GENDER, CONSUMPTION AND VALUES IN WOMEN’S LIFE-STYLE MAGAZINES: THE EXAMPLE OF LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL

Abstract

The aim of this study is to reveal the course of the relationship between gender, consumption and values that guided American society through advertisements between 1980 and 2005 in the example of Ladies' Home Journal, an American women's lifestyle magazine. For this purpose, a two-stage research was designed. In the first stage, the advertisements, editorial content and total number of pages in the magazine were counted and the advertisements were divided into categories. In the second stage, the advertisements in Ladies' Home Journal were analyzed according to Schwartz Values Scale. At this stage which was carried out with the qualitative analysis method, the previously determined advertisement categories were analyzed according to the Schwartz Value Scale: four higher order values, ten basic values and fifty-six lower order values. The most common value in Ladies' Home Journal issues in the twenty-five-year period is the value of "openness to change". This higher order value’s frequency, which was highest in 1980, started to decline after 2000 and the value of conservatism began to rise. The basic values most often found in Ladies’ Home Journal’s advertisements between 1980 and 2005 were hedonism, stimulation, and self-direction.