Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 20

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Popular Culture Review

or fashion trade executives or members of the helping professions in
their {personality profiles. While there is nothing unusual in these
practices, Lear’s takes the further step of generally equating the
success of the cause of women over 40 with the commercial success of
the magazine itself and, presumably, Frances Lear. The effacement of
borders here is not so complete, as it is in some magazines, that one
cannot tell where editorial content ends and advertising content
begins, but the separation between Frances Lear and Lear’s, between
the cause of women over 40 and the magazine itself, is far less
distinct. The idiom is sufficiently common that it is not clear who is
co-opting whom. In the pages of Lear’s such a distinction seems to be
of no real interest, as the margins seek the center and the center seeks
the margins in an oscillation of thresholds characteristic of
postmodemity.
Lear’s, as are many current manifestations of American popular
culture, is dedicated to simultaneously celebrating difference and
collapsing difference—to having it all, as we are wont to say,
whatever "it" may be. The palpable determinacy of 130 slick pages
of Lear’s oscillates with the indeterminacy of the multiple fragments
of the "cause" of women over 40 or, a bit more narrowly, of women over
40 with annual incomes over $40,000. The interests of women over 40
for Lear’s are "postfeminist"; that is, the substantial ideological and
cultural changes of the women's movement are viewed as more or less
having taken place. In a March 1989 editorial, Frances Lear writes:
It's odd there is no laser-sharp insight into the last 25
years of change for women . . . . One thing is certain:
The Mad Housewife isn't mad anymore. She may not
even be a housewife. And therein lies, we think, the
pith. The fundamental result of Friedan's storm may
prove to be the understanding and acceptance of the
right of women-equally with men—to pursue Freud's
prescription for happiness: to work as well as to love.
The finding must be solidified, however, then
molded—given depth and dimension—put into the
kiln and fired.
A woman for Lear’s is neither insane, angry, nor underemployed
outside the home, and doubtless the experience of her age provides