Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo

ABC, 2014, Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo (Web Video Extras), videorecordings, viewed on 30 May 2014, <http://www.abc.net.au/tv/papergiants/video/default.htm>.

Featuring preview clips for the 2011 television miniseries Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo, this webpage also includes several original television advertisements for Cleo Magazine, as well as interviews with Ita Buttrose from 1975 and 2011. These vintage advertisements provide context for how the magazine was promoted and how it set out communicating its ideals, focus and content to its readership. The tone is playful throughout, with a focus on fashion, celebrities, relationships, careers and sexual liberation, as seen in Cleo’s controversial male nude centrefolds, the ‘Mate of the Month’. While the television style appears quite dated compared to current content, these advertisements provide a compelling insight into how Cleo made issues such as feminism and sexual liberation appealing and non-threatening to its predominently middle-class audience. Primary sources such as these are valuable for positioning our research within the context of Ita Buttrose’s unique brand, as well as within the context of fashion and feminism in Australia in the 1970s.