The Feminine Body, Beauty Ideals, and Identity in Postwar America, 1945-1970
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2011 The Color(s) of Perfection: The Feminine Body, Beauty Ideals, and Identity in Postwar America, 1945-1970 Elizabeth M. Matelski Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Matelski, Elizabeth M., "The Color(s) of Perfection: The Feminine Body, Beauty Ideals, and Identity in Postwar America, 1945-1970" (2011). Dissertations. 158. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/158 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2011 Elizabeth M. Matelski LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO THE COLOR(S) OF PERFECTION: THE FEMININE BODY, BEAUTY IDEALS, AND IDENTITY IN POSTWAR AMERICA, 1945-1970 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN HISTORY BY ELIZABETH M. MATELSKI CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2011 Copyright by Elizabeth M. Matelski, 2011 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project is the culmination of many years and uncountable hours of study, but it represents a beginning as much as an end. Since the start of my graduate studies at Loyola University in Chicago, I have benefitted from the wisdom and friendship of numerous individuals. I can only begin to thank those who have helped me along the way. First, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the archival staff at the American Medical Association, Chicago Public Libraries, Evanston Public Library, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Their patience and willingness to retrieve boxes upon boxes and cartful after cartful of magazines was exceptionally helpful. I am grateful to the Interlibrary staff at Loyola, particularly Beth Andrews, for going above and beyond to help me find sources that would have otherwise gone unseen. This dissertation would not have been completed if not for the financial support of the history department and the Graduate School at Loyola that allowed me to work uninterrupted. I also wish to thank my fellow graduate students who provided not only intellectual companionship, but made my years living in Chicago memorable. Several faculty members at LUC deserve special mention for their support. Thank you to my teacher mentor, Robert Bucholz, for his passion to undergraduate teaching and his continued interest in my scholarship beyond my years as his Graduate Assistant. To iii Lewis Erenberg and Susan Hirsch who provided me with thoughtful and thorough critiques on my scholarship from the genesis of this project through its completion and from whose many excellent graduate courses I benefitted. I am particularly grateful to my advisor, Timothy Gilfoyle, whose graduate course on nineteenth-century America originally sparked my interest in the history of women’s bodies. As my advisor he provided me with a model of what an academic should be like, and his motto, “the only good writing is re-writing,” is advice I’ll practice long into my academic career. I owe a special thank you to Courtney who endured the mountain of hours I spent poring over Playboy magazine in the name of “research.” Because of her love and support, I found a balance between life and academia, and for this, I’ll always be in her debt. Thank you to my parents who supported my academic endeavors unflinchingly even though the shortest book ever written is Job Opportunities for History Majors. And lastly, I dedicate this dissertation to my grandmother, Rosemary Matelski. It is because of her that I first acquired my passion for the past, sitting in her kitchen while she made bread and entertained me with stories about growing up during the Great Depression. But most of all, I dedicate this to her because she loved me best for being “such a good little eater. iv To my grandmother, Rosemary TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii LIST OF TABLES vii LIST OF FIGURES viii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: CREATING THE IDEAL: ACTUARIES, HOLLYWOOD, AND THE FASHION INDUSTRY 15 CHAPTER 2: “WE MUST, WE MUST, WE MUST INCREASE OUR BUST”: UPLIFTING THE FEMININE BREAST 50 CHAPTER 3: BUILD-UPS AND SLIM-DOWNS: RE-SHAPING AMERICA 95 CHAPTER 4: WHAT MEN WANT: MEN’S MAGAZINES AND THE GIRL-NEXT-DOOR 132 CHAPTER 5: (BIG AND) BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL: BODY IMAGE AND EXPANDED BEAUTY IDEALS 160 CHAPTER 6: LESBIAN BODY IMAGE AND THE BUTCH/FEMME DICHOTOMY 195 CONCLUSION: THE YEAR OF THE AIRBRUSH AND OTHER PHOTOSHOP DISASTERS 232 BIBLIOGRAPHY 247 VITA 271 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1. “Desired” Weights of Women 25 Years Old and Older, 1942 and 1959 38 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Bar Suit From Dior’s “New Look”, 1947 29 Figure 2: Rita Hayworth’s