"Born to Make Homes, Not for the Street": Working-Class Women and the Politics of Peronist Desire in the Children's Magazine Mundo Infantil, 1949-1955

• In Event: Gender Representation in Print Culture

Abstract

This project focuses on a rich subset of the Argentine children’s magazine Mundo Infantil, printed between 1949 and 1955 by the government of Juan Domingo Perón, to address the specific questions: how did changing notions of consumption spurred by economic vicissitudes lead to changes in Peronist ideals of ‘proper’ womanhood; how did Mundo Infantil strive to transform and mobilize children into agents of government rhetoric to inform the economic and gendered consciousness of their working-class parents, specifically mothers? While Mundo Infantil was at heart a children’s periodical, I will focus primarily on how the Peronist state attempted to use the magazine and children as a medium to transmit Peronist ideals of working-class consumption and ‘proper’ womanhood to women. Depictions of working-class femininity were more prevalent in Mundo Infantil than those of working-class masculinity and the magazine’s messages regarding consumption—by which I mean the process of purchasing as well as using and transforming consumer goods—were primarily directed toward working-class women.
I argue that Mundo Infantil reveals the politics of desire embedded in Peronist rhetoric. The magazine maintained a tension between Peronist ideals of ‘proper’ female gender norms on the one hand and female rebellion against such paradigms on the other. Disparities in ‘acceptable’ models of working-class femininity and consumption arose in Mundo Infantil as the state attempted to adapt and alter its messages of working-class womanhood to account for vagaries in the Argentine economy. Children were at the forefront in the state’s attempt to transmit this continually evolving rhetoric to working-class women.

Author

• Thomas J Brinkerhoff, University of Pennsylvania