Gender Differences as Portrayed in LIFE Magazine from 1937-1960
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 women in LIFE were of housewives doing some sort of domestic work. Men were portrayed exactly the opposite, out at social functions or at some sort of important occupation. One of the first ads in the magazine was an advertisement for Colgate toothpaste. It pictured a girl in college complaining to her roommate that no one likes her and she is quitting school, “I should have never gone to college”. She then goes to her dean to quit and realizes she has bad breath. The dentist gives her Colgate and soon she has a date for the prom. “I love college now.” This cartoon advertisement seems to imply that in 1937, women went to college to get married. Most of the other articles involving women were ones that involved housework. Every last one of the cleaning and food advertisements had a pretty lady in a dress holding the item. Moreover, if there was a man in the picture, he was either getting food at the dinner table or sick in bed with his wife nursing him back to health. All of these articles implied the same thing: women stayed in the house and took care of all the domestic activities. Some ads did portray women outside the home. One cigarette ad had both a man and a woman on it. The Camel man was a cowboy, watching his herd, the Camel woman was a pretty young secretary busy at her typewriter. There was obviously a clear division of labor in 1937. Finally there was an popular art series exhibited in LIFE in January. The article was written about a series of murals painted of the depression. All the men in the paintings were working hard, carrying mailbags, building a house, farm work, and other hard labor jobs. The women were s...
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.... Less and less of the advertisements pictured women in a traditional dress. Also, while most of the articles in the previous issues had been about men, the 1960 issue was written as much about female accomplishments as it was about men’s. Concerning changes in male gender roles, one article titled, “New Roles in the Household” described instances of men tending to the house, cooking cleaning, and the kids, while the mother was out at work. In addition, one of the cover stories was of the US women’s Olympic ski team. Attitudes were changing by the early 1960’s. Women were not conforming to the past gender stereotypes. Instead, they were inventing a new one, which continues to further change today.
Gender roles changed a lot in this century and popular literature like LIFE magazine changed with it. At first women had a set role in the house, expected to tend to the house and children and not pursue careers of their own. Thirty years later men and women had changed the way they lived life as a gender. Popular magazine articles provided a good illustration of what we were like culturally seventy years ago, and how we have changed today.
For over centuries, society had established the societal standard of the women. This societal standard pictured the ideal American woman running the household and taking care of the children while her husband provided for the family. However, between 1770 and 1860, this societal standard began to tear at the seams. Throughout this time period, women began to search for a new ideal of American womanhood by questioning and breaking the barriers society had placed upon them.
Society in America during the 1950’s was one that portrayed men and women in very different, but rigid roles. Women were housewives, secretaries, and mothers. Men were providers, war heroes, and businessmen. Television, newspapers and magazines played an important role as well in determining ways men and women should behave. Advertisements for real estate were designed to sell to the “All-American” family. For example; Dad would be the returned home veteran who is now running the company, Mom is an ideal housewife who works a couple days a week for extra vacation cash, little Billy likes baseball and his sister Susie plays with dolls. Houses designed with this type of family in mind would prove very effective in luring away many from the city to live in suburbs like this at a rapid pace. Most jobs in the work place were gender divided. Help-wanted ads placed in newspapers in the 1950’s were very gender biased as well. Some ads with attention getting headlines could have read: “Sales Girl,” and “Brides! Housewives!” Occupations offered to women at this time were very limiting.
The social perception of women has drastically changed since the 1950’s. The social role of women during the 1950’s was restrictive and repressed in many ways. Society during that time placed high importance on expectations of behavior in the way women conducted themselves in home life as well as in public. At home the wife was tasked with the role of being an obedient wife, caring mother, and homemaker. Women publicly were expected to form groups and bond over tea with a slice of cake. All the while government was pushing this idealize roll for women in a society “dominated” by men. However, during this time a percentage of women were finding their way into the work force of men. “Women were searching their places in a society led by men;
Remember The Titans was a movie that was set in a very hostile time in our country. We were in the middle of what I like to call a civil war. Although there were no battles or gunfights our country was torn in half. There was an issue dealing with race in the United States. The movie, Remember the Titans is based on actual events that occurred in the year 1971. Mainly on the integration of a school called TC Williams High School. When the school was integrated the old football coach, Coach Yoast, was let go and a black coach Herman Boone was hired on. The main plot of this movie is regarding the coaching change in the school and the 1971 football season the TC Williams Titans have.
Due to the idealization of domesticity in media, there was a significantly stagnant period of time for women’s rights between 1945 and 1959. Women took over the roles for men in the workplace who were fighting abroad during the early 1940s, and a strong, feminist movement rose in the 1960s. However, in between these time periods, there was a time in which women returned to the home, focusing their attention to taking care of the children and waiting on their husband’s every need. This was perpetuated due to the increasing popularity of media’s involvement in the lives of housewives, such as the increasing sales of televisions and the increase in the number of sexist toys.
Remember the Titans is a film from 2000 displaying a true story of a racially divided football team from the 1970s. The movie highlights the relationships of the black and white people, and how they learned to interact with each other in a time when this was not the way of life. It brings up a number of questions throughout, of what is right and what is wrong, and really challenges the characters, making it a very interesting movie to watch. I have seen this movie many times, and each time I feel like I get something new out of it. It is a movie that can be used as a teaching tool, it does a great job of interpreting not only what was happening in the United States of America at that time, but social psychology concepts through real life situations.
