THE PRESS
Journalism for Squaws
CHARLES CURRAN, MP, writes:
Britain now has fifty-odd periodicals for women only. A decade ago, there were ninety- odd. The Mirror-Odhams merger of 1961 brought most of them under one ownership.
Since then, a good many have been telescoped or poleaxed. But the survivors are thriving-•--in particular, the weeklies. The leader in that field is Woman; its January-June average sale this year was just over 3,000,000. The runners-up are Woman's Own (2,170,000), Woman's Weekly (1,490,000) and Woman's Realm (1,320,000).
These four have a combined weekly sale of around eight million, and a combined readership of twenty-four million (for each copy has an estimated three readers). It is an impressive total; no other kind of specialised journalism comes anywhere near it. Popularity on this scale tells you a great deal about the feminine half of our population. What is the editorial mix that cap- tures and holds the attention of such a large number of Englishwomen? I have been looking at the papers, for the first time in my life, in order to find out.
When you do that, you find yourself in a cosy, twilit world—a sort of biological byway. You would never suppose that eight million women now go out to work in this country. Each of the papers is conducted on the assump- tion that its readers have no particular interest in any human activities except those of a wife and mother, present or prospective. Marriage is presented as the only career for a woman. Inside her wedding ring, she inhabits a dothestic Avalon, a .happy valley where falls not hail or rain or any snow, nor ever wind blows loudly. It is journalism for squaws.
A great deal of space is devoted to the mechanics of domesticity; cooking, furnishing, baby-care.. There are articles about bea uty (`the curl most likely to succeed'), fashions ("choosing the right clothes for a big night out'), knitting, gardening, cleaning and so on. All this is predictably what you might expect. But it is the ,other ingredients of the mix that take the eye.
All four papers are pervaded by a social atmosphere that might be described as fantasy rentier middle-class. It runs through the articles, the interviews, the fiction (each paper contains several stories, with illustrations), the columnists and the readers' letters. Clearly, in this woman's world the class war is over, and the bourgeoisie have won. Mr. Godfrey Winn, in a contribution to one paper headlined 'A Fairy Tale Day,' de- Vt
scribes how he showed London to a girl from Yorkshire, a receptionist of eighteen who wants to become a model. ("How much do you spend on your clothes?" I asked, equally approving of the plain blue coat she was wearing, the touch of white at the buttons at the throat, and the Yellow jumper to match the hat.') Another paper devotes much space to Margaret, the pace-setter Princess. ('By protocol, Lord Snowdon calls his wife "the Princess" to others, but "Maggie" when they're alone. She calls him "darling," or some- times "Antony" in times of stress.') A third dis- cusses the theme of Awakening to Romance. (`There is an old wives' tale which says that a woman's first baby always has the same colour eyes as her first love.')
Each paper prints a page of paid-for letters from readers. These are a revelation of artless naiveté. One woman writes: 'Last Christmas, my husband gave me a gorgeous crimson underset trimmed with black lace, which he had bought himself. It did not fit me, but I wouldn't part with it for anything. I am nearly sixty-one.' Another writes: 'I was waiting impatiently out- side a local kiosk to make a telephone call. At long last, the door opened, but the woman only popped her head out and said: "Shan't be long now. My friend is just bringing her new clock for me to listen to its lovely tick, and then she wants the parrot to say cheerio to me."' Another writes: 'Invariably, the comic, cloth-capped half-wit in any TV play, film or book is called Albert. My husband is an Albert; he is hand- 1 some, intelligent, industrious. His mother named him after Queen Victoria's consort. So why has this royal name degenerated so?'
Each paper also devotes regular space to horoscopes and fortune-telling. The rising popu- larity of such features as a circulation bait for women readers since the war tells you something about our contemporary society (since anybody who accepts fortune-telling is, presumably, a determinist). It reinforces the fantasy function of the papers.
'But the ingredients that are omitted from the editorial mix are equally notable. Contraception, for instance, is excluded. (Miss Mary Grieve, the most renowned of all women editors, says in her autobiography Millions Made My Story that this taboo is explained by the fear of losing circulation in the Irish Republic, which outlaws contraception.) Other omissions, equally sur- prising, are less easily explained. It seems to be assumed that the woman reader is not interested ,t in savings, insurance, investments, stocks and shares. There is nothing about finance in her papers. There is nothing, either, about mortgages, or leases, or the law of landlord and tenant; home-making is discussed, so far as she is con- cerned, simply in terms of paint and curtains. There is nothing about welfare services, family allowances, pensions; nothing about jobs, careers, or equal pay. Nor do the controversies about education penetrate her papers, so far as I can
see; can find no references to day nurseries, comprehensives or university places.
It seems, in fact, as though Sir Robert Ensor Was right. Journalists, he said, were obliged to be realists about women. Thus, certain propo- sitions had been adopted as working certainties by the newspaper trade. One was that women in the mass have very little interest in doctrines, arguments or serious speculations of any kind. Their concern was not with ideas or principles. but with persons and things. Their main interest was in their feminine roles.
That was Ensor's verdict nearly two decades ago. When you look at the women's papers today, it appears to be still a true verdict.
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