Women are from Venus, men are from Mars.

• Author: Rapping, Elayne
• Position: Women's and men's periodicals - Culture

When I was growing up in the prefeminist 1950s, my mother always had subscriptions to the major "women's magazines" of the day: Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Redbook, Woman's Home Companion, and the original, asexual Cosmopolitan.

They filled the magazine basket in our living room, and I would spend fascinated hours perusing their colorful, cheerful pages filled with glossy images of furniture and kitchen appliances, steamy casseroles and crisp salads. Most intriguing were the articles in which marriage counselors and family doctors described their most dire cases and answered the question: "Can this marriage be saved?" (The answer was always "Yes," of course, though the articles were invariably accompanied by grim photographs of frown-creased female faces.)

I loved the "children's pages," too, with their paper-doll cutouts and cartoons of sweet-faced little girls in ruffles and ringlets that never seemed to wilt or soil.

These magazines offered me and my friends an enticing peek into the private, intimate world of the grownup female life we would someday enter and gave it a tantalizingly romantic shape and texture. As we gazed at the candlelit dinner tables and stylishly sleek kitchens, we learned to long for the limits of those sequestered spaces in which women selflessly filled the needs and soothed the troubles of men and children.

I hadn't looked at any of those magazines in a long time when I heard about the publication of a new one aimed at the twenty- and thirty-something group. Married Woman, it's called, and I wondered what a magazine with such a title would offer today, when even the most conservative women have been touched, if not transformed, by second-wave feminism. How would married bliss and its many expensive accouterments be packaged in an age when shared housework and two-pay-check families are so common? How would marital conflicts be presented at a time when domestic violence, incest, and other abuses of male power are so much in the air? I decided to find out.

When I got to the newsstand, I could hardly find Married Woman amid the vast array of magazines aimed at women. There are close to a hundred of them, for every conceivable subset of female readers with enough cash to attract commercial advertisers. From Sassy and Seventeen to Lear's and Mirabella; from Working Woman to Working Mother; from Family Circle to Self, from New Woman to Ladies' Home Journal; from Essence to Glamour --there are magazines to suit every lifestyle and every image the post-feminist world has to offer.

I lugged home no fewer than twenty--fifteen for women, five for men.

Yes, there seem to be a lot of men interested in fashion and lifestyle, too. Esquire and GQ are fat with ads and their clones spring up regularly. I was somewhat heartened as I carried them home: choice for women, concern with personal life for men. It could bode well for us all, I thought. But I was wrong.

First, the good news. On the most superficial level, I have to say all these magazines, even the old standbys like McCall's and Redbook, have been profoundly affected by the women's movement. Articles present both sides of the abortion issue, give guidelines for avoiding date rape and obtaining credit, laud the achievements of women (always famous ones) in nontraditional careers. On occasion, they even profile progressive social activists and projects.

So there is no question that feminism has made itself felt in these pages, as it has in all our lives. To that extent, the women's magazines are different from--and better than--their 1950s prototypes.

Nonetheless, as I sank deeper and deeper into the world of female magazines, with their quizzes and tips and how-to guides for doing everything under the sun for everyone you know and still looking great, my spirits sank. And when I turned to the men's magazines, I was ready for the barricades.

First, the ladies: When you get past the superficial talk of success and independence, you soon see that these magazines--from saucy Sassy for teens to...