Advertising, whether criticized or celebrated, is undeniably a strong force in American society. Portrayals and Images of women have long been used to sell in published advertisements. However, how they have been used has changed enormously throughout the decades. Women have fought to find a lasting and prominent position in their society. Only in the span of twenty years, between 1900’s and 1920’s, the roles of women changed dramatically here in United States.
Texting however keeps people at arm’s length and prevents relationships from getting past a certain level of rapport. Text messages help people create distance between them and another person. This distance can lead to many things, like lost friendship. Friendships can be lost in text messages because of tone. I was texting my sister one day, who types in all capital letters, and finally halfway through the conversation I asked her why she was yelling at me, because that is how I was reading them, as me being yelled at. When she responded she was very confused, and told me that she didn’t realize that she had been yelling at me and was sorry. This can happen to anybody. People can confuse tone in text messages, and that can lead to one person arguing with someone who has no idea that they are in a fight. Text messages are also used by people to purposely keep others away from them, and by some it is used to hide. Alice G Walton, a science journalist with a Ph.D. in Biopsychology and Behavioral Neuroscience says, “People like to text because the message gives them the ability to hide,” (Walton). It is like the saying “a drunken mind speaks a sober heart,” When people are drunk they hide behind being it, and use alcohol as their mask, but when they are texting, it’s the phone. They are able to say what they would like, without having to actually face the person they are talking to, and
Without sufficient gun control laws, the death rate in the United States is incredibly high. Gun violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and many times more injuries annually. Many countries have death rates of gun violence at or lower than 200. This, as will be shown later, is quite It is reported that out of twenty-seven developed countries, the U.S. has the highest rate of gun deaths and the number is more than forty times larger than the deaths of Great Britain by guns (O’Brien 1). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2013, firearms were used in 84,258 nonfatal injuries and homicide deaths reached 11,208, suicide rates of 21,175, and accidental deaths by guns reaching a death count of 505 (23). From these similar high death counts from several different organizations, it is clear that the U.S must impose stricter gun control laws. If countries as developed as the U.S. are achieving low death rates from gun violence what is stopping the U.S. from making the same changes? Why not the U.S. too? By the same token, in an interview between Tiffany O’Callaghan and Garen Wintemute, Wintemute states that “It (guns) takes upward of
During the 1950s and 1960s, increasing numbers of married women entered the labor force, but in 1963 the average working woman earned only 63% of what a man made. That year The Feminine Mystique, a critique of middle-class patterns was published. The author encouraged readers to seek new roles and responsibilities, to seek their own personal and professional identities rather than have them defined by the outside, male-dominated society.
They were ready for camp and ready to get on the bus. At first the busses were separated by Blacks and Whites, but Coach Boone didn't want that he wanted them to sit together. So one bus had the offensive players only and the other had defensive players only. He wanted the players to get along, so he sat one black player with one white player on each set of seats and told them that the player they sit with would be their roommate. It still didn't work out when they got to the camp. They still had their differences and wouldn't get along. When practices began they wouldn't have each other's back. The white player would miss a block just because the person he was blocking for was Whi...
There is a scene in this movie that clearly shows that the whites did not want to be on the same team with the blacks. This was the scene when Coach Yoast was announcing to his players and the families that he was no longer going to be coaching for them and that he was planning on moving to another team to be head coach. Then the players started getting upset and saying they wouldn’t play for the new coach and that they would stop playing football if Coach Yoast left. In this time period it was not uncommon for there to be racism in segregated
The 1940’s were a turning point for women in the workforce. Women were perceived to be the weaker sex by society and faced social prejudices in efforts to become part of the workforce. The common belief was that women were intellectually inferior to men, incapable of making decisions regarding their household, and should not work outside of the home. Their job was to maintain the home, raise the children, and be supportive wives of the working husband.
A United Nations report states that land used for animal agriculture, both for grazing and production of crops fed to livestock, takes up an astounding 30% of land on Earth. ("Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources") To meet the industry’s demands, over 260 million acres of forest in the U.S. have been cleared to grow grain fed to farm animals. ("Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources") With that in mind, the meat industry also dumps disease-causing pathogens through animal waste that pollutes water and forces the need for waste lagoons to be constructed, which are susceptible to leaking and flooding. ("Facts about Pollution from Livestock Farms”) Scientists say that about 14% of the world’s greenhouse gases are released by said agriculture industries, which is a growing concern for climate change and global warming. (Silverman) The meat industry uses one-third of all the fossil fuels consumed in the United States. (Moore) There is no question that farming animals has a negative effect on the environment and steps should be taken to mitigate air and water pollution risks and future deforestation. If animal agriculture was phased out, land used for animal grazing could be returned to forest land and some of it converted into fields for cultivating crops for humans. A global shift toward veganism, resulting in the elimination of the meat and animal agriculture industries, would protect the environment from various detrimental effects.
In the 1960’s women were still seen as trophies and were beginning to be accepted into the work industry. They were still homemakers, raised the family, and made sure their husbands were happy. That was the social norms for women during that time period. They were not held to high work expectations like men were. But something amazing happened that would change women 's lives for centuries; it was the 1970’s. The 60’s put the equality movement in motion but 70’s was a time of reform where women were finally able to control their own paths. Not only was the 70’s a historical marker for the fiftieth anniversary for women suffrage, it was also a marker for the drastic change of different social norms, the changes of the American Dream, and the