Gender Relations During the Era of International Cold War Tensions: Women’S Role in Linking American Domestic Culture and Global Politics

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Gender Relations during the Era of International Cold War Tensions: Women’s Role in Linking American Domestic Culture and Global Politics

Gina Yoon Ji Kim

Introduction

The late 1950s and early 1960s were the years of peak Cold War tensions. Arising from the new balance of international power in the post-war era, the two ideological blocs of the East and the West competed against each other in a hostile struggle over establishing geopolitical dominance. Spearheaded by the Soviet Union and the United States as the two superpowers, Cold War motivations and impacts were felt all over the world, affecting key regional players such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In combating the threat of the communist regime, the United States adopted the policy of containment: ideologically and geopolitically restraining the Soviet Union to limit its influence.

Despite much of the traditional historiography focusing on the military and diplomatic trajectories of American foreign relations in the Cold War, recent studies have also shed light on the importance of culture. Defined as being areas that indicated the ways of life for a society, the United States was becoming a different cultural landscape in the 1950s; this was in response to the adoption of “peaceful coexistence” by both superpowers as a containment policy. 136 However, American culture was also shaped by the internal desires of a generation wanting to move past the hardships of war and secure future stability, resulting in a different world of “private affluence, suburban sprawl and baby booms.”137 Therefore, the power of American culture was shown through its consumerism and domesticity. The key principles of democracy, individual choice and freedom came together to locate material goods and ideological constructs of the family into the political discourse on American superiority. Shown through normalized consumer lifestyles, American emphasis on the country’s technological progress and material abundance manifested in their women. Focusing on the nation’s housewives and mothers dressed fashionably in their kitchens, women’s lives became intrinsically linked to living standards. Thus, as the all-American family became the buffer to contain the threat of communism, traditional assumptions about gender roles were increasingly affirmed. Steeped in the conventional expectations of marriage, motherhood and the home, women’s societal role became central in symbolizing American superiority.

Hence, this paper will argue that the domain of femininity was central to framing American interpretations of the Cold War in the era of containment. It served as a realm through

136 Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945-1961, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997), x. 137 Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 10.

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which American cultural understandings of gender, sexuality, consumerism and politics could shape the threat of the Soviet Union and China into a narrative of reassurance in the minds of the American public. This was exemplified in the American press, where newspapers, such as The New York Times, used women to showcase how different life was in the Soviet Union and the PRC. Influenced by the McCarthyism of the early 1950s, reporters were careful to entrench the differences of the political systems in negativity: both the Soviet Union and the PRC were shown to be less developed, unable to provide the comforts needed to offer “an alternate vision of collective well-being.”138 Going beyond the roles of housewives and mothers, female fashion, beauty and body weight were also scrutinized and critiqued to mark differences and extoll the virtues of American capitalism. Women thus became an indicator of the nation’s power: by serving as an accessible element in American cultural appeal, they represented the options opposing the communist system.

However, this paper argues that femininity also revealed the complicated internal understandings of the United States in the Cold War. The stereotypes of Soviet and Chinese women found in the press offered an important domestic insight into the “symbols, lifestyles and core values” that made up American identities. 139 In an era of Cold War anxieties, their coverage on other societies were guided by their perceptions of their own. Hence, through gender relations, American understandings of their own women encompassed what femininity meant to the nation and to individuals.

Therefore, this paper is divided into three sections, each examining American interactions with a key happening in either the Soviet Union or the PRC. The first focuses on the “Kitchen Debate” in the National Exhibition of 1959, and American reporting on Soviet women in the late 1950s and early 1960s; the second on American news coverage of Valentina Tereshkova’s 1963 space orbit; the third on the American portrayal of Chinese women in the PRC’s communes. Although the introduction of key themes and the bulk of the theoretical context is in the section on the “Kitchen Debate,” this paper is structured to provide a comprehensive narrative on the multifaceted significance of American femininity.

The primary analysis of this dissertation was drawn mainly from New York Times newspaper articles. This medium was chosen as the best source for the purposes of this paper: the aims of journalism to inform and shape public thought could be analysed to illustrate American understandings of femininity abroad and at home. Through the reporting of these key events, the way Americans thought about femininity themselves was revealed when talking about the “other”, showing the potential disconnects between the narrative in the media and the reality on the ground. However, the relevant selection used here is only a sample, serving as a representation of the broader sources. In addition, certain contextual factors must also be considered. The reverberations from the McCarthyism of the 1950s would have enhanced the negativity of reports, whilst the difficulty to physically enter the PRC meant that the verification of facts was limited: it was hard to know what was truly happening.

138 Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth Century Europe, (Cambridge, M.A.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 456. 139 Hixson, Parting the Curtain, 12.

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1. Women in the Gendered Home: American Propaganda of Kitchens, Dresses and Weight

Amidst efforts to move towards “peaceful coexistence” in the 1950s, women’s societal role began to take centre stage in symbolizing American superiority at home and abroad. Hence, women served as the linkage between the ideological and material notions of American superiority: from the commodities of the kitchen to feminine clothes, shoes and make-up, women were interpreted as the ultimate Cold War weapon on the cultural battlefield.

The 1959 National Exhibition and the “Kitchen Debate”

Beginning with the 1958 Cultural Agreement, the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated to establish national exhibitions, one in Moscow and the other in New York, to display each country’s culture, science and technology.140 Taking place over the summer of 1959, the exhibitions marked a watershed moment in the Cold War: both countries were exchanging knowledge to realize “peaceful coexistence.” For American policy makers, the exhibition was an opportunity to portray a “clearer picture of life in the United States.”141 Intended to show the benefits of a consumer society that was based on freedom and choice, it was recognised as an unprecedented chance to culturally infiltrate the Soviet Union to encourage dissatisfaction with their lifestyles and government. Therefore, it became the “first direct American propaganda effort inside the Soviet Union.”142 Described as a “glittering conglomeration of American products,” the exhibition’s focus on consumerism and American affluence manifested in their kitchen displays. 143 Organised by the United States Information Agency (USIA), different RCA Whirlpool kitchen models were shown, such as the Mrs. America All-Gas Kitchen and the Miracle Kitchen. Coming “complete with…electronic advances [such] as a “mechanical maid” and an “automatic meal maker”,” both symbolized the “kitchen of today” and the “kitchen of the future.”144 Home economists were additionally brought in to show to a predicted three and a half million people the convenience of frozen food and pre-mixed products, whilst also demonstrating the usage of robotic floor cleaners.145

140 Hixson, Parting the Curtain, 161. 141 Shane Hamilton and Sarah Phillips, The Kitchen Debate and Cold War Consumer Politics (Boston, M.A.: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014), 7. 142 Max Frankel, “American Exhibition Put Ideas of U.S. Across, Analyst Finds,” New York Times, September 5, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114668886?accountid=9630. 143 “The News of The Week In Review: Harsh Words,” New York Times, July 26, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114757002?accountid=9630. 144 From Office of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, press release, “Kitchens of Today and Tomorrow Slated for Moscow Exhibition,” in The Kitchen Debate and Cold War Consumer Politics, ed. Shane Hamilton and Sarah Phillips, (Boston, M.A.: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014), 38. 145 Ibid., 38; Image 59-14563, “Home Economist Demonstrates Convenience Foods,” in The Kitchen Debate and Cold War Consumer Politics, ed. Shane Hamilton and Sarah Phillips, (Boston, M.A.: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014), 59; Robert Lerner, “The Miracle Kitchen,” in The Kitchen Debate and Cold War Consumer Politics, ed. Shane Hamilton and Sarah Phillips, (Boston, M.A.: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014), 60.

