Propaganda films for women from the 1940s and 1950s

During World War II, many women went to work to fill the roles left empty by men who went to war (as Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis point out in their great book Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community, the increase in working women contributed to thriving lesbian communities during this time period, as women found themselves and each other). Vito Russo points out that one of the reasons that Hollywood movies in the 1950s made independent women characters in films "scary, evil lesbians" was to encourage women to return to to their "correct sphere" in the home (think about Donna Reed and Betty Draper). Click on Rosie the Riveter for a propaganda video encouraging women to go to work in the 1940s:

Click on the Pepsi ad for a Pepsi commercial from 1957 illustrating a "modern woman's" proper place in the mainstream imagination: