GENDER, FASHION, AND MODERNITY: The Linguistic Construction of Femininity in Early 1920s Harper’s Bazaar

This chapter examines the linguistic construction of femininity in the fashion content of early 1920s Harper’s Bazaar through the lens of critical stylistics. At a time when fashion, femininity, and modernity were closely related through a constant invocation of the new, and when gender roles and identities were swiftly evolving, Harper’s Bazaar utilised evocative depictions of contemporary fashion trends to promote innovative ideas of womanhood and challenge traditional gender norms. Moving beyond conventional portrayals of femininity that confined women to passive roles, a critical stylistic analysis of the magazine’s fashion features reveals how it mediated empowering notions of female assertiveness and individuality through the use of a sensuous language of desire and feeling, describing woman’s pleasurable engagement with fashion and modernity. Such discursive strategies demonstrate that Harper’s Bazaar employed linguistic form alongside visual and verbal content to invite women to pursue personal pleasure, self-fulfilment, and the progressive gender ideologies subtly embedded in its pages, where female agency, physicality, and modernity were constantly celebrated.