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The kitchen was ideal for the propagandic purposes of the exhibition, as it was a medium that could physically showcase the virtues of American modernity through tangible and material appliances. Although derided as “gadgets” by Khrushchev, with “no useful purpose,” the mere presence and functioning sophistication of these tools symbolized the difference between the two systems. 146 The American way of life was one that became synonymous with this affluence: the country was developed enough, rich enough, secure enough, to guarantee a lifestyle of comfort, ease and taste for its people. Unlike the Soviet system of “building firmly…for our children and grandchildren,” the Americans did not need to only rely on the sturdiness and durability of their homes.147 Instead, capitalism was designed to accommodate “new inventions and new techniques,” ensuring the democratic principle of individual choice would always be present through offering constant diversity. 148 This represented the true prowess of American science and technology: it was not only limited to a “man’s world” because it could go above and beyond to meet female consumers” desires and expectations too.

This is evident in the verbal sparring between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev, later labelled as the “Kitchen Debate.” Recognised by contemporary journalists as the “climax” in what seemed like an “event dreamed up by a Hollywood script writer,” the two leaders bickered over the virtues of their systems inside the kitchen of a model American house.149 Nixon, showing off the built-in panel washing machine that could be found “in thousands of units for direct installation,” argued that Americans were always interested in “making the life of their women easier.”150 Khrushchev’s rebuttal, of how the Soviets did not have what he referred to as this “capitalist attitude toward women” in turn spurred Nixon’s response: “this attitude toward women is universal…What we want to do is make more easier the life of our housewives.”151

The “Kitchen Debate” encapsulates Cold War tensions and ideological differences between the two superpowers. The verbal sparring embodied war in the “realm of consumer expectations and desires”: the domestic sphere of living standards was another battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union. 152 It showed how the Cold War seeped into every aspect of people’s lives, shaping societal attitudes and moulding personal identities. Hence, the importance of the kitchens in this debate was contingent on how they would benefit women’s lives. It sprung from the mutual recognition of both Nixon and Khrushchev, that

146 “The Two Worlds: A Day-Long Debate,” New York Times, July 25, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114757002?accountid=9630. 147 Harrison E. Salisbury, “Nixon and Khrushchev Argue In Public as U.S. Exhibit Opens; Accuse Each Other of Threats,” New York Times, July 25, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114755778?accountid=9630. 148 Ibid. 149 Harrison E. Salisbury, “Nixon and Khrushchev Argue In Public as U.S. Exhibit Opens; Accuse Each Other of Threats,” New York Times, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114755778?accountid=9630. 150 Ibid. 151 Ibid. 152 Shane Hamilton and Sarah Phillips, The Kitchen Debate and Cold War Consumer Politics, 17.

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women were a “central part of the good life that both systems claimed to espouse.”153 For the United States, all the modern household appliances and the abundance of produce came together to symbolize superiority within the politics of consumerism. All the “gadgetry of modern living in the United States” meant their women had the ease and time to focus on the important feminine things in life: marriage, motherhood, and housekeeping. 154 Hence, the kitchen went beyond embodying living standards: it allowed for the medium of the housewife to be used to explore American anxieties in the Cold War.

To the United States, the role of the housewife encompassed the expectations of traditional gender ideology towards being wives and mothers. The American interpretation in the 1950s rests closely with what we regard as the convention: a stay-at-home wife, mother and homemaker of a tight-knit family settled in a suburban, modern home. To the Soviet Union, this traditional gender role was interpreted differently. Women were expected to shoulder what was known as the “double burden” in the name of equality: toiling in the fields and factories like their husbands, whilst also bearing the brunt of housekeeping and childrearing duties at home. Within this context, the United States perceived the Russians very much as a “cultural foil” to the superiority of the capitalist system. 155 From the different attitudes held towards women, the Americans could picture a backwards enemy, oppressing their women “in the communal kitchen in the basement – sweating, scrubbing and boiling the baby’s laundry,” without the help of any “dishwasher, washing machine…, or even a vacuum cleaner.”156 Hence, American model kitchens and housewives became a way to contain the external threat of the Soviet Union. Especially with the scientific and technological successes of the Sputnik I launch in 1957, the kitchens and housewives of the United States showed that American superiority in the Cold War was rooted not in its weapons, but on the “secure, abundant family life of modern suburban homes.”157 The focusing on a family life, abundant with consumer goods, provided comfort and safety to Americans among the numerous anxieties present in the nuclear age.

The traditional domestic ideology was also important in containing internal American fears. Marriage and motherhood in the home also served as internal reassurance that the articulation of the American dream, of successful male providers caring for their attractive wives and children, could still be attainable.158 Thus, women served as an ideological bulwark against the fears of the Cold War. As a shield against communism and domestic immorality (i.e., subversion of traditional gender roles, uncontrolled sexuality), the image of the caring and loving housewife was seen to be the buffeting force needed to contain these notions. Unlike the Soviet Union, America’s women would protect the nation from “prostitutes, black

153 May, Homeward Bound, 18. 154 Osgood Caruthers, “When Russian Meets American,” New York Times, September 6, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114663594?accountid=9630. 155 Shane Hamilton and Sarah Phillips, The Kitchen Debate and Cold War Consumer Politics, 17. 156 Elena Whiteside, “For Soviet Women: A 13-Hour Day,” New York Times, November 17, 1963, https://search.proquest.com/docview/116675313?accountid=9630. 157 May, Homeward Bound, 18. 158 Ibid., 22.

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marketers, [and] a shook-up generation.”159 Hence, Nixon’s argument of the universality of American attitudes was not wrong. Despite having different interpretations, both superpowers undoubtedly recognised the significance of women’s lives as symbolizing the better life each system declared to have. To the Americans, the traditional roles of women as housewives and mothers also became cultural and ideological defences against the threat of the Russians. With their housewives exemplifying their strength and stability, the United States believed their conventional domestic and gender ideology was the way forward to culturally contain the threat of communism.

