Life: The USA Coming of Age in the 1950’s

When I picked up the Life anthology from library and set out to write this piece, I started with the same strategy as last time; pick an article that dabbles with the coming of age theme and write about it. On the last go around it was pretty easy; I used The New Yorker, a magazine filled with short stories and memoirs. Using Time, I found the task much more difficult. This magazine is more traditional journalism, reporting news stories and such. After about thirty minutes of flipping through the book, I decided that finding an individual coming of age themed story would be too difficult.

Instead, I decided to look at a series of issues of the magazine as a collective whole.  I found that a magazine like this showed the coming of age of America as a whole in the 1950’s, a time of rebuilding, middle class boom, and some testy international relations.

Over the course of the six or so issues I thumbed through (summer of 1955), I found a lot of stories covering two of the biggest topics of the time: Cold War and the Red Scare. The Cold War nuclear crisis was all over these issues, with articles ranging from new military tactics using nuclear bombs to a huge UN conference in Geneva that was going on at the time regarding weapons of mass destruction. Overall, this was a time of maturity and growth in the newest and most dangerous of technologies. I thought it was extremely interesting to see the new was America was adapting to foreign relations and such now having this technology. Also, stories about communism and western ideals were prevalent. I don’t know how much Life deals with politics and government these days, but it seemed like every issue had something to do with the Red Scare. Just goes to show you how important and prevalent the issue was in day-to-day life, and it shows America’s reaction to opposition with different governments.

Another interesting coming of age theme I saw was the growth of the “suburban family” stereotype that the 1950s is always remembered for.  Many of the advertisements throughout the magazines were for drug stores or cheap department stores, selling items that would appeal to the middle class. Although there weren’t many pictures, the Fallout-esque sketches made the advertisements fun and appealing to all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. This is a complete change in the style of ads from our last library research day; in the 1930s, the magazines were advertising a lot of luxury, expensive goods rather than basic everyday necessities. Also, lots of the articles stressed family entertainment and wellbeing. One of the best examples of this was the article covering the opening of Disneyland, a brand new theme park designed for families of all ages to spend quality time together and have fun. The eight-page article had color pictures and full detailed descriptions, showing how important family values were to the magazine and America at the time.

Although I was unable to find a specific article dealing with coming of age, I thought the 1950s Life issues all dealt with America coming of age, in the age of the Cold War and the rise of the middle class.