The popular arts were never exactly subtle about the roles of men and women:
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| Flash Gordon by Alex Raymond |
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| Prince Valiant by John Cullen Murphy |
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| Prince Valiant by Hal Foster |
But words are only one small part of an illustration. The non-verbal part– the lines and colors– can have a gender orientation as well. In the 1950s, illustrator Albert Dorne was commissioned to illustrate a story for Cosmopolitan magazine. The story involved a barn that burns down at night, a cow, and a boy and girl being confronted by crooks. Dorne turned in this dramatic illustration:
But Cosmopolitan rejected it. Dorne recalled the phone call he received from the art director:
Dorne was irritated. He recalled, “The audience in mind being primarily women, I knew I couldn’t actually show fire, so I… created the illusion of fire by lighting the picture with a deep fiery glow from off stage.” But that wasn’t sufficient. His strong, high contrast treatment, with pointed fingers, sharp angles, extreme positions and facial expressions was still viewed as too yang for a female audience.“Albert, your drawing is swell but we are afraid our readers will not like it. The violent fiery red is a bit frightening, the interpretation too literal. We have found from our readership polls, etc. etc. Would you mind doing it over?”
Cosmopolitan showed Dorne “a layout designed in a much lighter vein and quite gay in its concept.” The art director explained, “This is the sort of thing our readers like.”
Dorne bitterly started over and this time turned in a much softer, pinker, friendlier picture:
To his amazement, Dorne received a flood of compliments for the revised illustration, not just from the readers of Cosmopolitan but from art directors of other women’s magazines who thought that Dorne’s light and charming style would be well suited for their audiences as well.