The Physical Beauty of Clothes, Hair and Weight – The Key to Femininity

Gender ideology increasingly became the domain onto which American comprehensions of the Cold War were projected onto. For the United States, the Soviet threat became increasingly undermined through the realm of femininity. In the late 1950s, the supposed dangers of the authoritarian communist system manifested into a cultural stereotype of Soviet women that went against American expectations of female appearances. As they assumed equality “seriously and literally,” women’s “reincarnation as a full-fledged Comrade,” meant looks “were concealed and biceps were developed.”160 This new equality, wrote the Frankel’s, took Soviet women from the “urban salon to front-line trenches, from peasant hearth to rural smithy.”161 With their women pushed into heavy work, much of American reporting focused on the heavy-set female bodies that had been shaped by this physical labour. Described as being “too fat and too heavy,” and likened to looking “like cows rather than women,”162 the figures of these working-class women went against prevalent American cultures of female beauty, fashion and diet.

This was a contrast to the cultural norms of the United States that stemmed from conventional gender ideology. Physical beauty had had already been established as a norm: by the post-war era, America’s affluence was interpreted as being able to provide for women’s supposedly innate desires to be beautiful and stylish. This was exemplified in the embracing of Christian Dior’s “New Look” by the 1950s, of clothes which were all about female elegance, beauty and curves. Dresses such as these, which exuded such femininity, were complemented alongside American ideals of women always striving “for beauty in body and home.”163 This was a stark contrast with what American reporting described as the “general tastelessness” in Russia: “Make-up was often smeared on…, and most of the homemade clothes lacked fit and

159 Harrison E. Salisbury, “Khrushchev’s Russia-3,” New York Times, September 10, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114662675?accountid=9630. 160 Max and Tobias Frankel, “New Soviet Plan - Feminine Females,” New York Times, December 6, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114791063?accountid=9630. 161 Frankel, “New Soviet Plan - Feminine Females.” 162 Harrison E. Salisbury, “Women’s World Abroad: Dior’s Spring and Summer Collection Captures Feminine Heart of Moscow,” New York Times, June 13, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114791326?accountid=9630; Whiteside, “For Soviet Women: A 13-Hour Day.” 163 Frankel, “New Soviet Plan-Feminine Females.”

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styling.”164 Hence, the discord between the female stereotypes of American and Soviet women, rooted in their gender ideology, constructed the perfect arena to propagate American superiority in the Cold War.

These depictions of Soviet women were also featured in the same news coverage of their increasing interest in beauty, fashion and appearance: they were beginning to covet the goods offered by the capitalist system. For example, the Frankel’s demonstrate a changing Moscow: with the government beginning to import “large quantities of slim-heeled shoes, scarves and other accessories,” working class women were turning to dresses, lipsticks and high-heels to become “elegant and special…, deserving of a seat in the bus.” 165 In the American press, this change was believed to have taken place because of the innate eminence of gender; that despite Marxism, Leninism, socialism, communism, “there will always be femininity.”166 Many explored this socio-cultural shift through commodities: how pretty dresses, shoes and lipsticks encompassed the “heritage of [women’s] sex.”167 The power of commodities was not to be overlooked. As seen with Dior’s 1959 Spring and Summer Collection fashion show in Moscow, the spectacle of beautiful dresses inspired “expressions of pure rapture…a dreamy faraway look in their eyes.”168 These material goods were interpreted as symbolizing the irrepressible desire of women to be beautiful: they were the instruments for them to realize their natural gender identity by encompassing their purpose, self-realization and joy.169

The overall message this propagated in the American press was one of reassurance. By portraying Soviet women as now looking “forward to a time when she can be chic in well-cut feminine clothes, a stylish hair-do, and tastefully applied make-up,” it was comforting to perceive them as coveting what American women already had. 170 Hence, the thought that Americans were the model that their ideological enemy wanted to replicate, formed a propagandic message of reassurance. Since the United States was working to curb communism, this assumption would have served as a security blanket towards American domestic ideals. However, the way the Americans made sense of this change in the Soviet Union was important in showing their own understandings of the role of women. By associating femininity with material wealth, they were suggesting that what constituted femininity itself lay in the consumerist and capitalist aspirations of American women. This fit in with the Cold War mentality of American superiority, indicating an underlying assumption that women could not afford to be feminine in the Communist system. If the Soviet Union wanted to succeed in thus conquering the domain of femininity, they needed to have the wealth of the United States.

164 Whiteside, “For Soviet Women: A 13-Hour Day.” 165 Frankel, “New Soviet Plan - Feminine Females.” 166 Ibid. 167 Harrison Salisbury, To Moscow – And Beyond, in “"Russian Blonde in Space"; Soviet Women in the American Imagination, 1950-1965,” ed. Robert L. Griswold, Journal of Social History, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Summer 2012): 881 – 907, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41678943. 168 Salisbury, “Women’s World Abroad: Dior’s Spring and Summer Collection.” 169 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, (New York: Norton, 1963), 199. 170 Whiteside, “For Soviet Women: A 13-Hour Day.”

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Hence, these articles on Soviet women went beyond merely composing a narrative of reassurance. This dialogue in the press surrounding Soviet female, working-class bodies, clothes and desires also became a method of reaffirming womanhood in conjunction with Cold War issues. Through the supposedly universal feminine desire for physical beauty, the large and unruly bodies of Russian working-class women, shaped by tough labour, served as a symbol of the struggle and discord within the communist system. Women as “equal” workers had lost the femininity, individuality and freedom in the oppressive communist system that, to Americans, manifested in female desirability and sexuality. Instead, communism took gender out of the equation for their women: whether it be in the mass-produced clothes of tailored suits, or being “three of every ten construction labourers,” there was “no feminine noun in Russian” for “Comrade.”171 Hence, the contrasting slim bodies, flattering clothes and tasteful make-up of the United States suggested that the problems of communism were rooted in its gender identity. An ideological system that pushed their women to put in a “seven-hour day on a job…and then spend six hours on her housework,” was seen to be incompatible with natural female needs.172

The projection of American gender ideology onto Soviet women also exposed how the United States interpreted female freedom and power: their symbols of feminine authority were explored through the sphere of domesticity. Portraying the domestic home as something idyllic and worth coveting, the emphasis was placed on how not many “young Soviet women were able to grow up in a calm household where mother could pass on the secrets of homemaking.”173 As seen before in the “Kitchen Debate,” the reassuring symbol of the home, a source of security and hope, was interlocked with the role of women. Women embodied the “cult of domesticity”: traditional American ideas that the home was where true female autonomy lay, from which she wielded “the sentimental power of moral influence.”174 Hence, as Christina Klein has argued, the domain of the private home became the arena through which sexuality, domesticity and families combined to allow women to channel individual rights.175 Therefore, in the Cold War context, motherhood and homemaking were still interpreted as the ultimate forms of female authority and independence, now aiding the fight against communism with the material commodities offered by the United States. However, this also exposed how feminine power was limited to the confines of the gender norms expected from women. The autonomy, authority and independence that women theoretically enjoyed in the home were still gendered forms of freedom and power – they were understood as part of the political discourse of strengthening the country.

