ABSTRACT

From its start in 1936, Life magazine offered a portrait of the nation that blended the ideal with the typical through certain kinds of recurring characters. One was “the college girl,” the subject of Life’s first “photo-essay,” a 1937 feature on Vassar students. Such “girls” were more than a curiosity: in this era, women students constituted 40% of college enrollment. This paper analyzes their representation in more than one hundred articles and advertisements published between 1936 and 1941, the magazine’s first five years. It concludes that these characters served as symbols—of regional identity, of American superiority, of Life’s self-proclaimed wholesomeness—yet they also validated the real-life experience of many young women, whose presence in higher education would plummet after the war. One of the most visible media characters of her time, Life’s 1930s “college girl” illuminates a part of women’s history largely forgotten today.

摘要

自 1936 年创刊以来，《生活》杂志就通过某些反复出现的人物形象将理想与典型融为一体。一个是“女大学生”，这是《生活》第一篇“照片散文”的主题，这是 1937 年关于瓦萨学生的专题报道。这样的“女孩”不仅仅是好奇：在这个时代，女学生占大学入学人数的 40%。本文分析了他们在 1936 年至 1941 年（该杂志的前五年）发表的一百多篇文章和广告中的表现。它得出的结论是，这些人物是象征——地区认同、美国优势、生活的象征。自称是健康的——但它们也验证了许多年轻女性的真实生活经历，战后她们接受高等教育的人数会直线下降。作为她那个时代最引人注目的媒体人物之一，生活1930 年代的“女大学生”照亮了今天基本上被遗忘的女性历史的一部分。