Everybody’s talking about food: food & women’s magazines in World War One
Channel: WomensHistoryNetwork Midlands
Date: 2016-04-11

PAPER delivered by Jennifer Doyle – Kings College, University of London, at the Home, Food & Family Conference, 5 March 2016
ABSTRACT:  
On 15 June 1917, several days after a particularly devastating U-Boat campaign on British shipping, disrupting food imports, a deputation of the newspaper trade complained to a meeting a the Treasury, that the Government was not utilising the medium of women’s magazines in the dissemination of advice and information about food.  This particular reference shows how contemporaries view women’s magazines as a source of mass information distribution.  This paper will present an overview of the methods employed by contemporary print media to encourage women to engage with the war. For a significant portion of British women, household and childcare responsibilities prevented them from engaging with the war in a paid capacity, such as working in factories, the land or the many new roles made available by the conditions of war.  Women who remained out of the paid workforce/war effort, were asked to think of the Home as a War Front, and were encouraged to view the Kitchen as their theatre of war.   This paper will analyse the homogenised picture of the Home Front drawn by the media, and using the medium of food, it will show how food economy and dietary sacrifice were equated with national safety.