Hence, in this cultural battleground, the United States reigned supreme. The capitalist American system was the one that could offer the right commodities to support a “womanly woman,” and burgeoning Soviet femininity proved to the Americans that their gender

171 Frankel, “New Soviet Plan - Feminine Females.” 172 Whiteside, “For Soviet Women: A 13-Hour Day.” 173 Frankel, “New Soviet Plan - Feminine Females.” 174 Amy Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture, (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 24. 175 Christina Klein, Cold War orientalism Asia in the middlebrow imagination, 1945-1961 (California: University of California Press, 2003), 191-222, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1ppx9k.

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ideologies were inherently correct.176 Decades on from the Bolshevik Revolution, the Americans found the Soviet woman to be one that still had “visions of a better world,” but was becoming “increasingly distracted by food, family, furnishings and fashion,” sometimes even being “downright frivolous.”177

2. Women in the Working World: Being Wives, Mothers, and Cosmonauts

By the 1960s, American perceptions of Soviet women began to change: a new, modern Russian woman emerged, one which posed a different challenge. Catalysed by Russia sending the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova’s orbit helped to create a positive image of women retaining their femininity, alongside “competence and expertise” in careers outside the home.178 However, to American audiences, Tereshkova’s femininity was what her accomplishments were defined by, and eventually limited to. Regarding both her space flight and her cosmonaut celebrity in the aftermath, Tereshkova’s image was restricted by traditional gender ideology. To many Americans, she was famous for being a cosmonaut – but also a successful wife and mother within the accepted boundaries of domesticity.

First Woman in Space: June 16, 1963

In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first female cosmonaut in space. Aboard the Vostok 6 on a mission to join fellow cosmonaut Valerii Fedorovich Bykovskii in orbit, Tereshkova’s journey marked a huge feat for Russia. Taking place two years after Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, the orbit was lauded as a technological, scientific and propagandic success. Tereshkova herself became an instant celebrity: not only did she become a spokesperson for Soviet space exploration, but she also came to symbolise the magnitude of female potential in the future. This new image of what a Soviet woman could be, was a far cry from the burly and unfashionable figures of previous decades: instead, this “pleasant-looking…, athletic young woman” became an inspiring model for Americans too.179

For the United States, it was an eye-opening moment to say the least. Not only did the event symbolise the strength of Soviet space technology, ever increasing since Sputnik in 1957, the Soviet Union was also paving an alternative way to challenge American hopes for hegemony in the Cold War. Although showcasing the successes of Soviet space exploration, Tereshkova’s 70-hour orbit also exemplified government harnessing of female talents outside the domestic realms of homes and families. Beyond suggesting that the Soviet Union was actually realizing Leninist ideas of gender equality, this event illustrated how the superpower was becoming a different Cold War opponent: one who strategically used the whole

176 Frankel, “New Soviet Plan - Feminine Females.” 177 Charlotte Curtis, “Soviet Women Cherish Their Femininity,” New York Times, October 9, 1967, https://search.proquest.com/docview/117758783?accountid=9630. 178 Griswold, "Russian Blonde in Space," 889. 179 “First Woman in Space – Valentina Vladimirova Tereshkova,” New York Times, June 17, 1963, https://search.proquest.com/docview/116398530?accountid=9630.

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population’s talents in “ways that strengthened the nation.”180 Through Valentina Tereshkova, the Soviet Union was making a global statement: “we use women to sweep the streets, but we also allow them to dust off the stars.”181

Within this context of the changing Cold War discourse, the United States acknowledged Tereshkova’s accomplishment as the first woman in space. This was because her achievement was also important in allowing Americans to compose a narrative where something as scientific and ground-breaking as space exploration, was compatible with American understandings of femininity. Whilst publicizing her professional achievements, reporters also highlighted her physical appearance, especially her wardrobe and hairstyle. Described as having an “admitted weakness for spiked heels and stylish clothes,” and wearing her hair in the “most popular, short fluffy “kitten cut”,” the fashionable figure of the cosmonaut was promoted as being proof that one could keep all her womanly charms and still accomplish great things.182

This new Soviet woman, one of competence and capability, was both captivating and reassuring for Americans in the context of the Cold War. On one hand, it was heartening to see connections between American understandings of traditional gender ideology and the sheer magnitude of what the female cosmonaut had accomplished. On the other hand, Tereshkova also became an incentive to increase female employment prospects in the United States: she represented the vigour and vitality of the new generation, but also exemplified the benefits of utilising women. This was especially poignant with the rising tide of second-wave feminism that represented the struggle many women faced over their gender identity. Articulated by Betty Friedan as the “problem that has no name,” she aptly described how thousands of housewives all over the United States felt stifled in their confinement to their “reproductive role.”183 On the contrary to the cultural narrative prevalent in the media, many were unhappy with being relegated to being wives and mothers. Instead of being valued as human beings, they believed they were only seen as a “woman,” becoming limited to the domesticated form of femininity only.184 Hence, Tereshkova’s orbit was symbolic on the cultural battlefield of the Cold War. She became the emblem for female potential and liberty that many American women were looking for, serving as proof that women did not belong in their kitchens when they could be the nation’s doctors, teachers, and cosmonauts.

However, as seen in the New York Times June 17, 1963 article, the feminine physicality of Tereshkova was also interpreted differently in the media. Much of the article highlights her “physical toughness and courage,” which in turn helped her overcome her lack of prior training as a pilot.185 What she may “have lacked in preparation she made up in determination and sheer

180 Griswold, "Russian Blonde in Space," 890. 181 New York Tribune Herald, June 17, 1963, in “"Russian Blonde in Space": Soviet Women in the American Imagination, 1950-1965,” ed. Robert L. Griswold, Journal of Social History, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Summer 2012): 881 – 907, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41678943. 182 Ibid. 183 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 15. 184 Bowlby, “The Problem with No Name,” 64. 185 “First Woman in Space – Valentina Vladimirova Tereshkova.”

