Reading Chatelaine: Dr. Marion Hilliard and 1950s Women’s Health Advice

Mendes, Kaitlynn

doi:10.22230/cjc.2010v35n4a2247

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…Shortly after Long's final departure from the CBC, in 1957, talks on women's health by obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Marion Hilliard produced for TCM continued this project by canvassing topics such as the need for men to share housework, female sexuality, depression and anxiety, menopause, and menstruation (Hilliard 1959a, b, c, d). These talks were so popular, perhaps because they addressed topics not explored elsewhere, that they were repeated several times and published in the progressive women's magazine Chatelaine and as a book (Hilliard 1957;Korinek 1996: 115;Mendes 2010). This project of national "mental health" was yet to make its claims through an explicitly politicized intimate voice, one that would fundamentally question the separation of private and public spheres and work to go beyond individual experience, but the challenge to established formats of women's programming developed during Long's reign over "her own little empire" of women's talks (McEnaney quoted in Cayley 1986: n.p.…”

Section: Behind the Scenes: Elizabeth Longmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and Media in the Broadcast Age

Lloyd¹

2020

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Spatial histories Histories of intimacyInciting intimate geographies 2 Media's Domestication as Intimate Geography Introduction: Not a technical article Making time for women Writing radio histories The (gendered) democratization of everyday life Conclusion 3 Anything but the News: Defining Women's Programming in Australia, 1935 The plight of the home Censorship and the women's cold warResuming transmission

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Section: Behind the Scenes: Elizabeth Longmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and Media in the Broadcast Age

Lloyd¹

2020

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“…Other scholars (e.g. Mendes, 2010;McIntosh, 2014) focus on the empowering role of women's health advice in the magazine. Such advice, still common in the magazine today, must also be understood in the context of generally available health care and socialised health insurance in Canada.…”

Section: The Canadian Magazine Marketmentioning

confidence: 99%

Older women using women's magazines: the construction of knowledgeable selves

Sawchuk

2020

Ageing and Society

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Women's magazines are widely read in Canada. The popularity of such magazines is significant because critical gerontologists, primarily drawing on content analyses of the magazines, often argue that these publications convey problematic messages about ageing. This article broaches the subject of women's magazines and ageing from a different vantage point, that of the older woman reader herself. This audience-centred research draws on 21 semi-structured interviews with Canadian women over the age of 55. The study examines what older women say about the ageing-related content of women's magazines, along with what they say about how, when and why they read these magazines. Findings illustrate that participants are aware of the inadequate and unrealistic representations of older women in women's magazines. Nonetheless, they value the publications as a source of practical information on a variety of topics and as a light and undemanding source of entertainment and relaxation. The study reveals how participants assess and deploy magazine contents and characteristics in ways that contribute to, and are informed by, their lives and identities as older women. Against the broader cultural context of ageism, using and talking about women's magazines enables the participants to position themselves as knowledgeable and informed on a variety of topics and in multiple interactions, both in explicit reference to the magazines themselves and more generally in their lives.

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“…122–123) presented her as a reactionary figure who depicted menopausal women as manipulative and self-indulgent, compared them to adolescents, and encouraged them to maintain physical relationships with their husbands even in the event of severely diminished sexual urges. Conversely, her collection of essays in Chatelaine , a Canadian women’s magazine, have been construed as prescient and provocative warnings about the fragility of women’s health in traditional roles (Mendes, 2010). Published in Britain as A Woman Doctor Looks at Love and Life , Hilliard (1958: 109) asked a number of searching questions of menopausal wives and mothers.…”

Section: Surviving the Menopause: Psychological Resilience And Personmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medical feminism, working mothers, and the limits of home: finding a balance between self-care and other-care in cross-cultural debates about health and lifestyle, 1952–1956

Cooper

2016

Palgrave Commun

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Post-war medical debates about the psychiatric consequences of married women’s economic behaviour witnessed far more divergence and collision between perspectives than has often been acknowledged. Practitioners who approached women primarily as facilitators of family health—as wives and mothers—were mistrustful of the competing demands presented by paid employment. They were faced by a growing spectrum of opinion, however, which represented women as atrophying in the confines of domestic life, and which positioned work as a therapeutic act. Advocates of work tapped into anxieties about family instability by emphasizing the dangers posed by frustrated housewives, shifting clinical faith away from full-time motherhood, but nevertheless allowing responsibilities towards husbands and children to continue to frame argument about women’s behaviour. Doctors, researchers and social critics, in this context, became preoccupied with questions of balance, mapping a path which sought to harmonize public and private fulfilment, identity and responsibility. This article traces this discursive shift through a series of conferences held by the Medical Women’s International Association during the early-to-mid 1950s, connecting debates in Britain with systems of broader intellectual exchange. It enriches and complicates historical knowledge of post-war relationships between medicine and feminism, at the same time as offering a conceptual and linguistic context for modern discussion about work-life balance and gender. This article is published as part of a collection entitled “On balance: lifestyle, mental health and wellbeing”.

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Reading Chatelaine: Dr. Marion Hilliard and 1950s Women’s Health Advice

Abstract: This article explores key themes and discourses surrounding women's health advice written by Dr. Marion Hilliard between 1954 and 1957. Her works, published

Cited by 6 publications

References 16 publications

Gender and Media in the Broadcast Age

Gender and Media in the Broadcast Age

Older women using women's magazines: the construction of knowledgeable selves

Medical feminism, working mothers, and the limits of home: finding a balance between self-care and other-care in cross-cultural debates about health and lifestyle, 1952–1956

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