Sex was ubiquitous. Hollywood blondes Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Masfield were the sex icons. Growth of male magazines Playboy and Esquire offered ostentatious/pretentious sexuality epitomized/personified by Bettie Page-‘the pin-up queen of the universe and her explicit pictures led to anti-ponographic hearings of 1955 (Halliwell 42). Double image of women as a devoted housewife and glamorous diva was less a paradox than a duality in the 1950s. Media interest in the body shape/physique culminated in films like neo-noir Niagra (1953) where Monroe’s dangerous, hyper-sexualised character was pitted against the modest and sensible Polly Cutler (Jean Peters). Hitchcock also dexterously utilised the double image of women rampant during the decade
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Grace Metalious is the maiden writer who through her notorious bestseller Peyton Place (1956) lifted the veil of gender roles. Behind the doors female sexuality was more complex than thought and critics labelled it filthy and Canada banned it. Besides Peyton Place which was an attack on the presumed moral purity of womanhood, the other works that fully explored the postwar experience of women were Betty Friedman’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) credited with sparking the second wave of feminism in US; Mary McCarthy’s The Group (1963)and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963). The historical reality of women in the 1950s cannot be merely reduced to film representations, there were more challenging acting roles at the turn of the 1960s which reveals that female identity was changing during a decade which appeared inert. Issues of class and race are also linked to gender identity in various ways and Joanne Meyerowitz argues that women cannot just be categorised as mothers, entertainers, workers or activists, but there is another group ‘the uncontained women’ who largely exists as unwed mothers, abortionists and lesbians suggesting the variety of subcultures ‘beyond feminine mystique’ which were often relegated giving excess focus on white middle class identity
Grace Metalious is the maiden writer who through her notorious bestseller Peyton Place (1956) lifted the veil of gender roles. Behind the doors female sexuality was more complex than thought and critics labelled it filthy and Canada banned it. Besides Peyton Place which was an attack on the presumed moral purity of womanhood, the other works that fully explored the postwar experience of women were Betty Friedman’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) credited with sparking the second wave of feminism in US; Mary McCarthy’s The Group (1963)and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963). The historical reality of women in the 1950s cannot be merely reduced to film representations, there were more challenging acting roles at the turn of the 1960s which reveals that female identity was changing during a decade which appeared inert. Issues of class and race are also linked to gender identity in various ways and Joanne Meyerowitz argues that women cannot just be categorised as mothers, entertainers, workers or activists, but there is another group ‘the uncontained women’ who largely exists as unwed mothers, abortionists and lesbians suggesting the variety of subcultures ‘beyond feminine mystique’ which were often relegated giving excess focus on white middle class identity