Introduction

Lifestyles have a history, and lifestyle media is fundamentally implicated in this history. This original volume examines issues of taste, media and lifestyle from the 1900s to 1970s, providing a wealth of empirical evidence and debate from varied international perspectives.

Including examples as diverse as Good Housekeeping and Playboy, it explores the continuities and discontinuities between the past and present to provide a better understanding of the representation of lifestyle and its relationship to the self.

Key Themes

The volume demonstrates how ideas about gender, nation and race problematize taken-for-granted assumptions about lifestyle, with particular emphasis on the new middle classes in the US.

The book also examines the role of advertising and marketing in mediating ideas about lifestyle, the role of material culture in the construction of cultural hierarchies and the positioning of social groups within wider cartographies of taste.

Significance

The volume makes a significant contribution to this growing field and will interest academics and students in media and cultural studies, communication studies, cultural history and sociology.