The pamphlet "Oil Serves You" reflects the Cold War belief that science, industry, and natural resources were the foundation of American prosperity. The front cover shows a suburban home and car inside a drop of oil, symbolizing how petroleum supposedly supports everyday American life and technological progress. This optimistic message connects to the argument in the article "Curiosity as Anti-Standard: Paradoxes of Inequality and Inclusion in Cold War-Era US Science Education Reforms" by Christopher and Kathryn Kirchgasler, which explains how Cold War pressures to compete technologically shaped U.S. science education. While public messaging celebrated science and industry as benefiting all Americans, the authors argue that education reforms emphasizing “curiosity” actually worked as a gatekeeping mechanism, favoring students/majority who fit a narrow, middle-class definition of scientific potential. Together, the pamphlet and the article illustrate how Cold War culture promoted scientific progress and economic abundance while simultaneously reinforcing social hierarchies about who could participate in producing that progress.

In the images, the majority of people included were all men. There were few images of women, the ones included being the wife on the cover waving goodbye to her husband, the x-ray of the home where the only women were in the kitchen or looking in the mirror, and the women in the lab coat on the page talking about comfort. Furthermore, everyone was white, there was no diversity and no other minority group shown. With this "paradox of inequality and inclusion" visualized, we can see that throughout this era America wanted to focus on the majority groups, and undermine the minority while guising it as an educational pamphlet. Showing us that this was a gatekeeping tool influencing those curious about the oil industry, to reinforce the social hierarchy and racial inequality of the Cold War era.