A Study On Shanghai Female Illustrated In The 1930s

Shanghai was in the transformation period of modern society in1930s,the modern city had been formed, and many foreign settlements were founded.Western thoughts had been constantly disseminated, and a variety of ideas existed atthe same time, both old and new. Along with women liberation thoughts surging,women began to leave their homes and went to society. The pursuit of increasingdemands for independence was getting higher and higher. Women magazines andnewspapers flourished under the influence of urban mass culture and modernfeminism thoughts.“The Womans Pictorial” was a woman pictorial that founded by Liang YouBooks Company in Shanghai in1930s. Female readers were the target of “TheWomans Pictorial”, and this pictorial was selected as a perspective to describe theoverview of women pictorial at the time. First, going through the womennewspapers and magazines in Shanghai from sprouting to flourishing, and thecharacteristics of the development of Shanghai women pictorials, to analyze thepublishing background of “The Womans Pictorial”.“The Womans Pictorial” hadexperienced a shifting incunabulum, an active adolescence, and a mature continuetime. The content of the pictorial contained images and text. The picture partconsisted women who was educated and had social position, and related dress andmake up images.Also there are vivid comics. The text part included the introductionsof female celebrities, fashion information of urban women, as well as fresh shortstories, essays, modern poetry and so on. In the business the pictorial reflected itsown characteristics, which was led by the chief editor. A lot of famous writers wasattracted by the pictorial and wrote for it, especially male writers who had an openmind on women, such as LiuNaou, MuShiying, Shizhecun. They all had a certaininfluence in the literary world, which had improved the literary standards of thepictorial. Editors had an open international perspective. They arranged and editedthe contents of the articles, grasping of timeliness, interacting with readers actively,and using the strategy of less advertising, stable prices, wide publishing to promote the sustained and stable development of the pictorial, which reflected the specialtyof the pictorial’s business management ways. Finally, from the perspective of thereceptions of readers, we can learn the image of contemporary urban women, anddiscuss the definition of the standard of beauty for women. It mostly stood for theopinions of male elite, and hard to avoid the concept of male superiority. We can findout the features of the urban women from the changes of women education, career,marriage and family values, and the discussion of the way out of modern urbanwomen.