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“The Miss Civil Service beauty contests would solidify the ideology of femininity and beauty that was at the core of the Cold War cult of domesticity while justifying the gender division of labour.”
Though the 1950s was in many ways a period of conformity with traditional gender roles, it was also a decade of change, when discontent with the status quo was emerging. Popular culture and the mass media reinforced messages about traditional gender roles, consumer culture, and the Cold War ideal of domesticity, but the reality of women’s lives did not always reflect these ideals. Between 1946 and 1964, the largest generation known as the baby boomers, were born. This demographic trend in turn reinforced women’s identities as wives and mothers. Despite societal norms that encouraged women to stay in the home and out of the workplace, approximately forty percent of women with young children…
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