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physical stamina,” whilst, of course, maintaining a “special unobtrusive feminine beauty.”186 Despite the praising of her bravery and commitment, Tereshkova’s femininity in this article becomes what is used to discount her accomplishment. The deliberate and condescending focus on her lack of experience, claimed to have only been compensated for by her sheer dedication, is significant. Highlighting how “it was often hard for her to grasp rocket technology” and to “understand design and equipment of a spaceship,” the American press confines Tereshkova to the boundaries of traditional femininity.187 The belief that women innately still lacked understanding and skills regarding technology and science were what metaphorically restrained her: the belittling of her capabilities weakened her overall achievement.

Thus, Tereshkova’s femininity was also used to lessen the accomplishment of the Soviet Union: they had created a powerful statement on what women could accomplish under communism. Therefore, American interpretations of Tereshkova was exposed as a projection of their own understandings of women. The United States recognised that sending a woman into space had had exemplified the extent to which the Soviets were socio-culturally progressive. However, their subsequent interpretation of that as symbolizing the national development and strength of the Soviet Union exposed the irony in American comprehensions: Tereshkova’s femininity was dually what defined the accomplishments of the nation, but also what was exploited to undermine it.

In the direct aftermath of Tereshkova’s flight, this adherence to traditional gender ideology was a key feature in American reporting of the event. As seen in the article “First in Space – But Not in Femininity,” Tereshkova’s orbit was also explored in conjunction with the past and present lives of Soviet women. Despite acknowledging that she represented the “promise of the future,” the article reminded Americans of how the Soviets still continued to lag behind in attaining the “symbols of femininity”; of clothes, beauty and motherhood.188 With the average woman still having a “long way to go before she reaches the standard in America,” this was an attempt to foster reassurance that American views on femininity were still correct.189 Even with the supposed gender equality afforded to Soviet women through their shunning of physical attractiveness and traditional motherhood, this era of Tereshkova’s “new Soviet woman” was interpreted to have only been ushered in alongside feminine values that had existed in the United States for decades.

To illustrate this, Audrey R. Topping reports how, by 1963, there were 1,500 hairdressing shops in Moscow, books such as “Meditations on Beauty and Taste” were flying off the shelves, and women were becoming diet conscious.190 Purposely using examples that were clearly understood by American culture as accepted and familiar markers of femininity, Topping compounds the disparity between the quality of life in the Soviet Union and the United States. Whilst American women could have all this and more, Soviet women were still behind.

186 Ibid. 187 Ibid. 188 Topping, “First in Space – But Not in Femininity.” 189 Ibid. 190 Ibid.

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Although increasingly embracing these symbols of femininity, the reality on the ground was still one of scarcity: fresh fruits, vegetables and other basic goods remained difficult to obtain. Hence, reassurance was fostered: “no number of space flights [could] free the average Soviet woman from household drudgery as could a good old clothes-dryer, dishwasher…these things are not available in the Soviet Union.”191

In addition, the realm of female domesticity shaped connections between American and Russian culture, through the cosmonaut celebrity of Tereshkova. Valentina Tereshkova attained much fame in the aftermath of her orbit, culminating in diplomatic and propagandic tours of the United States and the United Kingdom with fellow astronaut Yuri Gagarin. Tasked with representing Soviet space exploration, the two astronauts propagated the notion that Soviet space technology could beat the United States. Compounded further by Tereshkova’s announcement that mixed gender space crews had already begun training, her and Gagarin’s statuses as the first man and woman in space strengthened the idea that Russia could put men on the moon by 1970.192 However, despite her status, much of the American reporting on their visit to the U.N. in October 1963 was focused on her presence as a woman. With one New York Times article only mentioning her in the lines: “Miss Tereshkova denied reports she was engaged to a fellow astronaut.”193 Another focused on her “high heels and upswept coiffure,” and how she “left most of the questions to Colonel Gagarin.”194

This sexist side-lining of Valentina Tereshkova in press coverage, relegating her to comments on her physical appearance and a passive, supporting role to Gagarin, is important in showing the constraints to her celebrity. Despite acknowledgement of her feat, the celebrity that was generated by the American press towards Tereshkova was rooted in her gender identity. The achievement of her orbit was not fully understood in the capacity of her being an astronaut, or a symbol of Russia’s science, but as a female: she was merely treated as Russia’s most famous young woman. Although Tereshkova theoretically symbolized the potential and future for many women in terms of what they could accomplish, as a cosmonaut celebrity she was never removed from the realm of domesticity and gender.

This became increasingly apparent in the press coverage of Tereshkova’s personal life, particularly her marriage and pregnancy. Despite being referred to as “the only woman known to have gone into space,” her marriage and motherhood eventually came to eclipse her achievements in the American press. 195 With these two defining aspects of traditional femininity, the newspaper headlines rapidly transitioned from “Khrushchev Toasts Marriage of Soviet Astronauts at Party for 300,” to “Tereshkova Will Fly After She’s a Mother,” and “6

191 Ibid. 192 “Spacewoman Says Others Will Fly, Maybe With Men,” New York Times, October 28, 1963, https://search.proquest.com/docview/116370296?accountid=9630. 193 “Envoy Says Soviet Plans to Put Men On Moon by 1970,” New York Times, October 16, 1963, https://search.proquest.com/docview/116365059?accountid=9630. 194 “Gagarin Stresses Joint Space Plans: He and Woman Astronaut Visit City and the U.N.,” New York Times, October 17, 1963, https://search.proquest.com/docview/116326693?accountid=9630. 195 “High Soviet Aide Confirms Spacewoman’s Pregnancy,” New York Times, January 30, 1964, https://search.proquest.com/docview/115654227?accountid=9630.

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½ -Pound Girl Born to Soviet Astronaut Couple,” between the months of November 1963 to June 1964. In doing so, these articles offered a glimpse into American understandings and subsequent harnessing of Tereshkova’s legacy. Her life supposedly demonstrated how one could be a cosmonaut, wife and a mother – all at the same time.

