How the Girls Really Are?: Images of College Women in LIFE Magazine during the 1960s

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/v118rf65f

Abstract

As an icon of American popular culture, LIFE magazine had a profound impact on an entire generation of American youth. When Henry Luce wrote his prospectus for LIFE, he wrote, "to see, and to be shown, is now the will and expectancy of half mankind." This study examines how LIFE's photographers and editors presented college women to look at during the 1960s for that "half of mankind". Drawing upon the work of feminist film critic Laura Mulvey and historian Wendy Kozol, this thesis explores how LIFE's stereotypical imagery of women was applied to college women during the 1960s. Issues of "separate spheres," sexuality and masculinization are all addressed and framed in the context of the history of education for American women and the feminist movement of the 1960s.

The first section deals with LIFE magazine itself and how it structured its imagery of college women. The next three chapters deal with images in the context of their specific articles and time periods, and includes comparisons with photography from Playboy magazine. The conclusion draws the thesis into the present, making a comparative analysis of college women in LIFE today. This study illuminates the ways in which LIFE's imaging of college women has evolved, and also how it has remained static. The goal is to use the imagery in question in a discussion about the changing roles of women over the course of the 1960s and how those roles were perceived by the American public.

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