Gender Roles In The 1950's

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, magazines in the 1950s were filled with degrading advertisements for women, “The magazines of the time were filled with images of dedicated housewives whose only pleasures were that their families were satisfied and their chores made easier” (“Women’s Roles in the 1950s”). This quote asserts the idea that popular magazines were filled with a sort of propaganda for what a woman should be. Secondly, women were expected to be as similar as they can to this propaganda. For example, women …show more content…
To start off, Clothing is a basic in life, and they way that women dressed in the 1950s was another representation of how unbending the gender roles were. Brett Harvey, a 1950s writer, wrote about clothing in the article “‘Fitting in’ for Fifties Women,” “Our clothings expressed all the contradictions of our roles. Our ridiculously starched skirts and hobbling sheaths were a caricature of femininity. Our cinched waists and aggressively pointed breasts advertised our availability at the same time they warned of our impregnability.” In this excerpt, the is explaining that The clothes that many women wore showed the message how feminine the wife-to-be is, and also showed that the women wanted to show their availability to be with a man. Secondly, women in the 1950s always wore clothes for the right situations and even this exemplifies the rigid gender roles in everyday life. There were times when it was okay to wear pants and a time for skirts, men and women both understood these times. Verney Connelly focuses on this, “For sports and roughing it, men will go for your rolled up jeans and pedal pushers, but the moment you out of the proper environment for such clothes, they get squeamish” (“How to Dress to Please a Man”). Men expected women to wear skirts, unless the activities were athletic, and when women wore pants outside of these situations they would start to feel uncomfortable because women weren’t dressing feminine enough. Another realistic undertaking in the 1950s was the treatment of women. The way women were regarded, and even how they treated themselves, displayed the harsh gender roles. In the article “‘Fitting In’ for Fifties Women,” Brett Harvey describes how women always had to be in top shape, even something as simple as bad breath could ruin the live of a single woman. “We knew bad breath could make the difference between ‘laughter and love