Ten Years that Shook the (Men's Magazine) World
By Dian Hanson
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A generation passes and history grows hazy. Today most confuse the 1960s with the 70s. Hippies, for instance, were very much a product of the 60s, even though they hung around through the 70s. The Civil Rights movement, women's and gay liberation, the anti-nuclear backlash, the Vietnam war, world-wide student revolt, the rise of drug culture, the fall of European imperialism, all were products of the Swinging Sixties, though swinging itself was a 70s phenomenon. The Sexual Revolution, Ban The Bomb, Flower Power, The Berlin Wall, apartheid, Bay of Pigs, miniskirt, Summer of Love, The Pill, LSD, Pop Art, pantyhose, Merseybeat, Baader-Meinhof, peepshow; all these words and phrases entered our language in the turbulent 60s. It was in this decade that John F. Kennedy, Fidel Castro and The Beatles came to power; when both John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Che Guevara were assassinated. The fearsome Khrushchev went quietly in 1964, while Charles de Gaulle hung on through a near-revolution in 1968 and Le Monde's subsequent declaration that France suffered from a national state of boredom.
The year 1968 also saw 10,000 anti-war demonstrators throng the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; radical writer Ulrike Meinhof team with bad boy Andreas Baader in Berlin for a bomb- and terror spree; feminists storm the stage at the Miss America pageant; Eastern bloc nations attack Czechoslovakia for attempting the democratic reforms known as Prague Spring; black riots in 125 American cities; and obscenity laws topple in Sweden and Denmark. The 70s may have been cool, but they were no more than a decadelong after-party for the Event that was the 60s.
And it all started so peacefully. The years following World War II were marked by an unprecedented global domesticity as nations rebuilt their populations. Even France, a country whose birth rate had been steadily falling since the 1880s, saw a post-war growth spurt when de Gaulle offered cash incentives for women to produce children in 1946. His initiative inspired the French fashion houses to remake the image of woman for her role as brood mare. Dior's New Look of 1947 emphasized breasts and buttocks and heralded a return to "classic femininity". Men's magazines heralded this return in their own way, replacing the sleek showgirl figures of pre-war titles with fleshy, maternal abundance post-war.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
A generation passes and history grows hazy. Today most confuse the 1960s with the 70s. Hippies, for instance, were very much a product of the 60s, even though they hung around through the 70s. The Civil Rights movement, women's and gay liberation, the anti-nuclear backlash, the Vietnam war, world-wide student revolt, the rise of drug culture, the fall of European imperialism, all were products of the Swinging Sixties, though swinging itself was a 70s phenomenon. The Sexual Revolution, Ban The Bomb, Flower Power, The Berlin Wall, apartheid, Bay of Pigs, miniskirt, Summer of Love, The Pill, LSD, Pop Art, pantyhose, Merseybeat, Baader-Meinhof, peepshow; all these words and phrases entered our language in the turbulent 60s. It was in this decade that John F. Kennedy, Fidel Castro and The Beatles came to power; when both John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Che Guevara were assassinated. The fearsome Khrushchev went quietly in 1964, while Charles de Gaulle hung on through a near-revolution in 1968 and Le Monde's subsequent declaration that France suffered from a national state of boredom.
The year 1968 also saw 10,000 anti-war demonstrators throng the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; radical writer Ulrike Meinhof team with bad boy Andreas Baader in Berlin for a bomb- and terror spree; feminists storm the stage at the Miss America pageant; Eastern bloc nations attack Czechoslovakia for attempting the democratic reforms known as Prague Spring; black riots in 125 American cities; and obscenity laws topple in Sweden and Denmark. The 70s may have been cool, but they were no more than a decadelong after-party for the Event that was the 60s.
And it all started so peacefully. The years following World War II were marked by an unprecedented global domesticity as nations rebuilt their populations. Even France, a country whose birth rate had been steadily falling since the 1880s, saw a post-war growth spurt when de Gaulle offered cash incentives for women to produce children in 1946. His initiative inspired the French fashion houses to remake the image of woman for her role as brood mare. Dior's New Look of 1947 emphasized breasts and buttocks and heralded a return to "classic femininity". Men's magazines heralded this return in their own way, replacing the sleek showgirl figures of pre-war titles with fleshy, maternal abundance post-war.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
History of Men's Magazines Vol. 3
Hardcover, 21.3 x 27.7 cm (8.4 x 10.9 in.), 460 pages
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Swinging Sixties at the newsstand
Daring Dolls, USA, 1968