The reporting on Tereshkova’s determination that a child would “not interfere with her space work,” indicated how femininity itself was also being wielded differently in the United States.196 In a similar vein to what Tereshkova’s “new Soviet woman” image had meant in 1963, she now emerged as this new ideal for marriage and motherhood. Tereshkova was a woman earning her own self-fulfilment at work, a loving wife and mother at home, whose daughter was a “fulfilment of fond hopes.”197 Therefore, this served as a recognition of the altering socio-cultural climate in the United States: domesticity was no longer a tool to only keep women at home and in kitchens. However, this only illustrated further that Tereshkova’s celebrity itself was restricted to the realm of gender. By shifting her portrayal from this glamourous, single cosmonaut to a wife and mother, the American press were rooting her in the secure and socially accepted boundaries of marriage and motherhood. Her fame and legacy now hinged upon the American press portraying her as a celebrity mother and wife: despite no longer being confined to the kitchen, she was still tethered to the home. After her orbit in 1963, Tereshkova never flew in space again. Instead, she reportedly found that “no work done by a woman in the field of science or culture or whatever…can enter into conflict with her ancient “wonderful mission”- to love, to be loved - and with her craving for the bliss of motherhood.”198

3. “Miss Communist China”: Female Emancipation in the PRC

Femininity became a critical prism through which the United States tried to understand China’s political and socio-cultural transformations in the Maoist era during the Cold War. Happening in conjunction with the revolutionary establishment of people’s communes, women’s lives were radically altered under Mao. Under the umbrella of Communist ideology, their appearances, jobs and social obligations were all changed in the name of strengthening the nation. In the American press, these transformations came together to not only encompass the ideological and material differences between the two countries, but also American attempts to understand and contain the threat of the PRC.

The People’s Communes and the “Great Leap Forward”

By the 1960s, Beijing was viewed by the United States as a more volatile enemy than the Soviet Union. Believed to still be “wedded to a fundamentalist form of Communist which emphasizes violent revolution,” the United States chose to “maintain a policy of

196 “Tereshkova Will Fly After She’s a Mother.” 197 Tanner, “6 ½ -Pound Girl Born to Soviet Astronaut Couple.”. 198 “Soviet Woman Astronaut Finds the Sexes Are Equal in Space, But She Terms Her Earthly role as Wife and Mother Paramount Mission,” New York Times, April 5, 1970, https://search.proquest.com/docview/118806298?accountid=9630.

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nonrecognition.”199 Since the 1950s, as a part of this “nonrecognition” and Cold War tensions, American reporters were banned from entering the PRC. Hence, foreign media was based in Hong Kong, obtaining their information from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) media outlets, Chinese refugees, and C.I.A. government chatter.200

Ideologically, the PRC had different motivations to American capitalist and democratic ideals. Mao’s “continuous revolution” was his interpretation of Marxism- Leninism, focusing on the mobilization of the masses to combat the revisionism of “old China” and Western imperialism. With political trajectories greatly shaped by ideology, the 1950s saw the realization of Mao’s experimental policies. This included the mass creation of rural communes and the Great Leap Forward: the agricultural campaign for rapid industrialization, at the cost of depleting the countryside.201 Lauded by the CCP as their “latest development in agricultural production and ownership,” the land, its industries, and even the kitchen utensils, belonged to the communes.202 With hostel-style dining halls, nurseries and dormitories, men and women alike became workers whose allegiance was supposedly only to the state. However, this mass re-organization of China’s countryside was a drastic upheaval for society. Interpreted as Mao’s “assault on traditional society,” the fundamentals of family, privacy and individuality were attacked through the creation of a government apparatus that “appeared to control every conceivable aspect of human life.” 203

Thus, American reporting on Chinese women was aligned with the changes that were taking place internally in the PRC. As seen in a similar fashion with the Soviet Union, American reporting created a female stereotype out of the changes that accompanied this socio-cultural shift. Gone were the days of “traditional, withdrawing…beauties”: the new ideal had become the ““woman warrior” who doesn’t let vanity stand in the way of communization.” 204 Hence, similarly to American interpretations of Soviet women in the 1950s, Chinese women were also shown as becoming “the equal of man with a vengeance.”205 Wearing the unisex uniform of “plain blue trousers and tunics,” with their “hair cut short and straight,” women were employed alongside men in all industries.206

199 Ibid. 200 Assignment: China – China Watching, directed by Mike Chinoy and Clayton Dube, (2019; California: USC US-China Institute, 2019), YouTube, https://china.usc.edu/assignment-china-china- watching. 201 Sripati Chandrasekhar, “Model Commune in China Depicted,” New York Times, February 22, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114694912?accountid=9630. 202 Ibid. 203 Sripati Chandrasekhar, “Mao’s War with the Chinese Family,” New York Times, May 17, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114902229?accountid=9630; Chandrasekhar, “Model Commune in China Depicted.” 204 “Communists Prefer Women Warriors to Fragile Girls,” Wall Street Journal, January 5, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/132533592?accountid=9630. 205 Sripati Chandrasekhar, “Red China Works Around the Clock,” New York Times, February 18, 1959, 9, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114699697?accountid=9630. 206 Maria Yen, “Red China Recognizes the Skirt,” New York Times, November 27, 1955, https://search.proquest.com/docview/113326143?accountid=9630.

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Therefore, women became the vehicle through which the United States tried to understand the PRC’s socio-cultural transformation: they symbolized how much the nation had changed. With their newly unsexed figures, women were supposedly emancipated by the Communist system: their trouser-clad bodies were not only “freed from household tasks,” they were also escaping the “male dominance…so central to the old clan relations.”207 With the abolition of forced marriages and their newfound freedom to own property and divorce, women were participating in the “sociological and economic revolution” of Mao’s China: in the name of collective commitment, traditions were broken.208 Exemplified in the common sight of an “emancipated” Chinese mother working in the countryside, dressed in “army uniform…, her baby bundled in her arms, the image of a revolutionized PRC in the American press was one that was very different to home.209

Therefore, the United States tried to understand these changes through “translated feminism.” Defined by Dorothy Ko as the transposing of Western ideas on gender, class, body and sexuality on a locale that already has their own conceptions, women as social actors in the PRC showcased the differences between the two ideological systems.210 In the PRC, the domain of the kitchen and the home were interpreted as restrictions: symbolizing the repressive traditions of “old China,” the supposed emancipation of women took place away from the traditions of “cooking, housecleaning and washing.”211

However, in the Cold War context, the “translated feminism” of the West was also a method of limiting the perceived threat of China’s global domination as “an industrialized giant.”212 Similarly to the Soviet Union, the perceived threat of the PRC was framed through femininity in the American press: efforts to undermine communism were done through the supposed virtues of female fashion. Reporting on how the CCP were calling upon their women to look “prettier” by launching campaigns for “getting them back into skirts,” this allegedly demonstrated how the PRC also equated “feminine clothing” with women having happy and “many splendored” lives.213 Like the reporting on the increasing Soviet importation of high-heels and scarves, the official recognition of the skirt by the CCP illustrated the transposition of American femininity. The skirt, steeped in its cultural importance of being a feminine fashion symbol, provided a visual image to readers back home of the innate eminence of gender – how female fulfilment from beauty had no cultural, ideological or political boundaries. Thus, its interpretation also invokes reassurance amidst

207 Tillman Durdin, “China’s Communes Mobilize Women,” New York Times, October 23, 1958, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114526072?accountid=9630.; Peggy Durdin, “Deep Challenge to China’s Communists,” New York Times, June 15, 1958, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114480118?accountid=9630. 208 Igor Oganesoff, “China’s Communes,” Wall Street Journal, January 5, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/132528524?accountid=9630. 209 Hughes, “Close-up of Miss Communist China.” 210 Dorothy Ko and Wang Zheng, “Introduction: Translating Feminisms in China,” Gender & History, Vol. 18, No.3, (November 2006): 464. 211 M. S. Handler, “Bulgaria to Use Communal Ways,” New York Times, February 18, 1959, https://search.proquest.com/docview/114689847?accountid=9630. 212 Oganesoff, “China’s Communes.” 213 Yen, “Red China Recognizes the Skirt.”

