If you think that the American obsession with a media-defined standard of beauty is a new thing, think again. Long before supermodels and movie stars told us all how to look, think, and act, American women turned to magazine illustrations to decide what “beautiful” was.
AMERICAN GIRL
Throughout much of the 19th century, the social values of Victorian England set the standard for what a “good” woman was: chaste, subservient, destined to play the role of wife and mother, and given virtually no legal rights. If a Victorian woman worked outside the home (something she did only as a prelude to marriage), she was a teacher…nothing more. She certainly had no time for makeup, independence, or mischief. And like their counterparts across the Atlantic, women in the United States also adhered to this standard. But as the 1800s wound down and a new century dawned, American magazines began to feature pen-and-ink illustrations of a new kind of woman: whimsical and willowy, with her hair piled loosely on her head, her neck bare, her tiny waist corseted, and a mischievous glint in her eyes. But who was this maverick woman, and who was daring enough to draw her?
THE ILLUSTRATIVE MAN
Charles Dana Gibson moved from Massachusetts to Flushing, Queens, in 1875, when he was eight years old. He spent some time at Flushing High School, but proved to be a talented artist early on, so his parents saved up and sent him to the Art Students League, a prestigious art school in Manhattan. He spent about a year there before the money ran out. Gibson specialized in line art, so he shopped his pieces around, hoping to sell his work to help support his family. Finally, in 1886, he sold his first illustration to Life magazine: a dog chained to a doghouse, baying at the moon. He made $4. That led to more sales—and more money—and by 1889, he’d saved enough to take a trip to Europe to study art.
It was there that the image of a spunky, independent women began to take shape in Gibson’s head. In London, he spent time with a French-born artist and cartoonist named George du Maurier, who was known for his whimsical art. Du Maurier encouraged Gibson to make his sketches more fun and to add more life to them. When Gibson got back to the United States, he sketched his first girl.
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By then, Gibson had already established himself as a go-to artist for the popular magazines of the day: Harper’s Monthly, Collier’s, Life, and others. And before long, the girls started appearing in his work and earning a following of their own. They came to be called “Gibson Girls,” and they were more than just art. Gibson created entire stories around them: In 1899, he did a series of drawings, complete with captions, that documented the “life” of one of the girls from birth to old age.
Pretty soon, Gibson’s drawings came to represent a new kind of American woman: She was beautiful, tall, independent, and mysterious. According to one historian, a Gibson Girl “would smile, but was never seen laughing, further adding to her enchanting persona of self-assurance.” The Gibson Girls went to college (many drawings showed them on campus), and they participated in activities typically restricted to men: ice skating, bicycling, and golf. And they did it all while keeping their hair and makeup perfect.
The public loved them. Women started styling their hair in swept-up dos, with a few tendrils hanging loose for that carefree effect. Images of Gibson Girls appeared on everything from pillowcases and spoons to fans and ashtrays. Young men decorated their rooms and apartments with Gibson Girl wallpaper, and famous models and actresses of the era—including Evelyn Nesbit, Gibson’s own wife, Irene Langhorne, and theater star Camille Clifford—posed for Gibson Girl drawings.
One thing a Gibson Girl wasn’t, however, was political. Women’s voting rights were a hot topic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But in most circles, suffrage was a touchy subject. Much of the population—men and women—was against it…or at least wary of it. So Gibson was very careful never to risk alienating the buying public by associating his spirited girls with the cause.
The Gibson Girl craze began to wane in the 1910s. When the United States entered World War I in 1918 and young men started dying in Europe, Americans lost interest in the whimsy the girls represented. Gibson himself seldom drew any during the war, focusing more on patriotic and heroic images. By the time the war ended, flappers—with their fitted skirts and sleek hairstyles—had become the public’s new “It Girls.”
That was fine with Gibson. He went on to become editor and owner of Life magazine and turned his attention to oil painting instead of line art. By the time he died in 1944, flappers were out, too, having been replaced by conservative, proper fashions inspired by the Great Depression. But women still combed the pages of magazines (and flocked to movie theaters) to learn how they should dress and act, and what they should want. The names changed over the years—Vivien Leigh, Katherine Hepburn, Twiggy, Angelina Jolie, Heidi Klum—but the idea that beauty could be determined by a picture in a magazine remained, thanks to Charles Dana Gibson and his playful girls.
The New Yorker has no masthead (the list that most magazines include up front, calling out the names of all the people who work there), a tradition since its early days. So it’s hard to track the comings and goings of the staff. Maybe it’s also because there is so little turnover: In its more than 85 years in print, The New Yorker has had only five chief editors. Cofounder Harold Ross edited the magazine for its first 26 years. He was a whirlwind of energy, working at least 10 hours a day. Sometimes he was pessimistic, grumbling, and prone to temper tantrums, but he was still considered a brilliant editor—idiosyncratic and well-liked. His death from cancer in December 1951 at the age of 59 was a terrible blow to the staff and writers. But by then, The New Yorker was so well established that its managing editor, William Shawn, could step right into the editor-in-chief’s job in January 1952. Shawn edited the magazine until 1987—he was followed by Robert Gottlieb (until 1992), Tina Brown (to 1998), and the current editor, David Remnick.
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