Description
This book analyzes the spread of American female consumer culture to Italy and its influence on Italian women in the postwar and Cold War periods, eras marked by the political, economic, social, and cultural battle between the United States and Soviet Union. Focusing on various aspects of this culture—beauty and hygiene products, refrigerators, and department stores, as well as shopping and magazine models—the book examines the reasons for and the methods of American female consumer culture’s arrival in Italy, the democratic, consumer capitalist messages its products sought to “sell” to Italian women, and how Italian women themselves reacted to this new cultural presence in their everyday lives. Did Italian women become the American Mrs. Consumer? As such, the book illustrates how the modern, consuming American woman became a significant figure not only in Italy’s postwar recovery and transformation, but also in the international and domestic cultural and social contests for the hearts and minds of Italian women.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Italy and the Arrival of Mrs. Consumer.- Part I.- 2. How to Read like Mrs. Consumer: Modernizing and Americanizing the Mondadori Publishing Company’s Magazine Division.- 3. How to Shop and Dress like Mrs. Consumer: Rebuilding La Rinascente the American Way.- Part II.- 4. How to Shop, Store, and Cook Food like Mrs. Consumer: The Refrigerator, Women, and the Italian Home.- 5. How to Be Beautiful like Mrs. Consumer: American Beauty and Italian Women.- Part III.- 6. The Catholic and Communist Mrs. Consumer.- 7. Were They Really Mrs. Consumers?.- 8. Conclusion.
