part of the play” out of their system before marrying. In fact, it makes a woman who has had premarital sex seem like a freak-of-nature. This shows that not everyone was catching on to the idea of sexual freedom. Society was still very much repressed when it came to sex before marriage, and it would take a while before premarital sex was actually an socially acceptable option.

A few months after their exposé on sex before marriage, in January 1968 Redbook seemed more sympathetic to the single women when they displayed the cover line A Defense of Women Who Refuse to Marry. Redbook appears to be giving single women a voice, letting them stand up for themselves, but the skepticism about women not marrying can still be seen, because the cover line assumes that single women need to defend their choice to not marry.

Redbook raised the topic of cohabitation in April 1968 with the cover line Why “Just Living Together” Won’t Work. “In 1960, only 17,000 unmarried couples were living together ‘without benefit of matrimony,’ as it was described at the time.” By the end of the decade, the number of unmarried couples had rose 900 percent. [1]

In April 1965, Glamour featured the cover line Birth Control: The Facts. In Marwick’s The Sixties, he says that most women were not familiar with the term “birth control,” and did not know there was a way besides coitus interruptus, to stop conception. The popularization of birth control also helped to erase some of the stigma associated with sex. Now, unmarried women would be less likely to have children out of wedlock and therefore be disgraced.

The cover lines seen in the 60s were often used to inform readers of things they did not know about sex. The cover lines of the 70s, 80s, and today suggest what has happened to magazines since the emergence of sex as a magazine-selling device.
Redbook takes a different spin on the subject in June 1974 with What Lovers Discover About Living Together. Now the shunned unmarried couple are lovers and they are left to their own devices to discover each other. This cover line suggests a more inviting time for the young couple.

September 1974’s Redbook describes a flirty, sexually aggressive woman with How Uninhibited Can a Woman Dare to Be? and Look Out! Here Come Naked Men! Women thinking about naked men, at least publicly, would not have been mentioned on a 1960s cover, neither would discussion of a woman’s attitude in the bedroom, and now, only 10 years later these things are cover worthy. One explanation for the saucier cover lines in the 70s would be the more mainstream use of the birth control pill, which made some women more likely to have sex with a much lower risk of pregnancy. Until the 70s women had not been in control of their sexuality. With the use of birth control and the promotion of the single woman, women are given license to experiment with different men.

In the 80s, covers get ever more sexual, with even more words that would have been foreign to a 60s magazine cover. Glamour’s October 1982 issue told of the Sex Debate on New Path to Orgasm: Is There Really A G-spot? January of the same year was all about Sex Toy Parties: Who Goes and Why? Fewer than 20 years after Brown’s Single Girl, sex was being talked about explicitly on magazine covers. It was not just about making babies anymore. It seems the sexual cover lines grow exponentially with each passing decade.

Today magazine cover lines have been much talked about and some magazines are even being shielded at the checkout lanes. Magazine editors seem to agree that sex in cover lines attracts readers, but should be used in moderation. Lisa Miya-Jervis, editor of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, says, “Anything that sensationalizes sex also oversimplifies it. Accurate sexual information is great for women, but overhyped, pressure-filled stuff is not.” [7] Miya-Jervis’ opinion is one that many hold about content of current magazine cover lines, that sex is being used to sell magazines, not because it holds any importance. Many sex cover lines today offer up tips on how to spice up the bedroom or ten nasty tricks to lure him. Details editor Mark Golin warns, “When every single month you need to sell the magazine, and the biggest cover line is the sex cover line, that starts to become a problem.” [9]

Not all magazine professionals think sex on the cover lines has gotten to be too much. Myrna Blyth, editor-in-chief of Ladies’ Home Journal, blames the readers: “There was an effort to write saucier headlines to attract consumers.” [5] Carolyn Kitch, director of the Magazine Sequence at Temple University and former senior editor at Good Housekeeping agrees: “What protestors forget is that the magazine business is based on supply and demand. And if sex entices readers, then that’s what they’ll get.” [7]

Editors like Miya-Jervis and Golin blame their peers for the overexposure of sex on magazine covers, but Blyth and Kitch say it’s all about the money, that they must use sex to stay in business. Both parties have valid points. Magazines walk a fine line between intriguing and disgusting readers with how much sex they think readers need for the month.

Have magazine editors exploited the American woman’s sexual freedom? We are a far way from promoting the sexual lifestyle of ancient Romans on today’s magazine cover. Some might say America is still sexually repressed; others may disagree and say that America is corrupt and its society doesn’t need the help of magazines to make it more so. Since the first semi-explicit cover lines in the 60s, America has been asking for more, and magazines have delivered it, in an avalanche of sexual information Americans want, but can’t stand to look at.

Today’s Glamour and Redbook covers prominently display sex cover lines at the top left corner. In their April 2004 issues, Redbook offers up How to Have Amazingly Great Sex (Tonight!) and Glamour checks off Men’s Sexual Wish List. Present day cover lines don’t condemn sexual choices, they just tell readers how to make their sex more frequent and more fun.

The future of sex on magazine covers lies with the future of sex in American society. It seems that as decades pass, society is more accepting of sexual behavior it had been against in the past. Homosexuals are adopting children and divorce is at an all-time high in America. As America becomes more openly sexual, its magazine covers will reflect that change.

REFERENCES

Bailey, Beth and David Farber. The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s. Columbia University Press, New York. 2001.
Biography, Helen Gurley Brown The Original Cosmo Girl. A&E Television Networks. 1996.
Escoffier, Jeffrey. Sexual Revolution. Women Alone? Oh Come Now! By Helen Gurley Brown from Sex and the Single Girl. Thunder’s Mouth Press. New York. 2003.
Hill, Ivan. The Bisexual Spouse: Different Dimensions in Human Sexuality. 1987
Kuczynski, Alex. Old-Line Women’s Magazines Turn to Sex to Spice Up Their Sales. The New York Times, Feb. 28, 2000.
Monteagudo, Jesse. Review of Roman Sex: 100 BC to AD 250. Gay Today Volume 8, Issue 39. http://gaytoday.com/reviews/100603re.asp
Navratil, Wendy. Read all about it sex sells, but some say magazine covers are going too far. Chicago Tribune. Feb. 2, 2000.
Reti, Irene. Nothing Out in the Redwoods? The 1960s. Regents of the University of California. 2004. http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/oir.exhibit/1960s.html
Roundtable discussion. The Joy of Sex Brandweek, March 6, 2000, Vol. 41 Issue 10
Sex and the women’s magazine. Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2000, Vol. 24, Issue 1, p.84.

--top--

Back to the Journal of Undergraduate Research