Women’s magazines play a variety of roles: they are forms of entertainment, sources of education and trade journals and historically are the precursors to today’s “Virtual Communities”. The magazines allow for two-way communication between readers and writers, rather than the one-way communication of books. Women’s magazines weren’t always a medium for recycled, superficial news, nor were their readers always in the market for it. They used to be thoughtful, provoking, political and something completely different from what we pick up today.

In the very early women’s press, the contents were predominantly literature; with a lesser amount of personal advice. What distinguished women’s magazines was the personal nature of the material. The roles of women’s magazines, as educators, as virtual communities and as trade papers are interrelated. The areas that magazines choose to educate their readers in, and the elements that define the trade of housewife are aspects of the community created and represented by magazines.