Both the United States and Canada in the 1920s were cultures that were becoming increasingly focused on the visual. A burgeoning celebrity culture alongside rapidly improving technologies of film and photography were instrumental in this shift, as were the mass-market magazines.1 In addition to written content the mass-market magazine presented increasingly sophisticated images; iconography which served to construct aesthetically based ideals which their readers were encouraged to aspire to, but which were also used in a commercial capacity to sell advertised products and the magazines themselves. This use of imagery on a mass-market scale can be seen as evidence of this burgeoning visual culture, which granted growing importance to appearance. As Conor points out in her book The Spectacular Modern Woman, women were far more visible in public spaces – from the department store to the silver screen, in print and in person – with the result that, ‘for women to identify themselves as modern, the performance of their gendered identity had to take place within the modern spectacularization of everyday life’ (7), thus, ‘modernity's visions of women became part of women's self-perception as modern: gendered representations became embodied’ (8).

Conor's study focuses primarily on recognisable character types of the period, including the flapper and the screen star, who – while intermittently featured in the magazines’ pages – are not closely aligned with the intended audience of the Ladies’ Home Journal and Canadian Home Journal. Yet Conor's comment is nevertheless entirely applicable to the two magazines.