Transformation 35 Figure 3: Twiggy: Seventeen Magazine, July 1967 45 Figure 4: Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell Make Their Mark Outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, 1953 54 Figure 5: Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire, 1953 59 Figure 6: Annette Funicello as a Mouseketeer, 1955 and Later in the 1960s as DeeDee in the Popular Teen Beach Party Movie 64 Figure 7: Hollywood Starlet, Joan Dixon, c.1950 Before Her 1959 Breast Surgery 91 Figure 8: Hugh Hefner’s Prototype for the Girl-Next-Door, Janet Pilgrim 137 Figure 9: Marilyn Monroe Lifting Barbells 148 Figure 10: “The New, New, New Look,” Flirt Magazine, October 1948 150 Figure 11: Cover of First Sports Illustrated Magazine Swimsuit Issue, 1964 157 Figure 12: Duke Magazine Cover, June 1957 174 Figure 13: Ebony Magazine’s “Lady Fat” 187 Figure 14: Butch and Femme Bar Patrons 197 Figure 15: Typical Lesbian Pulp Fiction Cover, Artemis Smith, The Third Sex (1959) 208 viii Figure 16: Comic by Domino, The Ladder, February 1962 223 Figure 17: “Well, of Course, I’m Butch – What Do I Look Like!” Comic by Domino, The Ladder, April 1962 224 ix INTRODUCTION In the film Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), Rock Hunter’s fiancé, Jenny Wells (Betsy Drake), realizes that attending college to just develop her mind was a serious mistake. Fearing that Rock will leave her for the buxom and vapid Hollywood star, Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield), Jenny initiates an exercise regime designed to develop her modest bust line. Upon visiting her apartment after work, Rock discovers his fiancé comatose on the ground and frozen in a perpetual push-up. When Rock informs her doctor that the malady was caused by too much exercise – specifically push-ups – the doctor nods knowingly. “Push-ups are a waste of time,” the physician tells the advertising executive. “It’s really better for women to just go to a store, if you know what I mean.” When Rock Hunter returns to his own apartment that night and checks in on his teenage daughter, he finds her sleeping in bed, her arms above the covers in a frozen push-up. Prescriptive literature, Hollywood films, and popular culture in general created and perpetuated the postwar feminine ideal of the “Sweater Girl” – a busty, curvaceous figure more sexual than maternal. Yet, this ideal gave way in little more than a decade. One of my earliest childhood and most lasting memories of my mother is watching her inspect herself in the full-length mirror of our family bathroom. She would stand, twisting and turning, her eyes intensely scrutinizing the curves of her body. Then she would turn to me and simply sigh, “We were born in the wrong decade.” Those same 1 2 eyes that had just previously scrutinized her own shape would gaze on me as if to say that I was destined (doomed?) to follow in her footsteps. I would file away her beauty tips and hints and embarrassingly chant, “ I must, I must, I must increase my bust” with my middle-school friends, thanks to the influence of young-adult author, Judy Blume, a woman who experienced her own teen years in the 1950s. My mother, neither unattractive nor “overweight” was born in 1960. Like many women of her generation, she clung to the urban legend that the Hollywood sex symbol of the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe, wore a size 12 dress. She came of age during an era where youth culture placed a cult-like status on Twiggy, a model with a 31-inch bust and 32-inch hips. How had the ideal female body type changed so quickly and so drastically? How did we go from a society that worshiped full, buxom blondes to child-like waifs in just over a decade? Previous scholars have not recognized how malleable these ideals were and how susceptible the female figure is when seemingly disparate factors like consumerism, fashion trends, foreign policy, medical opinion, and mortality collide. While many women conformed to the Hollywood “sweater” model and then later looked to Twiggy as the fashionable ideal, most did not exhaust themselves in efforts to remold their bodies to replicate these unique body types. This dissertation explores and analyzed how women of different ages, races, and sexual orientations imagined and actively altered their own bodies in their efforts to mimic or reject this body ideal from 1945 to 1970. At least once scholar has argued that women face more pressure to conform to an ideal standard of beauty than men because women learn early on that their future – economic, social, and reproductive opportunities – hinges on their personal 3 appearance.1 Moreover, as historian Kathy Peiss notes, “Beauty signifies difference… making distinctions between high and low, normal and abnormal, virtue and vice.