Blanco y Negro Magazine

Gender roles

Gender identity

Gender and history

In contrast to the ideal of the domestic woman, in the early 20th century there emerged a new type of woman, referred to as a garçonne in France, a flapper in Great Britain and a machietta in Italy. The garçonne was a woman who did not passively remain shut up at home, but instead occupied public spaces, frequented cafés and smoked cigarettes. The ‘modern’ women also joined in the new fashion for sport, ‘masculinized’ their clothing with more loose-fitting garments, and stopped wearing impossible hairstyles, having their hair cut a la garçonne. Illustrated magazines such as Blanco y Negro, La Esfera, Nuevo Mundo, La Semana Gráfica de Valencia and the sport magazine Aire Libre reflected this modern woman on their covers. However, despite this, she was an ideal of womanhood only accessible to women from an urban environment and the upper or middle classes.