Images of Women in Postwar Mass Culture

Introduction

In the 1950s, suburban communities started booming. The first mass-produced suburb - Levittown, New York - was built in 1951. The houses made in these suburbs were built quickly and cheaply, so they were affordable. After the GI Bill was passed in 1944, many young couples across the country were able to buy a home. Mass production of these houses resulted in uniformity of the design and homogenous suburban neighborhoods. Additionally, the decade after World War II had ended included a baby boom, where millions of Americans began having families. New forms of media - in particular, the television - promoted a consumer culture, which created pressure to keep up with the Joneses with material purchases of items such as cars and appliances. This new media also created a new suburban ideal with the television show leave it to Beaver: the white, nuclear family with specific gender roles (Renzetti, p.19).

In the fifteen years after World War II, the mystique of feminine fulfillment became the cherished core of contemporary American culture. Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their station-wagons full of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor. They baked their own bread sewed their own and their childrens clothes, kept their new washing machines and dryers running all day. Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers. Their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands. They had no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home; they wanted the men to make the major decisions (Meyerowitz, p.36).

Discussion

The Woman's Home Companion (a popular women's magazine) conducted opinion polls in 1947 and 1949 in which readers named the women they most admired. In both years the top four women were women involved in politics. The postwar popular magazines were also positive about women's participation in politics. The Ladies' Home Journal had numerous articles that supported women as political and community leaders. One article in the Ladies' Home Journal from 1947 encouraged women to make politics your business. Voting, office holding, raising you voice for new and better laws are just as important to your home and your family as the evening meal or spring house cleaning. This shows that women at the time believed that individual achievement and public service were at least as important as devotion to home and family.

Most everyone is familiar with the storybook image of America in the 1950s. Images are continually popularized of a simpler, happier time emerging from the aftermath of the Second World War. Families moved to the suburbs, fostered a baby boom, and forged a happy life of family togetherness in which everyone had a specified role. Women were considered domestic caregivers, with sole responsibility for the home ...