People Magazine People Magazine, first released in 1974, is completely devoted to stardom and the lives of those stars. Our modern day culture is fascinated by what stars are doing, what they are wearing, who they are dating, where they are eating, and the list goes on to cover every little detail of famous people’s lives. Fame comes in many different forms in our culture today from professional athletes to actors to Kardashians, and people in today’s culture try to escape their own lives by reading about the lifestyles of these people. The notion of fame was not the same around the late 19th and early 20th century. There were large names such as Andrew Carnegie or JP Morgan, but working and middle class people were not obsessed over how these wealthy people were living. The closest thing to a magazine like People that existed was the notion of a painted woman. Painted woman stories were in the papers that covered sensational murders of women who were often incredibly beautiful and morally virtuous but for some reason strayed off course and paid the ultimate punishment for it. People around the turn of the 20th century were fascinated with these people, but the fascination was not an envy to be like them. There was not a fixation on becoming famous and well-known back then.
American culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was undergoing serious change. The industrial revolution led to significant economic growth and concentration of wealth during the turn of the century, and with it came a complete change in cultural norms. Class formation started to become defining with the emergence of the middle class during the latter half of the 1800’s, and it led to the creation of new leisure activities, different social codes, and a new group of consumers. New industries started to pop up everywhere as a result of increased consumerism, and one of these was the film industry.
Films were mainly focused on capturing motion and were nonsensical, lacked plot, and were used as a simple form of entertainment during the early years. The working class were the main moviegoers in the early 20th century because small theatres, known as nickelodeons, provided an easy, cheap escape from everyday life. People were able to duck into theatres and watch movies that seem pointless to us in present day, but people were amazed simply by what could be done with a camera and editing tools. Film started to spread rapidly throughout the early part of the 20th century and by 1920, it was the largest form of entertainment in the United States.
Films had changed by 1920—they started to develop plot, characters, and even comment on society in powerful ways. The rise of film started to lead to the creation and rise of film stars. They were leaders in their industry just as Carnegie or Morgan, but their industry was much different. They were projected on thousands of screens across the country, so they started to become recognized nationwide. They were becoming famous in the modern day sense of the word because of their beauty and the characters they portrayed. People started to wonder if the characters they were playing were similar to what they actually were like, and throughout the rest of the century the amount of famous people just kept growing. Sports stars started to become more important figures, politicians became more scrutinized figures, and with the rise of television, even reality television contestants could become famous. While increases in technology led to the fame of more and more people, the cultural feelings towards famous people changed outside of this rise in technology.
The middleclass has continued to grow and grow since the early 1900’s. The definition of being middleclass has been made looser and by today’s standards, most people consider themselves to be middleclass. Around the turn of the 20th century, there was a large amount of guides for how people should properly live their lives within their social class. The notion that people had guides to success within different classes leads to a conformity of class rather than the aspirations of fame that people have today. This may have changed because the middleclass has been growing and growing and it causes people to want to distinguish him or herself in some other way. Today, people are infatuated with the lifestyles of the famous and the urge to become famous as well. There almost appears to be as much of a drive for some people to go to work and try and become rich because it will lead to fame as it does for people to go to work to feed themselves. They want to live the lifestyles that are portrayed in magazines.
The fixation of famous people led to the creation of People magazine. People is a magazine that is not focused on current events but rather the people that cause them. Henry R. Luce, the creator of People puts it best in saying, “ ’We're getting back to the people who are causing the news and who are caught up in it, or deserve to be in it. Our focus is on people, not issues’ " (“The Press…”). People is a magazine that is entirely devoted to how famous people live their lives and serves as a blueprint for how we should desire to live our own.
An example of how People stokes the envy for the middle class to become famous is the cover of People from April 30th, 2008 (“Kate Hudson…”). It is the cover for the 100 Most Beautiful People edition of the magazine that has Kate Hudson’s face on the cover. The secondary stories of the edition depicted on the side of the cover page are “Jen & John’s Hot New Romance”, “Miley Cyrus’ Photo Fiasco. Who’s to blame?”, and “ ’Smiley Face’ Murder Mystery: Is a Serial Killer Gang on the Loose?” (“Kate Hudson…”). Out of all of these articles, only the “Smiley Face” Murder Mystery could have intrigued people enough to be published in newspapers or magazines around 1900 because of the similarity it has with the painted woman stories of being sensational. The other three main things on the cover are all about the lifestyles of famous people.
