Women, Magazines, Depress

Women and depression have had a long relationship together that continues today and is likely stay in tact for as long as the world exists. Depression is often described through means of scientific data and is defined as a chemical imbalance in the brain that is generally treated with medication. Once prescribed a drug cocktail, it may be that a depressed person never receives any other advice on how to combat their ailment. The usual protocol of mental health doctors is to tweak and perfect the harmony of medicinal compensation for their patients. If one drug does not work, either the dosage increases or a different pill altogether will replace the last.

Thankfully, magazines are still in print.

Over the past century, American women have collectively experienced depression because of the social constraints that society poses on them. During a period of 90 years, women fought for voting rights, equal treatment, work force issues, domesticity, and birth control among many other large-scale women's issues, leading to the onset of depression.

Magazines play a role in fostering, dispelling, and sometimes temporarily relieving depression in women. They promote discussion, connecting women from across the U.S. into one large conversation, about the topics that matter to them. Magazines are also good forms of escapism, offering fantasy as a way to deal. These factors are both relevant to today's magazine and those of the past. The power of the magazine is not very obvious. People clearly looked at them as a collection of text and words, but magazines signify more than just being an aesthetically pleasing booklet.

All women's magazines have addressed and continue to address depression in a variation of ways but how its reader is affected differs as time passes, and in this sense has shaped the way American women perceive their livelihood. There is one fundamental difference between how different populations react. Magazines started out addressing women's concerns by publishing intelligent discourse. A little later, magazines started to address the personal aspects of female depression relating to their role as housekeeper or other pigeonholed, stereotyped. Today's magazines still address depression, but in an era where women seem to have it all, it is much more subtle yet ironically more sophisticated. Depression, in this case, is the result of reading these magazines, in addition to having been subject to social saturation. While using traditional methods to delineate what women are worried about, like self-help articles and self-assessment quizzes, the emphasis on a woman's physical characteristics plays off a woman's self-worthiness, which is another way to further extend, or foster, the possibility of depression.

The earliest part of the 20th century featured magazines that were rich in intellectual and political content. The big topics for magazines of that period, like education (the employment of more women to work as teachers) and working conditions appeared mostly during the earliest part of the century. During this time, women were not sulking around, looking for a way to ease her pain or an opportunity for a fast escape route. Women were smart, directive in their mission to strive for equality, and took advantage of an avenue available for them to speak their minds freely during a time when women had no influence on public policy. This sort of activism mainly appeared in the Letters to the Editor section. These letters were not just quick blurbs commending an author's efforts, but they were long missives that required real attention and thought. A magazine like Godey's was very popular for this interactive quality.

In this sense, depression was not as big of a factor for these publications because it did not take on full-blown form, or at least it was under great control. Women who wrote into magazines like Godey's or Ladies' to talk about social reform appeared to be smart, proactive women who knew what they wanted to say or do in response to their social plights.

Passivity crept into the picture in between WWI and WWII. Around this time, domesticity was a standard part of lifeÐ'--naturally, society expected women to uphold the American tradition. Women across the country were frustrated in regards to the roles society was forcing onto them, mainly because most women prior to the return to the household were working people. Good Housekeeping magazine was extremely popular during this time, as the leader in "raising the status of housework to that of a true Ð''science' and by encouraging women to buy their way to a new domestic freedom" (Horwood, 23). But while women seemed dissatisfied with their supposedly ascribed statuses, they conceded nonetheless and turned to Good Housekeeping to find a way to make the best of it. The magazine capitalized on this by overly stressing everything great about housekeeping.

But housekeeping was not as glamorous as magazine editors and advertisers made it appear to be. On the surface, Good Housekeeping underscored the importance and pleasure of being a homemaker. Shiny, convenient domestic products were advertised and handy tips about knitting and cleaning were sprinkled all through the pages, but "women's magazines featured a steady stream of articles about overwrought and depressed women [and] normalized their reader's feelings of discontent" (Moskowitz, 3). The women who were unhappy with their lives felt this way because of the obligations she had to her house, her husband, and her children that took precedence over her own needs. These magazines, however, did not do much in the way of helping to relieve the