ZUR 589o: Cultural History of Advertising Stephanie Coontz,“Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet: American Families in the 1950s” Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcjzS-6ooIg https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=IcjzS-6ooIg post-war years (1946 - 1960) 1950s were not the last stronghold of the traditional family, but a new invention —and a historical fluke. Young people were marrying at an earlier age... http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2014/10/matt-walsh-doesnt-get-historical- marriage-rate-trends.html http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/11/29/u-s-birth-rate-falls-to-a-record-low-decline-is-greatest- among-immigrants/ having children at an earlier age (and more children)... http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb11-cn188.html and buying a home at an earlier age (in the suburbs). somewhat similar trends in Europe http://www.socresonline.org.uk/6/2/holdsworth.html mean age at first marriage http://www.ceemr.uw.edu.pl/vol-3-no-2-december-2014/articles/longer-term- demographic-dynamics-south-east-europe-convergent number of children http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/09/why-us-needs-fall-out-love-homeownership/6517/ homeownership Emphasis on nuclear family understood at the time as a new invention • reaction to enforced extended family arrangements of the Depression and WW2 • home as the center of emotional happiness, psychic wellbeing, and entertainment • leads to ideal of self-sufficient nuclear family Americans saved more during war years than ever before (or since). Savings spent on durable goods after the war. http:// www.drfurfero. com/books/ mandf/ ch08.html clear gender roles for every member of the family youth market women and appearance breadwinners “This book is about the ideology that shaped the breadwinner ethic and how that ideology collapsed, as a persuasive set of expectations, in just the last 30 years” (Ehrenreich, 1984,11). The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit 1955 novel by Sloan Wilson 1956 film directed by Nunnally Johnson https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=970n8Mv1Wqc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qADM67ZgYxM breadwinners • courtship and marriage as a “battleground” • “The fact that, in a purely economic sense, women need men more than the other way round, gives marriage an inherent instability” (2-3) breadwinners • Charlotte Perkins Gilman • marriage as a “sexuo-economic relation”: men pay for the services performed by women—in inverse relation to the work performed (quoted in Ehrenreich, 5) principle of the family wage • men (in powerful unions or in professional careers) earn sufficient wages to support a family • men earn more than women • men use extra earnings to support women/families • creates gender-based occupational hierarchy • women squeezed out of higher-paying jobs, often earning wages insufficient to support even themselves breadwinner ethic • men must grow up, marry, support their wives • 1950s and early 1960s: deviation from the norm met with censure • “less than a man” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2014/10/matt-walsh-doesnt-get-historical- marriage-rate-trends.html gray-flannel dissidents • frustration and anger over “gray-flannel conformity” directed at women • home as a forbidding territory • corporation as men’s “haven in a heartless world” (Ehrenreich 38) Playboys • in early 1950s Playboy introduced a radical revision/redefinition of acceptable male heterosexual behavior • self-indulgence • hedonism • masculine attention to and desire for material goods as a source of pleasure Playboys Playboy promotes male rebellion: • a critique of marriage • a strategy for liberation (reclaiming the indoors for male pleasure) • a utopian vision (defined by the possession of commodity goods) "The real message of Playboy was not eroticism, but escape--literal escape from the bondage of breadwinning" (Ehrenreich 51) "The breasts and bottoms were necessary not just to sell the magazine, but to protect it" (51). "In every issue, every month, there was a playmate to prove that a playboy didn't have to be a husband to be a man" (51). beats • rejected both job and marriage • first all-out critique of American consumer culture • remain a small, marginalized minority