How Is the Stereotypical Role of Women Promoted Through U.S. Magazines in the 1960s?

In "Where the girls are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media," Susan Douglas analyses the effects of mass media on women of the nineteen fifties, and more importantly on the teenage girls of the baby boom era. Douglas explains why women have been torn in conflicting directions and are still struggling today to identify themselves and their roles. Douglas recounts and dissects the ambiguous messages imprinted on the feminine psyche via the media. Douglas maintains that feminism is a direct result of the realization that mass media is a deliberate and calculated aggression against women. While the media seemingly begins to acknowledge the power of

The most prevalent and popular stereotype of the post World war II era in America is one filled with women abandoning their wartimes jobs and retreating into the home to fulfill their womanly duties. In Joanne Meyerowitz’s Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, she shows how far women departed from this one dimensional image. While Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is reflexive and focused on the mainstream, Meyerowitz’s analysis is a broader and more inclusive exploration of media, as she draws upon multiple sources. Although Friedan effectively unveiled the thought process and reasoning behind society's belief that the message of media was to make women think that their place was to be the happy housewife, Meyerowitz expanded her media archives and found a differing message in analyzing both female responses to media and exploring their stories.

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

Advertisements often implied that women were only useful in kitchen, cooking and taking care of the kids. Image A displays a women in the kitchen looking outside the kitchen window at her husband with her daughter. The kitchen is portrayed with light white, yellow, and beige colors. The advertisement has a caption placed at the bottom and it states, “Women don’t leave the kitchen!” The caption was the quote in a big font and then in a smaller font it talks about how a woman’s place is in the kitchen. The purpose

In the 1960’s, women had been placed in stereotypical roles for years. But women were tired of these roles and were done with being complacent. They felt like something was missing in their lives, and they desired something more. The typical American

The idea of television began since the 1820s but it was until 1927 when the 21- year old Philo T. Farnsworth produce the first electronic television picture. Experimental broadcast began, featuring music, wrestling, and dance; however, it was until the 1950s that TV really became the new form of mass entertainment. Nevertheless, in all the shows that were produced women was denigrated and producers focused mainly on their physical appearance and not their intellect capacity. Ward and Harrison stated, “TV has depicted females by focusing on their physical characteristics, sexual appeal, and romantic success, whether they are housewives, mothers, or objects of desire.” Women did not have a choice, they were placed on TV shows with a certain stereotype needed to be fulfilled by them, and because they wanted to work they did not deny the job, therefore, they encouraged the stereotype.

3) What role did mass media play during the 1950s and 1960s in regard to supporting or undermining the “feminine mystique”?

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

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

These roles for females represent what the advertisement industry believe buyers deem as the real world. As Goffman asked," What messages about women have been given to society through magazine

The first section of Gender and the Media addresses gender representations and the beginning of feminism. During the late 60’s and early 70’s, women’s rights movements were first introduced with the challenge of the media, prompting them monitor the way the media portrayed women. This portrayal starting in the late 1970’s has seen many transmissions since. Gil states: “I use the term feminism to signal a concern with enduring gender

This source is about the gender roles in America. It discusses the different ways that the media influences gender stereotypes in women. It compares the present to the future. According to this paper, women are often sexualized and put in proactive clothing. Women are portrayed as nonprofessionals, homemakers, wives, and parents. This benefits my paper because this shows how the media has a negative effect on the stereotypes of women. It supports the theory that the media is one of the main causes of the negative stereotype and traditional gender roles.

Besides that, I will also be looking out for writing in the magazines’ editorial content that suggest gender stereotype. Lastly, ads will be looked as the type of product and lifestyle associated with said product that is being depicted may show gender stereotypes.

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the extent to which women are presented as sex objects in magazines. Previous research by Stankiewic and Rosselli (2008) resulted in 51.80% of advertisements in magazines that featured women, and portrayed them as sex objects. The particular way in which objectification is defined, and thus the resulting rates at which women are portrayed as objects, had varied by study. The objectification of women in advertisements also varied by magazine type.

Between the years of 1937 and 1960,LIFE underwent changes involving the portrayal of the genders. In popular literature, stereotypes and views of certain subjects are often displayed for future study. In the case of gender differences, advertisements and articles yield the best portrayal of gender stereotyping of the time. The following issues of LIFE magazine were used in this paper: January-February 1937, January-February 1945, January-February 1952, and January-February 1960. At the end of the Great Depression in 1937, women had a very simple stereotype in the popular media. They were portrayed as staying home, cleaning, cooking, and mothering. The only pictures of