Gender Changes In Popular Media Essay

The woman’s role in society had many changes during the era of WWII to the baby boom era. It went from the strong independent woman that can work in a factory to a house wife that takes care of the family to the final slightly dominant, but still dependent female. All of these different feminine mystiques were changed because of society and through indirect propaganda in TV shows and

Historically, societies have divided the sexes into male and female and assigned specific gender roles for each group to ‘perform’. Alternative sexual practices outside of the norm were considered unacceptable and abnormal. These ideologies of heteronormativity have been reinforced throughout various social institutions including media where heteronormative portrayals have been considered standards. Furthermore, as Rogers mentioned, “Commonly intertwined with such heterocentrism are values celebrating heterosexuality as normal and natural while condemning or at least rejecting lesbigay sexualities.” (Rogers 72). Heteronormativity is largely depicted in the media and reinforce dominant norms of society, which portray heterosexual romantic relationships

Frederick Lewis Allen, in his famous chronicle of the 1920s Only Yesterday, contended that women’s “growing independence” had accelerated a “revolution in manners and morals” in American society (95). The 1920s did bring significant changes to the lives of American women. World War I, industrialization, suffrage, urbanization, and birth control increased women’s economic, political, and sexual freedom. However, with these advances came pressure to conform to powerful but contradictory archetypes. Women were expected to be both flapper and wife, sex object and mother. Furthermore, Hollywood and the emerging “science” of advertising increasingly tied conceptions of femininity to

Right of the bat, the 1950s saw magazine and publishing companies facing an exponential growth in popularity. Due in part to the public’s fear of both the “Cold War” and the “Korean War”, family oriented magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and Look continued to post articles highlighting current events, fictional stories, family life and illustration. As they grew to the top of the consumer market, women became the primary demographic for these magazines. The most prolific magazines in the women's market where Ladies Home Journal, Woman’s Day, Woman’s Home Companion, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, McCall’s and Cosmopolitan. (www.illustrationhistory.org)

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and see to what extent women have been depicted within typical stereotypes, how they have been objectified and only seen as a sexual sell, and what consequences and effects these depictions can have on both the female and male audiences. The analysis is over two decades where major social changes underwent. The time after the war, being a housewife and mother was heavily implemented. Whilst after a decade, women started to step away from what was considered the norm, what was considered the ideal life. They started to fight for a better future for themselves, and a life free from their husbands ruling hand. I have chosen visual analysis of magazine front covers as my method because magazines were a major resource for both women and men at the time, it was one of their sources of information about what was going on around them. Front covers often represent the magazine or the audience it is meant for, and

For centuries, women have struggled to fit society's expectations, but the 1950s and 60s were a prominent time when gender roles were a big influence on everyone's lives. All throughout history women have had constant pressure from society to look and act a certain way to fill gender role expectations. There were battles women had to face, including how they looked and acted. Gender roles including dress codes, required etiquette, beauty standards, cooking and cleaning, and education have greatly affected and limited American women historically in the 1950s and 60s.

Women who had to work out of the home was the stereotype of a nurse, secretary, and teacher- any feminine occupation. This all began to slowly change during WWII as media played an immense role encouraging women’s participation in the war. This affected women’s magazine content, columns, and articles during this time,

Though many gender role advancements were achieved in past and future decades, gender roles were more segregated in the 1950’s than they were in even colonial times. In the 1950s, there were rigid gender roles represented in popular culture. To start off, women were expected to be as similar as they can to this propaganda.

Knaff’s historiography Beyond Rosie the Riveter: Women of World War II in American Popular Graphic Art has the aim of analyzing and explaining the impact of popular media like magazines ushered in a cultural shift within the American public, especially in regards to young women. The author explores the effects of World War II on women’s participation outside the home using evidence from the Office of War Information documents, as well as widely read magazines and newspapers. The monograph ends with the conclusion that “female masculinity” that women projected during World War II assisted in the widening of perspective of “people’s ideas” and stereotypes of what constituted proper women’s behavior. This assessment agrees with the general consensus of most historians on the topic, continuing the narrative of World War II as a “watershed” moment of transformation for American

Almost everyone is familiar with the image of an ‘ideal woman’ (Illustration 2) and what they are supposed to look like, and their stereotypical role in society. The notion of the stereotypical ‘ideal’ women can be seen in the 1950s; this era referred as the “post-war” era had a significant impact in the construction of women’s identities. “Studies of post-war culture found that government propaganda, popular magazines, and films reinforced traditional concepts of femininity and instructed women to subordinate their interests to those of returning male veterans” (Meyerowitz,1994 p.50) The place for women in the 1950s contrasted sharply to their roles during WW2 with men coming back from war and taking their jobs back. Women had to join in and help during World War Two, they had to take on the roles of men while still taking care of the children as well as the house.

1. The largest difference in editorial content from the recent issue of Today’s Woman magazine compared to Frieden’s list is the indication of female accomplishment. Frieden’s concerns and critiques described situations where housewives would have metaphorically traded brains for brooms which is reflected in the title of her piece, “Happy Housewife Syndrome”. The majority of content in Today’s Woman displayed women who took initiative and early action in order to achieve their goals whereas topics in McCall’s discussed the nature of a housewife’s duties. The change in content displays the accomplishments and growth for female roles in modern society due to better gender equality than that present in the 1960s. Part of this empowerment can be seen in images of women in Today’s Woman seen as doctors, shop owners, and generally in roles of leadership that would not have displayed in women’s magazines in the 1960s.

Betty Friedan explores the troubles that women have faced and the reason behind these troubles in The Feminine Mystique. She defines the “feminine mystique” as a limitation set on women’s femininity across America in the 1950s and early 1960s. She explains how she believes it came to be so widely upheld due to magazines written by men and how it has had an effect on women in a negative way. According to Friedan, due to the feminine mystique developed from magazine stories, society forces women to abandon any career aspirations in order to devote their lives to being housewives and mothers, as well as be completely fulfilled with this life path.

Magazine’s published stories and articles that were chock-full with the sort of “all-American” ideals and narratives that suggested women’s place to be in the home. Census recordings and Gallup polls showed women’s participation in the workforce to be on the rise in the decades after the war, women still faced more gender based wage and job discrimination often working in

Popular Culture in the form of media does not always do a fair job of reflecting accurate characteristics of men and women. Society has added to this by creating what is known as gender roles among men and women. They are like a type of social guidelines which men and women follow in order to be accepted by today's society. Although this was designed with the best intentions it can have negative results.

One thousand years go by and an abundant amount of people still view women in a stereotypical type of way. On the opposing view, if women did not overstretch the slightest of things, this wouldn’t be such an enormous issue. Women may be overreacting to what the media has to say about them. It is not affecting everybody but a vast majority of successful women from continuing to moving forward said Marianne Schnall. Important to realize, women are capable of doing jobs men can do. Such jobs as being an engineer, physician, mechanic, lawyer and even top notch business women! Up to the present time there is an ongoing public debate on women suffering from double standards. If it makes a female feel threatened or belittled than it may be