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Baking Cookies In American Culture

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Baking cookies is a very simple tradition in American culture, which was once only done by married women for their hard at work husbands. From the 1950s on, however, women in America and on American TV shows have undergone a remarkable transformation. As portrayed on popular TV shows like I Love Lucy and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show housewives wanted to have more independence, but their husbands refused to give up any decision making power in the household (Mittell 334). After the 1960s the country began a cultural upheaval, as the feminist movement gave rise to such shows as Maude and The Mary Tyler Moore Show that showed strong women being the leader in workplace or domestic settings. When the dust had settled, for the most part, …show more content…

They were expected to remain chaste and get married early on carrying on similar traditions that had been around for hundreds of years in American society. The TV show I Love Lucy showed a stay at home house wife who wanted to break into show business (Thompson and Mittell 245). Lucille Ball’s character got into situations where she would get into trouble each week, which would undercut her argument that women could have stable jobs without causing societal unrest. On the show Leave It to Beaver the appearance of women’s lack of position in society was further advanced by the Beaver’s mother being unable to make financial decisions without her husband around (Mittell 332). While Lucy wanted more freedom and was shut down by her husband, Beaver’s mother was a more ideal version of the female homemaker during the 1950s. The decade would show women trying to gain independence from domestic duties, but it would take the Flower Power Movement and the 1970s to bring real change to their …show more content…

In the 1950s women on TV and in the household were supposed to take care of all domestic work and leave important decisions about their future to their husbands. Many women took issue with this doctrine and by the time the turbulent year of 1968 happened the “Women’s Lib” movement started to gain support for more freedom in women’s lives. Once this happened women had independence from men and any other impediments, but in modern TV shows the narrative is about the current problem of how women live without slipping back into the lifestyles of the 1950s. Throughout the years of women on television there have been shows that demeaned their place in American culture, but there have also always been shows instilled with feminist undertones (Mittell 336). Television today has many models of strong females, like the shows that Shonda Rimes produces, but it stills need to continually look forward and not back on the role of women in American

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