1960's independence= changing fashion=shallow headlines

During the 1960’s, women’s roles started to change again as many women became upset with their oppressive lifestyles. They realized the suburban housewife image was not the route to happiness. Women wanted to leave the house and work . Divorce rates increased during the end of the 1950’s and throughout the 1960s , because of the way women were being oppressed causing them to feel isolated. Since women often got married at a very young age some went back to school.

While women understood the value of bringing up their children, housework wasn’t something that was rewarding. They had been taught that housekeeping and making the husband and kids happy was the most important thing they could do, but this was not enough for them. The media continued to try and uphold this same suburban, housewife image through the end of the 1950s and early 60s . The media started criticizing women who wanted to do more then housekeeping and child bearing. As one article said” They should use [their minds’ in every conceivable way.. so long as their primary focus of interest and activity is the home” and that “if they are truly feminine women, with truly feminine attitudes, they will.. accept their wifely functions with good humor and pleasure”(encyclopedia). The media tried to make it seem as though these women became a threat to their family and the well being of the entire country.

The media was attempting to promote the ideology that the US government wanted during this time. In the book “Practices of Looking” it states: “ Dependence on markets and government support makes it difficult if not impossible for media corporations to play the role of watchdog when it comes to reporting issues that involve potential infringements upon rights and freedoms by those who determine the financial stability of the corporation”(255). The media, including Seventeen magazine, is mainly owned by powerful men who are also connected to government officials who did not want to see a change in roles after life had finally returned to what they saw as normal and perhaps steady.

While this may have been, the case the demands of family life including domestic work and the man’s work all created stress that had to be dealt with in order to stop the family lives from continuing to fall apart. Men and women accepted changing roles in society. Since women stayed at home doing domestic work from cooking to mowing the grass, her jobs included some more commonly masculine tasks. Men sometimes drove the kids to school or bought groceries. The line between male and female jobs began to blur. While women and girls began to be taken seriously in school and girls were able to see a future that went beyond simply getting married and having kids, they faced more problems entering the work force. The cover of these magazines in the 1960s usually mentioned something about jobs or college, like how to make money in the summer or articles about picking the right college. Although it seemed as though these covers began to digress in terms of the female images they promoted.

In the 1960s women started to gain some more freedom , and the fashion changed along with this. As women no longer had to appear as perfect statues, taking care of the home and looking good for her husband, clothing demonstrated this new freedom and independence women started to gain. This meant shorter and tighter dresses, which meant thinner models. This perpetuated young girls to think more about their weight and appearance . More headlines started to appear on the magazine cover , most of them concerning weight, clothing, and guys.

It seemed as though the digression of this magazine began and instead of promoting active citizens and treating girls as and intelligent demographic the covers seemed to encourage girls to solely think about their appearance and how to get a guy. Girls started to look up to the women on the covers, because of the way they looked rather then their contributions to society.

Although there were exceptions and the magazine still held to their original purpose, but more and more it began to change. This cover happens to be one of the more positive covers for young girls. More headlines exist on the cover , but many of them are about ways to participate in society whether by going to college or voting . The cover still retains its artistic side by using a photo, which is beautiful and stands out as a piece of artwork. It is not just an airbrushed portrait of some model or actress. Although it no longer presents women in a scene that reflects a lifestyle, it is just a photograph of a girl dressed well and looking pretty. The one headline that’s says “Help! I hate my nose” is an example of what a lot of the covers began to look like in the 60s, while still incorporating the freedom women started to obtain. We may take advantage of voting at 18 or going to college, but these were very hot topics at a time when women were finally being encouraged to move ahead in society through education, work, and their political voice.