Desiring the (Popular Feminist) Reader: Letters to CLEO during the Second Wave

The second wave of feminism in Australia became a popular reality for ordinary women through many forms of media, and especially through the new women's magazine Cleo. The reader letters published in Cleo throughout the 1970s provide rich, if productively problematic, evidence for the media historian's desire to interpret the meanings readers can make from magazines. In this case, the desire is to understand how younger, ordinary (non-activist) Australian women made sense of the immense challenge of feminism. Through letters written in response to Cleo's feminist journalism (and journalism about feminism), it is clear that a popular feminism was being experienced in the period of the second wave.