Women In The 50's

The aim of my dissertation is to explore the way women have been represented within magazines. From the stereotypical housewife magazines from the 1950’s and 60’s, through the evolution of women as a sex symbol in magazines primarily made for men, and how women throughout time more often than not have been viewed as a ‘thing’ presented to the world to be looked at and objectified.

In my dissertation I intend to write about how women since the 1950’s have been put into stereotypical boxes created by other people, objectified and made into a mean for entertainment for certain parts of the public, all within the format of the magazine. I will look at early magazines where the housewife of the 50’s are represented, magazines where women are nude and made into sex symbols, where women are not being considered at all but there to sell an item to the public. How have all of these representations and different portrayals of the female sex within the magazine affected how women are viewed by the rest of the world, and what the effects have been.

Magazines have been around for a very long time, and is a very productive way of
It often plays on the same features such as sexuality, sex and nudity, but in a slightly different way. The aim is not to sell the body, it is to use the body to sell an object or an illusion. The photography in magazines, maybe especially fashion magazines are for many what holds the magazine up, what makes it so interesting for the audience. Beautiful women have been depicted for years to make the magazines look as alluring as possible, trying to get across to women around the world. “Societal standards for female body shapes have been changing from year-to-year, placing pressure on women to conform to these unpredictable and inconsistent beauty trends.” (Bale, 2011,