Cipe Pineles, Magazine Culture & American Ideals

Fast forward to 1942, Pineles became the art director for Glamour, a more affordable alternative to Vogue. She went on to work for Overseas Women, a military magazine for female soldiers, until she in 1947 started working for Seventeen.⁶ Seventeen was a magazine directed to younger women, which was an overlooked audience, and often displayed as “husband hunters”. Pineles aimed to convince and showcase that teenage girls were intelligent and deserved to be taken seriously, and argued that they were mature enough to appreciate real art.⁷ She broke the traditional, cliché-filled, and sugary sweet illustrations⁸ and gave artists and illustrators like Ben Shahn, Lucille Corcos, Ad Reinhardt, and Andy Warhol⁹ the creative freedom to illustrate the covers. She also encouraged Seventeen’s photographers to focus on the girls' day-to-day life.¹⁰

In 1950, she started working for Charm, a magazine for working women.¹¹ She was interested in fashion and its effects on people’s self-esteem. She worked alongside editor Helen Valentine¹² and created spreads that showcased women in various professions and everyday situations.¹³ Later, she went to work for Mademoiselle and left the magazine in 1961 to work as a freelance designer and illustrator.¹⁴ As a designer, she preferred playful typographical solutions and often integrated text and imagery to create a cohesive visual experience. However, she avoided changing fonts merely to appear modern, believing that change should come from the magazine’s content.¹⁵ Many consider her work foundational to the modern layout design we know today.

Constructing the American Woman

As previously stated, magazines actively promoted the ideal of American lifestyle and the “American woman”, helping to shape both visual and cultural ideas of what was considered normal, desirable, and appropriate in society. In 1940, Ladies’ Home Journal had the largest print run of any magazine in the world, and throughout the 1940s-50s, the leading women’s magazines had between two and eight million readers. The magazines featured a mix of fiction, poetry, fashion content, beauty tips, housekeeping, cooking, childcare, and interior design, as well as articles with broader cultural significance, such as profiles of presidential candidates, medical topics, debates on television, and analyses of the American education system.¹⁶ This content was shaped by the editors’ assumptions about women’s interests.¹⁷ Despite the magazines’ varied content, advertisements dominated and occupied most of the space, forcing readers to flip through hundreds of pages before reaching the table of contents. By the late 1940s, some issues exceeded three hundred pages. The products advertised ranged from deodorant and haircare to frozen food and vacuum cleaners, and the large advertising revenues allowed magazines to maintain low subscription prices.¹⁸

Alongside these service magazines, which focused on home, family, and consumer life, there were also other publications aimed at women. As early as the 19^th century, some journals actively championed women’s rights and the fight for suffrage. Some were aimed at working women, such as Voice of Industry in the mid-19^th century and National Business Woman in the early 20^th century. However, the ideology that tied women to the home, combined with advertising for technological innovations, ensured that magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal attracted the most readers and advertisers in the mid-century. After World War II, several magazines gradually shifted to maintain the ideal of “the American woman” as homemaker and consumer. Redbook, founded in 1903 as a literary magazine featuring short stories and novels by well-known authors, toned down fiction and focused more on lifestyle and society articles. By 1951, it called itself “The Magazine for Young Adults,” but through ads for perfume and diapers, as well as articles on children and beauty, its target audience was clearly women.¹⁹

The historians Charles and Mary Beard were among those who criticized the direction the magazines were taking. In a book published in the 1930s, they criticized male editors and their superficial ideas about what women wanted. They argued that the pages, filled with fashion, gossip, sentimental stories, and advertisements, were designed to sell a particular idea of what a woman should be like.²⁰ Despite their criticism, several magazines claimed to base their content on surveys of their readers to find out what they wanted to read more about.²¹

In Forever Feminine, a study of British and American women's magazines, researcher Marjorie Ferguson explores how magazines portray women and men differently. Men tend to read specialist magazines about business, sports or hobbies, rather than magazines that try to cover their entire "masculinity" or male role. Ferguson argues that women are often perceived as insecure, and therefore "need" or "want" guidance, training or updating in "feminine skills". She believes that advertisements that linked femininity to consumption and that purchasing the right products became part of women’s identity.²²

Debating Pineles’ Influence

Something interesting I discovered during the research process was that most people who write about Cipe Pineres refer to her as a feminist and a trailblazer. However, according to Martha Scotford's biography of Cipe Pineres, Pineres herself denied in the 1970s that she was a feminist. She believed women’s liberation was unnecessary for herself, since her supportive husband encouraged her career, perhaps leaving her unaware of the broader need for liberation. This suggests that she viewed her own success as an individual achievement rather than a result of a collective fight for women’s rights. Scotford then points out that even if Pineles was one of few extraordinary women that succeeded in a male-dominated world, this could also trivialize the feminist movement.²³

Neither in Women’s Magazines, 1940-1960 nor in Ellen Mazur Thomson’s review of Martha Scotford’s biography on Cipe Pineles, are magazines such as Seventeen, Glamour, and Charm mentioned as particularly groundbreaking. Instead, they were portrayed as one of many magazines that relied on advertisements to capitalize on women who were interested in fashion, dating, and etiquette. They featured thin models with narrow waists and long legs, avoided controversy, and instead supported traditional ideals.²⁴ Thomson even argues that it is unfair to portray Charm or Seventeen as early feminist magazines. It is not specified whether this was during the period when Pineles was in charge at the magazines.

Although the magazines Cipe Pineles worked for may not be considered revolutionary by everyone, and she was not necessarily politically engaged enough to actively uplift other women, I still believe, after seeing several of her works, that she was an incredibly talented designer who helped create a new image of women. She wanted women and girls to gain confidence and take control of their lives, without losing their interest in beauty and fashion.²⁵ She is considered the first woman to integrate illustration and visual arts into mainstream and mass media,²⁶ and was the first female participant in the Art Directors Club in 1948, an organization that was then completely male-dominated.²⁷ Whether or not this was influenced by her then-husband William Golden or not, I believe it opened the doors for more female designers in a male-dominated field. After a sixty-year career, she died in 1991, and in 1996 she was honored with an AIGA medal.²⁸

I’ve found it very interesting to read about Cipe Pineles and the magazine culture in America in the mid-20th century. Although it is difficult to determine exactly what role these magazines played in women’s lives during and after the war, it is clear that they had a significant influence. They contributed to shape women's dreams and ideals about work, family, appearance, health, and happiness. It is easy for me to read about the past and feel frustrated by ideals largely shaped by male leaders, and by the women who lacked the opportunity or courage to stand up for themselves. At the same time, it reminds me of the society and pressures we face today, where we are constantly exposed to advertising, often without even realizing it. We are also influenced by social media and an extremely high ideal of beauty, where many feel they have to change in order to be accepted. Even though we are, in much of the world, more or less equal today, I still believe that attitudes and expectations toward both women and men persist, especially online, where criticism and harassment are amplified. Studying Pineles and her era reminds me of how far we have come, but also of how important it is not to forget the past.