The Importance of Nutrition Re-defining Ideal Womanhood in the 20th Century

Abstract

Increasingly historians have been studying the importance of popular culture, such as film, radio, and popular music, in the lives of adolescents. Receiving less attention has been the role of less dramatic, but perhaps more pervasive print media provided through the school system and through girls' organizations. In 20th-century America, hundreds of thousands of girls attended home economics classes during their primary and secondary school careers. In these often mandatory courses students were exposed to textbooks that presented complex, but still clear images of the appropriate social roles for girls and women. Popular youth organizations, such as the Girl Scouts, presented similar messages.

This paper examines these crucial, but under-studied sources of American culture. These materials encouraged girls to prepare themselves for domestic life in general and motherhood in particular. They emphasized the defining, gendered role of cooking, insisting that through nutrition, girls--and the women they were to become—could provide the sustenance and the social balance of American family life. Given the vast numbers of girls who participated in home economics training and the Girl Scouts, analyses of these materials are pivotal to our understanding of the development of 20th-century American youth culture and the critical role nutrition knowledge played in its evolution.