MONROE DOCTRINE
Schneider, Karen A.
VIEWS REVIEWS MONROE DOCTRJNE BY KAREN A. SCHNEIDER Women: Toss aside your business suits. Kick off those comfy flat shoes. Gray flannel? Forget it. Pink is in, and so are spike heels, sorority...
...It was so awful for women, why would anyone want to revive the '50s...
...As Simone de Beauvoir warned in The Second Sex, "The purpose of the fashions to which [woman] is enslaved is not to reveal her as an independent individual, but rather to cut her off from her transcendence in order to offer her as prey to male desires...
...But that is, after all, the underlying message of the 1950s clothing craze—it's fashionable to be a sex object again...
...Life centered around the hearth, Dad ruled the roost from his armchair, and Mom, oblivious to it all, toiled over the hot stove...
...Marilyn "represents a time when clothes playfully evoked the feminine mystique...
...For feminists, resisting the fashions of the 1950s should be easy...
...Come celebrate as we remember Marilyn—and all she inspired...
...But the broader issue of beauty and clothing is a thorny one even for women who can ignore the dictates of the fashion industry but enjoy dressing to suit their mood or activity—or simply to look good...
...Department stores, fashion magazines, and newspaper advertisements are ushering women back to the era of Dwight Eisenhower, James Dean, and Leave It to Beaver...
...A later generation of feminists thinks of Marilyn Monroe in a less congenial context—the hourglass figures, breath-stopping girdles, plunging necklines, dumb blondes, languishing minds...
...But in a sexist society, dressing up is often interpreted as a sexual come-on...
...We now remember the '50s with not-so-innocent clothes that snuggle the waist, hug the hips and do nothing to stop a head from turning...
...Women should be free to express themselves through their clothing...
...Welcome to the fabulous 1950s...
...Beneath the romantic glow over the 1950s, however, is a disturbing reality: The decade was a time when woman's place was in the home...
...Those words were written in 1949...
...She added, "The skirt is less convenient than trousers, high-heeled shoes impede walking . . . the costume may disguise the body, deform it, or follow its curves...
...asks Mary Brown Parlee, a psychologist and director of the Center for the Study of Women and Sex Roles at the City University of New York...
...in any case it puts it on display...
...Macy's has a new "Fifties Fever" shop and Bloomingdale's calls its 1950s boutique "Remembering Marilyn...
...Pink is in, and so are spike heels, sorority sweaters, bandstand skirts, and honeymoon halters...
...In the 1980s, with people out of work and worried about nuclear destruction, a lapse into escapism is understandable...
...What would de Beauvoir have said after a decade of honeymoon halters and spike heels—and after their revival for still another generation...
...m Karen A. Schneider covers education for The Hartford Courant...
...Women were to seem like children, expressing their adulthood primarily through their sexuality," writes historian Lois Banner in her recent book, American Beauty: A Social History Through Two Centuries of the American Idea, Ideal and Image of the Beautiful Woman...
...The 'dumb' blonde who had 'more fun' and whom 'gentlemen preferred' now became the dominant beauty for American women...
...What better symbol for those days than the sex goddess of Some Like It Hotl Bloomingdale's hammers home the message in its advertising copy...
...She calls the 1950s "a safe period historically...
...Fantasizing about "the good old days" and dressing up in 1950s-style clothing is "better than living in fear that someone is going to push a red button and blow the world up tomorrow," says New York fashion designer Sue Ekahn...
Vol. 47 • May 1983 • No. 6
