How Newspapers Manufactured the Ideal Singapore Woman in the 1960s
By Jacelyn Teng
In this article, we explore how our local newspapers enforced the dominant ideals of women in 1960s Singapore. The elements include reportage structure, featuring models as agents of influence, appointing males as enforcers, and punishing non-ideals.
Introduction
In 1960s Singapore, the main agenda of economic prosperity had three characteristics - docility, subordination and being socially active homemakers were idealised and prooted through media in the form of newspapers. This was mainly due to the priority of economic prosperity since the 1960s marked the start of the first industrial revolution in Singapore. To establish a strong and productive workforce, the women were encouraged to become docile subordinal workers who could balance both work and homemaking. Through news articles, the most direct form of communication between authorities and her citizens, this ideal was perpetuated to the nation specifically through the lens of fashion. Local papers communicated this ideal through establishing the standard for women’s bodies, clothings, public selves and dreams. (to link to article 1).
In this article, we will explore how elements of local newspapers effectively communicated these notions of the ideal woman through its reportage structure, featuring models as agents of influence, appointing males as enforcers, and punishing non-ideals.
Enforcing an ideal through reportage
The reportage structure typically observed in commentaries includes the following elements: trend, criticism, reward, and advice. To illustrate the structure, we will be using two articles from two prominent commentary pages. The first article is “Warning: YOU will have to watch your WAIST again” in Evelyn Tu’s Women and The Home. The second article is “Men and gIrls have a word for above-knee skirt: Wow” in Margaret Wee’s Miss Know-How.
Trend
Trend was observed to be the main motivator to perform social control on women. In Tu’s article “Warning: YOU will have to watch your WAIST again”, clothes that emphasise the waist such as tucked-in blouses and belts are in trend. Similarly, Wee’s article shared the trend of knee-length skirts amongst teenage girls in London.
Criticism
The bodies of women were often criticised to persuade women to conform to the bodies that the trend required. This is done in two ways - direct and indirect. Direct criticism involves using derogatory phrases like “sore to the eyes”, “not pretty enough to show off” and “stop being complacent” as observed in Wee’s article. Meanwhile, indirect criticism involves prompting women to accept their inadequacy through self-reflection such as Wee asking women to “take a good look at [their] legs and be honest if [they] really fit this trend” or Tu’s article prompting women to lose weight on their waists to a “standard 21 inch” rather than a “stock 24 inch”.
Reward
Following criticism is the mentioning of desirable situations that women will be rewarded with upon putting in effort to achieve the bodies that the trend requires. In Wee’s article, the reward of having smooth and undarkend knees is the attention, especially from men. Meanwhile, the reward presented by Tu for reduced waistlines is the recognition by society as fashionable and modern.
Advice
Lastly, the commentaries end off with advice or suggestions to help women achieve the ideal. Wee’s article gave the readers three exercises “guaranteed” to lose weight around the waist and were encouraged to select one exercise to do per day. On the other hand, Tu’s advice for the trend of knee-revealing skirts was through bringing in the opinions of a local teenage reader who falls under the demographic in which the trend is targeting. By wearing a “pretty underslip” when wearing knee-length skirts, Tu encourages women to be able to participate in the trend.
Enforcing the ideal through models as agents of influence
The second way in which the newspaper elements enforced the ideal women concept was through the help of models. Recognized as cultural icons, models were also admired for their beauty and the privilege to travel frequently. Along with their achievements, these models were often asked about their marriage plans.In an interview featuring Tina Moore, one of Singapore's most popular teenage models at the time, her dream of motherhood was given more emphasis than her recent departure from Singapore for modelling. It shared that Tina “had no other ambitions of making a name for herself” apart from maternity as she claimed that maternity “is when women could play the role she is meant for”. By featuring models who were admired by women, the message that capable women still dreamt of marriage and maternity was effectively communicated to the public.
Yet, not all women believed so. In the article “The “Selfish” Mother”, women shared their opinion on being a modern day mother. They believe that motherhood should not be tied with the “toil and sacrifice” giving the child material goods at the expense of their savings, overworking the parent, always having to put the child first, giving up all adult interests and sacrificing the relationship with their husbands. Hence, while newspapers were used as a tool to instill the motherhood dream in 1960s women, newspapers also revealed that women then were actively negotiating their various roles in society as wives, mothers, working adults, and women with their own personalitites, interests and dreams.
