The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of  Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media
It seems that each time the American woman begins to veer toward  feminism, mainstream magazines put her back in her "proper"  place, portraying her as wife, mother, and consumer. Kitch  (journalism, Temple Univ.) traces the early development of this  trend, beginning in the 1890s with Alice Barber Stephens's  "American Woman" series and ending 30 years later with the ideal  families depicted by Norman Rockwell and Jessie Willcox Smith.  In between, she considers such influential icons as the flapper,  the vamp, the nurse, the "girl graduate," and Charles Dana  Gibson's eponymous representation of womanhood, who is tellingly  called a girl, not a woman. Kitch places each of these  stereotypes in context, not just historically but also within  the avowed agenda of the artist or editor. In the last chapter,  she discusses the dual role of prominent illustrators who worked  simultaneously for magazines and advertisers; this shared  imagery, Kitch asserts, "created a blueprint for the routine  blurring of editorial and advertising messages in mass media."  This engaging, insightful study is recommended for most  libraries. Susan M. Colowick, North Olympic Lib. Syst., Port  Angeles, WACopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.