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According to PBS’s The American Experience, between 1945 and 1949, Americans purchased 20 million refrigerators, 21.4 million cars, and 5.5 million stoves, a trend that continued well into the 1950s. Television and automobile sales also skyrocketed, as people needed vehicles to travel longer distances now that they were no longer confined to cities. Similarly, families of all income brackets were buying televisions at a rate of five million a year. Shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best projected images of the ideal nuclear family, while television networks divided viewers into target audiences and advertisers spent large sums to promote their products in living rooms across the country.
Women and teenagers were especially targeted, and for the first time, teenagers were developing their own subculture and proving a valuable consumer group in their own right. Because of the depression of the previous generation, teens in the 1950’s had plenty of job options, and since their parents were generally also thriving, they often were able to keep all of their earning for themselves. Heavily influenced by the advertising of the time, they spent their money on cars, fashion trends, and entertainment designed just for them, not unlike young people who can afford to do so today. For women, many of whom were homemakers and young mothers, advertisers preyed on their self-image just as intensely as their homemaking, and an obsession over body image and weight came to the fore during this period. All in all, televisions and print culture exerted an increasingly large influence over the average American, contributing to the development of a modern, consumer-based popular culture.
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