| During World War II, white middle-class women grappled with finding a balance between their private and public lives, while the government sought to control their sense of self through inducing guilt. Conventional ideals regarding these women's proper social and economic roles were carefully crafted and manipulated by the government who used propaganda in order to induce participation in an attempt to procure a unified spirit of self-sacrifice on the home front. Washington through the Office of War Information and its branch the Magazine Bureau, sought to manipulate and control when and how women could spend their money, where they volunteered and worked, what they said to their neighbors and wrote to the soldier overseas, how they dressed, and even what they served their family to eat. The government's reach was widespread and carefully crafted for they knew white middle-class women turned to popular magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, McCall's and Better Homes and Gardens, and sought information from government generated booklets from the "Nothing Counts But Victory" series such as What Women Can Do to Win the War, and from popular books such as Calling All Women and So Your Husband's Gone to War. The hegemonic workings of the mainstream to create patriotism was racially differentiated, as black and ethnic Americans were often ignored by a government that claimed to be working towards a pluralistic nation. |
