Stereotypes Of Women In The 1950s

In the 1900’s it was a social accepted practice to believe one’s gender restricted what an individual was cable of doing. During this time period and going back further in the past the main ideology of society was males were there to lead, provide and protect the fairer sex. Susan Glaspell uses stereotypes to disprove the notion that women are less superior than their male counterparts by having the women solve the murder of Mr. John Wright.

The idea of the ideal wife is a woman who is happy with staying home all day, tending to the home, caring for the children and husband. A woman's success in patriarchy is measured by how happy she makes her husband and how well the home life is portrayed to be. These ideas were strongly portrayed in a popular shows in the 1950s. Shows such as Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and I Love Lucy allowed audiences to faithfully watch the TV and subconsciously absorb what they saw. They are each very conservative shows that show strong family values and patriarchal ideals such as the nuclear family, the wife submitting to the husband, and teaching moral lessons to their children.

How often do you hear your friends, family, or acquaintances say they would like to go back to simpler times such as the 1950s - the era where you could wear fancy poodle skirts, drive big cars, eat at your favorite diner, or catch a movie at the drive in. Americans tend to think of the positive aspects of the 1950’s. Unfortunately during that era women were treated unfairly. Even though women had rights, they were still unequal to men. Fortunately feminism has progressed since then. Today, women comprise over 50% of the workforce. Nonetheless, men still cling to stereotypes that should have been destroyed long ago, whether in the workplace, at home, or in society.

Without this cultural and social change to society in the 1950’s and 60’s, a woman’s world today would be very different than what we currently know it as.

The chapter, From Rosie to Lucy, by James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle, is about how the feminine mystique changed drastically from the era of WWII to the era of the baby boom. The shift was attributed to men’s influence on the women through fashion trends, magazines, and TV shows. The main purpose of the chapter is to show that the propaganda through TV and society affected individuals, and more specifically the feminine mystique.

Throughout history women have been depicted and treated as an inferior to the male all aspects of life. It is without debate, that to this day, like many other countries, the United States of America is a patriarchal society, valuing men over women and using various tactics to oppress women by constructing gender roles. These gender roles are thrust upon people before birth and are reinforced through society within the media. This object here is to provide an overview of the portrayal of women in magazines from the late 1800’s to present day. As the years progress, so do the number of women’s rights. While women are still fighting for equality, the birth of feminism has done much to close the gender gap. Mass media, magazines in particular, facilitated in fostering a stereotype which became the standard, and continues to be, used by society. A society that continues to oppress and suppress its women. However, as the mass media has the capability to demystify, or to bring down and/or destroy a particular group or person, they also have the ability of mystification, or emulating a person or group into society’s graces. I plan to review how women were portrayed since this country’s inception with an analysis of how gender equality might be possible today.

During the period after World War II, there was a shift in the role of women from the private sphere to the public sphere. Namely, at the turn of the 1960s, the concept of the nuclear family was becoming less of the norm as many women began to fight more and more for their rights and the way in which they were to be portrayed. For many years, women have been made to believe that they must follow certain expectations such to fit into the “American ideal” of what the role of a woman should be. For example, according to the Redstockings, contests like Miss America perpetuate the idea that women must be “inoffensive, bland, [and] apolitical” and that “conformity is the key…to success in our society.” The sentiment expressed in the quotation,

Throughout history young girls and women were limited on what they could and couldn’t do. Society had put more pressure on them than men and they had to act a certain way in public and in their homes. Females were the underprivileged gender and were greatly affected by the gender roles occurring in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and were taught at a young age these rules and expectations. Gender roles had limited women in the past from being more than a perfect wife and homemaker, fitting the generation's beauty expectations, unable to dress freely due to the school dress code, to use proper etiquette to please everyone but themselves, and to work the same job as a man and get paid a lower wage.

Life in the 1960’s consisted of many deep cultural changes; especially when it came to a change in gender roles and stereotypes. For woman, society was set on a believing that a their overall goal in life was to be married, have lots of children, and devote their life to be 100% dependant on their husbands. On the other hand, men had to be the provider and the rock of the family. This all changed when The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ensured that people of all colors, races, and gender could not be discriminated against in employment thus females were entering the paid workforce head on. Men also started to learn more about being a caregiver and became stay at home dads. Both Walter Mosley and Raymond Chandler help convey this representation of gender roles, gender as a category and gender stereotypes in the 1960s through their written works.

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

I would like to dispel the idea that Black women were passive observers during the women’s movement. It’s understandable that they would be perceived as such. A lack of photographs certainly did not help their cause. Photography played a crucial role in chronicling events from the pre-Civil War well onto the passing of the 19th Amendment. There is historic value in a documentary photograph. It captures a moment in its actual time. There are no images of African-American women marching ten-by-ten along New York City Avenues. And so, without this type physical evidence, they are easily written out of history.

Jaidee Benasfre History 30 Professor Rohr 9 February 2015 Emerging Attitudes The infamous 1960’s became well known through cultural, political, and social change. Although many lasting events have taken place during this time period, the women’s new attitudes toward equality and liberation demonstrated itself as one of the most notable. Women were successfully taking apart and depicting their lives in preparation for the strive of a better future. Two of a few influential factors that sparked the women’s movement were the significant shifts in cultural trends and the 1950s “problem that has no name” as described by Betty Friedan.

Written by the former senior editor of Good Housekeeping Carolyn Kitch, this books offers an intimate look at various representations of womanhood in illustrated magazines and mass culture from 1895 to 1930. The subject of her study are magazine covers and advertising images. Kitch discusses the distinct feminine types depicted in each decade. These include various portrayals of the modern woman of the time – the Gibson Girl, the Fisher's Girl, The Christy's Girl, the Vamp, the Flapper. Taken together, and considered chronologically, they represent a system of icons. Kitch explains that these feminine ideals symbolize the zeitgeist of particular eras, and they are a way of making sense of societal change as well as serving to impose norms on

Gender Portrayals. The 1950s. Change. You might wonder what these words mean, today, here, you will learn about gender portrayals in the 1950s. Gender portrayals are how a gender, such as the only two, Male and Female, are portrayed in media and social life. Now, in the 1950s bread was .14 cents, bomb shelter plans were sold, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president and people were afraid of communists invading america and making us into communists (American Cultural History). New technologies were arising, like computers and color television, and with this new technology; the advertising industry was born, and with them, new kinds of gender portrayals.Gender portrayals both

The roles of males and females in society have significantly changed, as opposed to the predominant roles in our history. In the modern culture of today, women have begun to break out of the mold that which society has placed her in. This much can’t be said when it comes to modern gender representation in mass media advertising. It can be safe to state that woman are seen as sexual, fragile, exotic—whereas men are portrayed as tough, in control, and aggressive. This trend can be one seen as an inhibitor to the advancement of our culture, because especially for women, it is hard to pull away from the stereotypes that are continuously represented. As examples of the given trend, the following