“Ideal woman”

Most everyone is familiar with the storybook image of America in the 1950s. Images are continually popularized of a simpler, happier time emerging from the aftermath of the Second World War. Families moved to the suburbs, fostered a baby boom, and forged a happy life of family togetherness in which everyone had a specified role. Women were considered domestic caregivers, with sole responsibility for the home and child rearing, while men 'brought home the bacon.' “Popular since the 1950s, this tenacious stereotype conjures mythic images of culture icons -- June Cleaver, Donna Reed, Harriet Nelson -- the quintessential white, middle-class housewives who stayed at home to rear children, clean house and bake cookies.” (Meyerowitz, 1994) The creation of the “ideal woman” gave a clear picture to women of what they were supposed to emulate as their proper gender role in society. In effect, women began to construct their identities around this image, and may still continue to do so today.

Gender construction is nothing new to American society; nor to any other society, for that matter. In fact, nearly all societies in the world practice some form of structuring based on gender roles. The question commonly posed is whether one is born with innate concepts of gender or whether our gender preferences develop through our experience of social constructions of acceptable gender roles. I believe society plays an immense role in the construction of individual gender roles, and in turn our identity. This is not to say that society has complete control over this construction. Evidence shows that biological sex-linked factors involving hormones like testosterone do contribute to the formation of gender.

However, to place this in proper perspective we would need to investigate how the social construction of testosterone as an indicator of aggression has motivated a gender role in which males are expected to be aggressive and rewarded for such behavior, while girls are expected to be very passive and should be discouraged from engaging in similar aggressive behavior (Lippa, 2002). Most everyone is familiar with the storybook image of America in the 1950s. Images are continually popularized of a simpler, happier time emerging from the aftermath of the Second World War. Families moved to the suburbs, fostered a baby boom, and forged a happy life of family togetherness in which everyone had a specified role. Women were considered domestic caregivers, with sole responsibility for the home and child rearing, while men 'brought home the bacon.' “Popular since the 1950s, this tenacious stereotype conjures mythic images of culture icons -- June Cleaver, Donna Reed, Harriet Nelson -- the quintessential white, middle-class housewives who stayed at home to rear children, clean house and bake cookies.” (Meyerowitz, 1994) The creation of the “ideal woman” gave a clear picture to women of what they were supposed to emulate as their proper gender role in society. In effect, women began to construct their identities around this image, and may still continue to do so today.

Gender construction is nothing new to American society; nor ...