Because of the power to shape emotions, their advertisements influenced in creating and maintaining specific gender norms. Review: True Colours tells the stories of two female copywriters Shirley Polykoff and Ilon Specht, who with short catchy taglines summarized the particular feminist sensibilities of their day. Their success highlights the importance focused advertising campaigns aimed to interpret with the consumer perception. Both of them understood the changing mindset of the American Women in the 1950s to the 1970s to successfully connect them personally as consumers to Clairol and L’Oreal. It was the expression of Polykoffs personal feelings and the understanding of the issues faced by average American women in the 1950s that led to the success of Miss Clairols “Does She or Doesn’t She” campaign.
Perfect Dress by Marisa de los Santos In reading this poem Santos speaks of finding the ‘perfect dress.’ The poem is about the longing women feel to fix every imperfection. Santos also speaks about dress itself and the importance of the name. In the last stanza, Santos admits to the desire to not only feel beautiful, but to have others notice it as well. In the first stanza of the poem it says, “…..a blue confession in smudged, erasable ink: ‘I can’t stop hoping I’ll wake up, suddenly beautiful.” Things written in ink are not typically erasable. I interpret this to mean that as much as we women would like to erase the thoughts from our heads, it is something that stays with us not only in childhood, but through adulthood as well.
The Woman of Willendorf may have been looked up to back in Common Era due to her capabilities. Her "womanly features" emphasized to show that she was respected because of what she has naturally, and her ability to reproduce. Barbie, on the other hand, is highly superficial. People look up to her now because she is beautiful, and is successful within her career as she has evolved to become other beings such as Barbie Police and Barbie Doctor. But the biggest difference with her is that achieving her looks may be highly unlikely.
They wanted their image to change. An artist, Charles Dana Gibson believed that the Gibson Girl represented the loveliness of American women. The Gibson Girl influenced society in the early 1900's much like Barbie influenced society of the late 1900's. She was critiqued by many people; much like Barbie is today, for creating an unrealistic perfect image of what women should look like using picture-perfect proportions and long flowing hair. Regardless of the criticism she soon became a trend setter.
Not only does she try to impress everyone with her appearance but she also goes along with Char, and gets in trouble because she has no ability to say no and walk away. Maleeka takes the blame at first, but towards the end of the novel she gets her courage and tells on Char. She finally finds herself and realizes she is beautiful without Chars expensive clothing. She also realized she doesn’t need to stick out; she just needs to be herself. In the end Maleeka and Caleb are backed together and Maleeka is friends with Miss Saunders.
Women did not want to express too much concern with the way they felt about the growing emptiness inside of them for they feared people would think of them as a failure. Women began filling these roles as houswives at a very young age so much so that by the end of the 1950s the average marrying age was 20 (Bowles, 2011, 4.3). Women began, at this period, using college as a means for obtaining a husband rather than as a stepping stone to a career. The perception by many was that they attended college to get their “Mrs” degree. Betty Friedan revealed what her and other women like her had kept secret for so long, that they are human beings and deserve better
Now that’s growing up without a childhood. Jane Smiley seems like a great parent who cares about her children but to allow her daughters to put on makeup even entering their teenage years just isn’t right. Her girls where prematurely growing up, where behaving beyond their age, and with their only priority being beautiful at all times it seem to help them in the long run. As they burned off the “Barbie stage” and grew into more important things down their lives. Like for example Smiley talks about her older daughter, “Now she is planning to graduate school and law school and become an expert on woman’s health issues, perhaps adolescent health issues like anorexia and bulimia” (377).
A large emphasis, when Barbie came out, was on her beauty and clothes. This reflected the suburban ideal of a woman staying at home, waiting to look gorgeous and be "perfect" for her husband when he came home from work. Many women wanted to achieve the ideal body that Barbie flaunted. She also slowly became a symbol of the body younger girls wished to have when they grew older. Ironically, the dimensions that Barbie would not even be anatomically possible on humans.
“Writing about gender roles of the 1950s, Betty Freidan once defined the ’suburban housewife’ as ’the dream image of the young American woman.’ Just as prescriptive literature of the 19th century geared to middling classes emphasized women’s ’true’ place in society as mother and wife, the 1950s saw an ideal perpetuated in books, magazines, movies, television, songs, and ads the depicted the white middle-class woman fulfilled only by happy marriage,” (historymatters.gmu.edu). Some examples of this bombardment was hit television shows Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, which gave false advertisement of the typical family in the sixties and also the popular song You Don’t Own Me by Lesley Gore. “Most young women, at least in the middle class, expected to have access to the same careers and to receive the same compensation as men. It was no longer surprising to see women leaders in formerly ‘men’s’ fields like television production (Oprah Winfrey), diplomacy (Secretary of State Madeleine Albright), or the Supreme Court (Justices Sandra Day O’Conor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Even conservative Republicans recruited female candidates and urged them to be as aggressive on the stump as men,” (Isserman and Kazin
Regardless if it’s 2012 or 1950, young girls struggle with self-confidence issues. Marilyn Monroe was not the skinniest girl ever and she loved her body. She put out the message that tall, short, skinny, fat, white, or black you should always love the body you were given. One of her famous quotes was, “I’m living proof that you can still be adored by thousands, even