Enforcing the ideal through appointing men as enforcers
Moving on, the third way that fashion media imposed social control on the appearance and quality of homemaking of women was by appointing men as enforcers. The fashion and public selves of women were influenced according to the tastes and desires of men. In many of the articles about trends and fashion advice for women, the opinions of men were included and often served as a motivation for women to conform to the ideal.
The opinions of men were often included by female columnists, giving advice from women to women. In an article featuring actress, fashion consultant, beauty specialist and mother Arlene Dahl’s new book “Always Ask a Man”, she reveals her disappointment towards women becoming less feminine. Discontented by the unfeminine outfits by Paris designers, Dahl “[pleaded] for women to stay women” and that women should ask men on how to dress or behave as men would know best.
Additionally, an interesting finding is that men’s appearance reflects the homemaking quality of women and women’s appearance reflects the taste of men. Dahl encouraged more men to “care more about how his wife dresses” because their wives’ dressing would directly reflect the class of themselves. Similarly, a woman’s homemaking efforts were judged based on the condition of their husbands’ clothes. Tu’s commentary revealed that men with shined shoes and perfectly ironed shirts had “angelic wives” while men with crumpled shirts had “mean” wives. With these media-constructed associations placing men’s social reputation at stake, men were used as enforcers by the media, often from women journalists to women in society, to conform to the ideal suboordinal women who dreams of homemaking and working.
Enforcing the ideal through punishing non-ideals
Finally, the last method employed by the media in disciplining women was through punishing the non-conformists with the subculture term - beatnik. The beatniksubculture existed from the 1940s to mid 1960s, labelling youths in a social movement against strict social norms for self-expression. Originating from the States, this subculture was particularly disapproved by the Singapore authorities as these youths were often associated with rebellious acts such as “glue-sniffing” and “shoplifting”. Contrary to this definition of beakniks, articles associated beatniks with individuals in casual dressing. In the commentary Dear Know Alls, an anonymous reader wrote to columnist Jane Lee on whether his girlfriend, whom he labelled as a beatnik for her “long stringy hair” and “tight jeans'’, would make a good homemaker.
Jane Lee responded that her sloppy fashion would reflect a messy future home that his family would not be “proud” of. Here, fashion media related a perceived non-conformist outfit to one’s personality and the type of homemaker one would make, punishing women with such behaviours as rebellious using the beatnik label. Casual dressing was further criticised in another commentary where beatniks represented women who did not dress for the occasion. They were ostracised for not putting “precious hours planning their clothes’', investing in “quality tailoring”, and going out wearing anything they could find which degrades their surroundings. As such, through the beatnik subculture, fashion media punished the non-conformists as rebellious social outcasts who were undeserving of being good wives and citizens.
Conclusion
Overall, through this fashion history archival research, we were able to understand how the fashion media was an enforcer of the social control of women in the 1960s in support of the government’s agenda for economic growth. This objective had given importance to specific characteristics of women deemed beneficial for the economy and society which were docility, subordination and being socially active homemakers. Through fashion, the local media had supported the government’s vision by enforcing these attributes through its platform. It established the ideal woman by disciplining women for their bodies, fashion, public selves, and dreams to achieve the ideal. These notions of the ideal woman were effectively communicated through its reportage structure, featuring models as agents of influence, appointing males as enforcers and lastly, punishing non-ideals.
In writing this essay, I have realised the amount of knowledge that local fashion history provides us. Reading these articles often left me in shock that such content could be published back then. It was insightful in seeing how fashion, supposedly something chosen by oneself with freedom, reveals society’s impact on individuals which, to a great extent, affects what they believe in, what they choose and hence who they are.
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Women & Beauty Feature. (1960 July 7). Awareness of Bareness. Retrieved from https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Page/freepress19600707- 1.1.9?ST=1&AT=advanced&DF=01%2f07%2f1960&DT=31%2f07%2f1960&NPT=&L=&CTA=&SortBy=Oldest&K=fashion&KA=fa shion&P=2&Display=0&filterS=0&QT=fashion&oref=article
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Schein, E. H. (1996). Strategic pragmatism: The culture of Singapore’s Economic Development Board.Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. pp. 46–48. (Call no.: RSING 338.95957 SCH)
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Veenstra, A., & Kuipers, G. (2013). It is not old‐fashioned, it is vintage, vintage fashion and the complexities of 21st century consumption practices. Sociology Compass, 7(5), 355-365.
Wilkinson, B. (1988). Social engineering in Singapore. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 18(2), 165-188.
