Elizabeth Fraterrigo

Fraterrigo writes, “Exploring the world created in the pages of Playboy, this book looks at transformations in postwar middle-class society. It begins by examining changing modes in gender roles and family life. In the years after World War II, the men and women who raced to the altar and generated the baby boom endorsed the roles of male breadwinner and female homemakers. They also grappled with their identities, however, and expressed frustrations as they negotiated these roles” (2). Following Hefner’s work and “drawing inspiration from the playboy, by the early 1960s, the ‘Single Girl,’ an unmarried, working girl, had taken her place alongside him, both figures providing models of unfettered individualism and self-fulfillment” (5). Fraterrigo continues, “Playboy’s representations of women shaped later discussions of gender equality and consumer society” (6). Playboy fits into the debate regarding the difference between “masculine” and “feminine” elements of culture in America at midcentury. Fraterrigo begins her narrative with Hefner’s biography and a discussion of popular culture immediately after WWII. Fraterrigo writes, “As [Betty] Friedan acknowledged, women formed a convenient target, their alleged attempts to dominate men and their undue feminizing influence providing a suitable explanation for unsettling changes in American society” (29). In 1952, Ezekiel Gathings’ Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials “sought to define obscenity, assess the scope of offending publications, and propose remedies for curtailing their distribution” (39). The committee failed to reach a conclusion. At the beginning of the 1960s, Helen Gurley Brown countered Friedan’s argument, by making “a strong case for female autonomy, but offered a different strategy for achieving it. She articulated a relationship between feminine identity, paid employment, and consumption that accepted women’s limited career opportunities and construed marriage to be the eventual goal, while placing sexuality and commodity consumption at the center of a prolonged stage of pleasure-oriented singlehood” (106). Despite this framework, the working girl was encouraged to take pride in her appearance, be empathetic, and generally pose “no threat to the gender order” (116). While Playboy certainly fits into the narrative of reclaiming masculinity during the Cold War, it simultaneously fit into prescribed gender roles.… (mais)