Red Lipstick, Red Scares: Women’s Magazines and the Cold War

Renfro, Kailynn

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Red Lipstick, Red Scares: Women’s Magazines and the Cold War Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/t722hb551

Abstract

On August 6, 1945, a modified Boeing B-29 Superfortress, called the Enola Gay, dropped the atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets named the plane after his mother. Meanwhile, the bomb’s name evoked the image of a child. Together, this small weaponized family helped the United States win the Second World War. The names of the aircraft and bomb, combined with their purpose, allude to one of the Cold War era’s most enduring institutions: the nuclear family and its weaponization.

The Cold War resulted in the weaponization of each member of the family. This thesis focuses on wives and mothers specifically. Writer Phillip Wylie drew and employed part of the above connection in his 1954 book Tomorrow, which he dedicated to the Federal Civil Defense Administration. The novel follows three women who dominate the men in their lives. They also refuse to take the Soviet threat seriously and oppose civil defense measures. When nuclear war erupts, one mother is grotesquely killed while the other two lose their children and sustain serious injuries. Although Wiley’s work took the concept to an unsettling extreme, it portrayed the substantial responsibilities women held in the nuclear age. This high level of responsibility indicated that women also held great power during the Cold War. Their actions could either fortify the nation against the Soviets or leave it susceptible to them.

Political scientists Michael Rogin interpreted the bomb and aircraft's names as representative of a mother’s ability to unleash her son’s destructive power. Mom’s influence (the Enola Gay) over her son (the atomic bomb) helped end World War II, yet also resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. This was symbolic of the belief that mothers could both save and endanger entire nations. The ability to deploy the destructive potential of motherhood was not unique to the United States, and by 1949, neither was the possession of nuclear weapons.

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