The role of narrative in creating the ideal woman: The case of Hayat Magazine

Abstract

This study investigates the creation of ‘proper’ womanhood through the content analysis of celebrity women’s profiles in Hayat magazine, published between the years 1956 and 1960. The contextual framework of the study is the emergence of the modern nuclear family and women’s place in it as a new form of governmentality in the Turkish Republic as part of the modernization process. This study pays special attention to how ‘proper’ womanhood, one of the central ideological constructions of the new regime, was defined as being modern and at the same time as being first and foremost decent mothers and wives, the main regulators of the modern nuclear family. The main sources used are celebrity women’s profiles in Hayat in a period when the construction of the new regime matured to a great extent. The profiles are analyzed as important cultural products both reflecting and reproducing the discursive formation of ‘proper’ womanhood. Elaborating on Warner’s (2002) theory on the mass public subject, this study argues that strikingly different approaches of Hayat magazine regarding foreign female celebrities and local ones orient the readers to a direct identification with the local female celebrities while the foreign women’s celebrity profiles channel the readers to the normativity of marriage.