Making Her Up: Women’s Magazines in Slovenia

In Making Her Up, the authors try to elucidate the precise
ambivalence of the image of the modern woman, which is (un)wittingly created by
the producers of women’s magazines in co-operation with capitalistic
advertising mechanisms and, not least, their own readers. Through the discourse
and content analysis of a diverse selection of Slovenian women’s magazines
(Cosmopolitan, Jana, Modna Jana, Glamur, Naša žena, and Moj malcek), the
writers have uncovered a few representative topics: the contradictory contents
of ‘universal women’s culture’; the phenomenon of subtle advertising, with its
inexhaustible options among the various types of magazines; fashion as the main
theme of each and every one of these magazines; the disciplining of a woman’s
mind through the disciplining of her body; cosmetics advertisements; medicine,
pregnancy, birth, and the cult of motherhood, which still prevails over the
image of the independent, successful, emancipated woman.

Contributors: Majda Hrženjak holds a doctoral degree in sociology and works as
a researcher at the Peace Institute; Ksenija H. Vidmar holds a doctoral degree
in sociology and works as a lecturer in the sociology of culture at the School
of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana; Zalka Drglin has a master’s degree
in the sociology of culture; Valerija Vendramin has a doctoral degree in
women’s studies and works as a researcher at the Pedagogical Institute; Jerca
Legan is a postgraduate student at the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis
(Ljubljana); Ursa Skumavc is a student of the sociology of culture at the
School of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana.

At the book presentation, Majda Hrženjak, Ksenija H. Vidmar, Zalka
Drglin, Valerija Vendramin, Jerca Legan, and Vlasta Jalusic, the founders of a
research group for reviewing women’s magazines at the Peace Institute, will
take part in a conversation moderated by Brankica Petkovic, the editor of the
MediaWatch series.

In cooperation with: Cankarjev dom, Založba/*cf., Mirovni institut / The Peace Institute.