The “100 Most Beautiful People” is not exactly what it sounds like; it is not the actual 100 most beautiful people but rather the 100 most beautiful famous people (“Kate Hudson…”). This “competition” would have never existed in the early 20th Century because there were not enough people of notoriety and fame to create such a list, and more importantly, it would not have existed because people placed much more emphasis on a person’s character. The culture of character that existed before the 1900’s placed an important emphasis on individuals fulfilling an important role in a larger social order. Being beautiful did not fulfill any societal role, so it would not have been something that was important enough to publish and make a huge deal over. Today, we live in a “culture of personality” that has to do with being the best version of one’s self. It is about distinguishing yourself from others, so judgment of the beauty of one person versus another is a way that famous people distinguish themselves from others.
The Miley Cyrus “Photo Fiasco” story and the look into “Jen and John’s Hot New Romance” are more examples of how our culture has shifted away from character and towards a culture of personality (“Kate Hudson…”). Photography existed and was prominent in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, but it was not blamed for making someone look worse than they do. And if it was blamed for inaccurately portraying someone or something, it was not scrutinized to find who was at blame. People today read these articles because they just want to know every little detail of the life of Miley Cyrus and this simply adds a perspective of their lifestyle that maybe hadn’t been previously addressed in People.
The look into Jennifer Anniston and John Mayer’s relationship, one of the most intimate things two people can share, would have seem like a complete invasion of privacy at the turn of the 20th century, but we no longer even think twice about it. It seems so normal that we are able to read and interpret things about two people’s relationship when it used to be that people, such as Emily Dickinson and Susan Gilbert, wrote letters of love to one another that were shared only with one another (Dickinson). Our modes of dating people have drastically changed. Dickinson and Gilbert wrote letters to one another that were intimate and talked about love, and today, we read these letters and think that they were in some sort of lesbian relationship (Dickinson). The reality is that they were just incredibly close friends who shared more together than two females would feel socially acceptable to share with one another today. Today, dating is much more in the public eye, so everyone more heavily scrutinizes every aspect of a relationship. If you are famous, this becomes a national scrutiny, so Anniston and Mayer are being judged by millions of people who they have not met and probably will never meet.
People magazine being incredibly popular and successful shows the change in culture today compared to the late 19th and early 20th century. Our culture has changed from a culture of character—in which fulfilling one’s own role was most important—to a culture of personality. Today it is most important to make yourself not just be the best version of yourself but also make sure people know you are better than your neighbor. I am not denying that Hierarchy existed around the turn of the 20th century because people definitely were competitive with one another, but the manner in which they went around it was different. Andrew Carnegie was really the first person to introduce this new type of competition in the form of a map to success, which he refers to the “law of competition” in The Gospel of Wealth (Carnegie, pg. 16). A worker was meant to not only fulfill his own role by doing his own work but also do others work for them and then point it out to the supervisor. Carnegie believed that appearing as better than everyone else even if you weren’t helping productivity or helping people along the way was the way to become successful.
Our culture has become much more about appearing as better than other people rather than being a good person, a beautiful person, or being good at what one does individually. The cover of People shows this desire to be better than another and be known for it through the “100 Most Beautiful People” competition (“Kate Hudson…”). I do not think that people at the turn of the 20th century were always helping one another and taking no credit for it, but I do not think that they were seeking fame like people are today. People today are not necessarily seeking national or international fame, but many more people today are trying to be noticed in any way they can.

Works Cited
Carnegie, Andrew. "The Gospel of Wealth." The Administration of Wealth. N.p.: n.p., 1889. 14-49. Ereserves. Web. 14 May 2013.
Dickinson, Emily. Letter to Susan Gilbert. 11 June 1852. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.
"Kate Hudson Is PEOPLE's Most Beautiful Cover Girl." People. N.p., 30 Apr. 2008. Web. 12 May 2013.
"The Press: PEOPLE"S PREMIERE." Time 04 Mar. 1974: n. pag. Time.com. Web. 12 May 2013.