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the Cold War; that there was a mutual understanding that women should have as much “variety in the ornamentation, the material and the style of their clothing” to be happy and fulfilled, regardless of the political system they lived in.214

In addition, female agency was also used to limit the perceived threat of the PRC by focusing on the shortcomings of communist China. In the American press, the alleged failure to implement lasting positive change and meet CCP ideological aims created an image of an ultimately backwards and unstable regime. Despite the recognition that American- understood notions of femininity were connected to the CCP, it was also believed that women only needed to be “prettified” since the Maoist model of the Chinese woman “had ceased to be feminine.”215 Without “even a hint of cosmetics or the slightest bit of jewellery [to] adorn her,” millions of women had become “grim and serious,” pushed into a dull uniformity to become equal to men: they made up the hundreds of thousands of workers, looking like “an endless army of blue ants scurrying to their appointed tasks.”216

To American sensibilities, the tragic criticism of Chinese femininity thus lay in what was defined as the “sacrifice of all feminine standards and values.”217 Amongst the defining conformity of Maoist ideology, the United States understood that the loss of individual female identity was, to their perspective, symbolic of the problems with the communist system. However, the evidence used in newspaper articles to show this was interesting, such as the norm of women keeping their maiden names after marriage meant many were introduced as “Worker” or “Producer,” not as “Mrs. X” or Mrs. Y”.218 Yet, the fact that women not being referred to their married names was perceived as a loss of female identity, spoke more on American understandings of femininity. In the United States, someone’s name, which represented their “ideal of a robustly conceived and fully realized self,” was defined greatly by the rigid gender binaries of biologically determined ideas.219 For women, much of the conventional narrative was shaped by her physical appearance, maternity and sexuality. Hence, her married name represented the categorization of her social role. It described the conformity of 1950s America, where the supposed natural pathway was one that bound “all women to the same adult future role of child-rearer.”220 It also legitimized hierarchical gender relations, under the guise of ensuring that American principles of domesticity survived.

The failures of the communist system were also framed by the American press within the perceived flaws of Maoist ideology, and the paradoxical nature of its relationship with gender: women were expected to fulfil the demands of conventional gender roles at home,

214 Ibid. 215 Chandrasekhar, “Red China Works Around the Clock.” 216 Ibid. 217 Hughes, “Close-up of Miss Communist China.” 218 Chandrasekhar, “Mao’s War With the Chinese Family.” 219 Elizabeth Lunbeck, The Americanization of Narcissism, (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 2014), 224. 220 Rosie Germain, ““The Second Sex” in 1950s America,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 56, No. 4 (December 2013): 1041-1062.

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whilst meeting the “obligation to work…outside it.”221 Despite the propagandic claims that the CCP had realized women’s rights by making them equal to men, women were still instructed to establish a “harmonious, democratic family” and to rear children with “exemplary, moral, Socialist characters” in the communes.222 Instructions were also given regarding housekeeping: “It is completely wrong to despise housework...Management of the home with diligence and thrift is of exceptionally great importance to State socialist construction.”223 By offering these narratives, the United States was thus demonstrating the weakness of Maoist ideology: women were “simply moving from one cage to another,” even shedding their feminine instincts, interests and appearances, for a flawed form of independence.224 In contrast, American understandings of the ideals of family and homemaking were strengthened. CCP adherence to this realm of domesticity, and even situating women’s role in them, demonstrated to readers back home how American superiority truly lay in the secure abundance of family life. Although the Chinese woman may not be a housewife in the kitchen, she was still bound to the home.

This highlighting of the supposed hypocrisy in Maoist gender conceptions, also held implications for the United States that went beyond the immediate context of interpreting the PRC as an enemy. It defined how American understandings of female emancipation stemmed from a domestic viewpoint, rather than genuine comprehensions of equality and reform. As shown through the lives of Chinese women in the communes, the negativity of the “double burden” placed on them symbolized how Americans understood that women could work, earn money and have the freedom to do so - but it would never eclipse the role they were expected to hold in the home. Therefore, Americans viewed their women to be liberated: they believed their women were already offered the fundamentals of “all human freedoms and individual impulses,” in their capitalist system. 225 However, this female emancipation was only determined within the confines of domestic ideology and its notions of wealth and materialism. Just like the interpretations of Valentina Tereshkova’s feminine power, the descriptions of Chinese women exposed how the United States understood female freedom as being strictly gendered: despite being able to divorce and hold jobs, female independence could not leave the sphere of domesticity. The expectations of women to become mothers and wives, seeking their main fulfilment from a modern home equipped with the newest goods, showed their emancipation could not escape the categorization of their gender: even in a system defined by the democratic power of individual choice.

Hence, American reporting claimed to expose the realities of the country behind the “bamboo curtain.”226 Through American understandings of Chinese femininity, the failure of the communist system to implement socio-economic changes to the extent they claimed, were instead perceived to have hindered their own ideology. Despite certain advancements being

221 Durdin, “Deep Challenge to China’s Communists.” 222 Ibid. 223 Durdin, “Deep Challenge to China’s Communists.” 224 Hughes, “Close-up of Miss Communist China.” 225 Ibid. 226 Henry R. Lieberman, “Glimpses Behind the Bamboo Curtain,” New York Times, January 30, 1955, https://search.proquest.com/docview/113246592?accountid=9630.

