Abstract
Popular media provides a window in which researchers are often able to observe shifts in
societal norms in history, and women’s magazines have provided a wealth of information. This
qualitative historical analysis will examine if and how the portrayal of women in three popular
women’s magazines—Cosmopolitan, Ladies’ Home Journal and Redbook—changed and how
society influenced these changes, if at all. The thematic analysis will cover the years 1963 to
1973 because this was time in which multiple changes related to race and sex were occurring
within American society, which included the second wave of feminism.
