Managing bodies—managing relationships: the popular media and the social construction of women's bodies and social roles from the 1930s to the 1950s

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which the bodies and social roles of New Zealand women were constructed in the popular media prior to, during and after the Second World War. A study, based on a critical discourse analysis of the New Zealand Woman's Weekly, shows the ways in which women were encouraged to appropriately manage and survey their bodies and behaviours to maintain an unproblematic gender order. During the war, women were primarily constructed in terms of their usefulness to the war effort. After the war, women were encouraged to regard their bodies and their social selves as the social currency by which they could attract and hold the scarce resource which men represented. They were also encouraged to construct their bodies as primarily suited to motherhood in the family-centred postwar social environment. This mothering role also extended to the postwar rehabilitation of men. This study draws on the work of Foucault to discuss the operation of power on women's bodies and their subjectivities during this historical period.