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made in communist China, the difficulties of ordinary life on the communes showed a country that could not yet “adequately…feed or clothe its own people.”227 Facing eternal shortages, “of food, clothes, shoes, soap, fuel,” the country’s struggles to overcome their own industrial and agricultural backwardness was embodied in their women.228 Although freed from elements of oppressive, masculine traditions, female lives were thus shown in American newspapers as having been made more difficult by the communist system. They were chiefly needed, “not in official jobs and factories, but to work in fields and pinch on every last drop of cooking oil and grain of cereal.”229 This image therefore accentuated to the United States the superiority of their own governance. Although the Soviet regime was also portrayed in a similar manner of lagging behind the United States, the reporting on the PRC suggests the racial superiority the Americans felt towards the Chinese. The image created of the PRC as a country scavenged by scarcity and poverty through the failure of government reforms also implied that the shortcomings of their country were, in part, due to their being “inscrutable Orientals.”230

However, this highlighting of the difficulties of women’s lives went beyond being a propagandic image on U.S. superiority. It also held implications for how the United States viewed their own society: it defined how American understandings of femininity, despite its importance in symbolizing national strength, could not be separated from domesticity. Harkening back to the ideology mentioned in the “Kitchen Debate,” women in the homes of the United States were a stronger image of American power in the cultural context of the Cold War. The image of security and stability they represented in the minds of the public were crucial to “domestic containment,” limiting the powers of the socialist regimes. Therefore, women’s domestic role in representing the all-American family embodied the endurance of American societal beliefs in a period that was rife with change and instability. Femininity was understood by Americans as the realm in which the hopes for the future could be communicated: national values could enmesh together in a nuclear age to realize the American dream.

Thus, the self-perceived superiority of the United States was compounded within the socio-cultural battlefield of the Cold War. By showing the logistical failures of the communes and its discord with Maoist gender ideology, the radical hopes and aspirations they represented were not fully realized. With people always hungry, weak and tired, by 1961 the United States claimed the commune had become “little more than a name.”231 Therefore, it became a propagandic exposé on the inherently flawed PRC, suggesting the overarching power of American ideology: its democracy and affluence were unbeatable, the power of its women unmatchable.

227 Durdin, “Deep Challenge to China’s Communists.” 228 Richard Hughes, “The Bitter Rice of Red China,” New York Times, June 3, 1962, https://search.proquest.com/docview/115682511?accountid=9630. 229 Durdin, “Deep Challenge to China’s Communists.” 230 Assignment: China – China Watching. 231 Peggy Durdin, “Chinese Village: Then and Now,” New York Times, October 22, 1961, https://search.proquest.com/docview/115212758?accountid=9630.

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Conclusion

Gender relations during the era of international Cold War tensions serves as an interesting lens to view the supposed dichotomies between the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China. Despite the ideological differences between the three regimes, they were all united in realizing the transformative power of the role of women.232 Narratives of national power, modernity, and living standards were embodied in female societal roles. Whether they were factory workers, farmers, or housewives, the lives of women were interpreted as being indicative of the ideological and material functioning of political systems, shaping much of the cultural landscape they were situated in. Thus, American interpretations of Soviet and Chinese women in the late 1950s and early 1960s had many similarities. Helping to construe propagandic messages of reassurance to readers back home, their portrayals in American newspapers were both shown to be representative of backwards authoritarian regimes. With their masculinized bodies and unfulfilled desires for pretty things, the communist systems exploited them to serve the needs of the nation, but only ended up making their lives harder through the ideological “double-burden.”

Hence, the narrative of femininity was exploited by all actors involved in the Cold War’s global competition for dominance. To the United States, a country founded on the principles of democracy and freedom, women were complex symbols of self-perceived superiority in the Cold War. Their lives were greatly dictated by the conventional gender expectations to be mothers and housewives, situated in the secure ideological boundaries of the interior home. The Cold War augmented these expectations to a large extent: the widespread “ideological investment” made by many Americans into female homemaking tropes ensured that “domesticity and motherhood maintained cultural saliency.”233 Linking female fulfilment to homemaking and childrearing, these narratives brought the “cult of domesticity” into the Cold War context. Therefore, American femininity in the Cold War was not about individualism. Women did not have the same extension of natural, individual rights that men did: the “rhetoric of individualism to women” did not go “beyond consumer choice.”234 The consumerism of American society, defined by the abundance of material goods, thus became the “means for achieving individuality, leisure, and upward mobility” for women.235 Hence, femininity itself was understood differently. Not only could it be utilised to reveal internal comprehensions of the United States during the Cold War, but it could also be weaponized to attack its external ideological enemies. Showing a country that clung onto traditions to not only interpret an emerging “concern about women’s [labour] roles,” Americans were also turning to femininity to extend their power and influence through cultural contact.236

232 Jessica Weiss, “Fraud of Femininity”: Domesticity, Selflessness, and Individualism in Responses to Betty Friedan,” in Liberty and Justice for All? ed. Kathleen G. Donohue (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), 124-153, http://www.jstor.com/stable/j.ctt5vk2h9.7 233 Ibid., 145. 234 Weiss, 144. 235 May, Homeward Bound, 18. 236 Benita Roth, “Real Housewives with Real Problems?” Gender and Society, Vol. 27, No. 1 (February 2013): 110-112, http://www.jstor.com/stable/23486621.

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Ultimately for the United States, the role of women was crucial in linking American domesticity and global politics. The accepted capitalist notions of wealth and consumerism that American femininity encompassed allowed the United States to use their culture, and their women, as “powerful rhetorical devices for selling American political ideas overseas.”237 Thus, the United States succeeded in realizing the policy of containment by culturally infiltrating with their ways of life, especially in the Soviet Union. Amidst ever-increasing public enthusiasm for American goods and gadgets, Khrushchev noted in 1964, after he was removed from power, that the Soviet Union could no longer hope to compete in the realm of consumerism against the United States: “It’s too bad; it’s shameful, but it is a fact that can’t be denied.”238 Thus, American culture in the context of containment was not only a “material political practice”, but also a “prevailing cultural metaphor” in itself.239

Hence, as an extension of this, the culture of the Cold War itself needs to be examined. As Stephen Whitfield and Heonik Kwon have argued, the Cold War served as both a “question of social order and a question of international order.”240 As a “question of social order,” cultures of nations, such as the United States, developed through confrontations within the paradigms of this international conflict. As explored in this paper through the prisms of femininity and womanhood, the Cold War had had great impacts on societal thinking and behaviour that would influence people’s lives for many decades to come. However, the culture of the Cold War as a conflict also refers to its identity as a “question of international order.” The global socio- political trajectories of nations had undergone drastic political divarication in many contrasting ways by the end of World War II: whether it be the consumerism of the United States, the continuing of Marxism-Leninism in the Soviet Union, or the Maoism of the PRC, the engagement with the “Cold War” was interpreted differently for each society. Hence, all the differences that the umbrella term of the “Cold War” encompassed was where its definition lay, allowing it to stand as a “culture” on its own: the interweaving of both geopolitical and social narratives came together to form an altogether very variant, and very human, conflict.

237 Heonik Kwon, The Other Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 148. 238 Direct quotation from Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes (Boston, M.A.: Little, Brown and Co., 1990), 137; Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945-1961, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997), 231. 239 Kwon, The Other Cold War, 140. 240 Direct quotation from Kwon, The Other Cold War, 148; Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).