“Pardon me, m’am, but your wall is glowing.”

The cover of this October 1987 issue of Family & Home Office Computing is so sociologically charged that you could interpret it in dozens of ways — some of them seemingly contradictory.

The cover story and art are reflective of the 1970s women’s movement in the US that empowered women to more freely seek careers outside of the home. And yet it’s referring to a woman working from home — while wearing semi-formal business attire, nonetheless. (I’m not particularly equipped to critique women’s fashion, but I can imagine that some women today would find the idea of working at home in this kind of outfit to be amusing.)

Plenty of people do office-style work from home these days, but in 1987, that was a very new concept. It was all made possible by advances in telecommunications and personal computers. But the concept brought with it many new challenges.

The lady seen here is a mom (see mug), and she has to worry about “juggling career and family,” as the cover states — a tricky issue that will never fully be resolved in any decade. Does she care for her children during the day, or are they at school? Is she an employee or a business owner? Why did she choose an Epson-brand PC compatible machine?

While these are all very real concerns, in this case we can answer every question quite easily: she’s just a model in a magazine cover shoot.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Do any women read this blog? [echo, echo…] What do you think of this cover image?