cal commentary of the day, 'we should have before us a repulsive and useless hybrid'...Participation in modernity, education and employment was portrayed as making Victorian women ill...Victorians protested women's higher education by fervidly imagining the damage it would do to their reproductive organs...and it was taken for granted that 'the education of women would sterilize them' and make them sexually unattractive: 'When a women displays scientific interest, then there is something out of order in her sexuality.'"The attitudes toward women at that time are pretty obvious: women were seen as walking wombs, and anything they did to expand their usefulness in the world was attacked as a threat to this "reality." That women could have had more to offer society beyond the children they bore was not conceivable or allowed.The advent of the two world wars changed the rules. It now became important to society for women to leave their homes and work for the war effort. Advertising in women's magazines jumped on the bandwagon: "A Pond's cold cream ad of the time read: 'We like to feel we look feminine even though we are doing a man- sized job...so we tuck flowers and ribbons in our hair and try to keep our faces looking pretty as you please.'" A cosmetics ad "admitted that while the war could not be won by lipstick, 'it symbolized one of the reasons why we are fighting...the precious right of women to be feminine and lovely.'" The propaganda in women's magazines of that day emphasized that it was okay to work in the factory, live on your own and earn your own salary, so long as you stayed "feminine." And, of course, the goal of all women's magazines was to be the sole source on how to be feminine. "Women's magazines needed to ensure that their readers would not liberate themselves out of their interest in women's magazines."After each war, the propaganda in women's magazines took a drastic turn in emphasis. Forces in culture were concerned ...
