The Modern Woman in The Mirror: Modernity and the New Zealand Women's Magazine, 1922-1932

Abstract

In 1922 a new women’s magazine, The Ladies’ Mirror, was launched in Auckland. The first magazine of its kind in New Zealand, The Mirror sought to provide New Zealand women with their own space in print, and contained a wide array of content, including fashion notes, housekeeping advice, and social and political discussion pieces. This thesis uses The Mirror’s first decade to explore the relationship between New Zealand women and modernity in the early twentieth century. The Mirror appeared at a time that was conspicuously and self-consciously modern, and it presented itself as a magazine for the modern woman in an era of change. Women and modernity are often presented as having a fraught relationship, but The Mirror presented a modern world in which women’s lives were being improved and enhanced.