| I am working to illuminate a connection between the pervasive anxiety regarding "traditional" gender roles that permeated Cold War culture during the mid-twentieth century and the advertising industry's messages to women during the same period. By examining women's magazines, a particularly important piece of cultural media for the period, and their advertisements, I seek to examine patterns that develop in the way advertisers expressed their messages to women. Tracing the development of these messages through a narrative that examines the varying prescribed roles women were expected to assume will lead to a discussion that flows from advertisers targeting brides, wives, and mothers. This narrative strategy will help create an accessible, clearly organized discussion of this topic. This project relies heavily on an examination of primary sources including advertising images from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.;Much scholarship has been written regarding gender, advertising, consumerism, and the postwar/Cold War era. While most of these works focus on only a few of these aspects, my work attempts to present a discussion of this period with these aspects at the forefront. By examining how advertisers spoke to women through their images in a period that was unquestionably influenced by an all-permeating anxious culture of the Cold War, I hope to prove that issues of gender, consumerism, and Cold War political efforts were inextricably connected. |
