ABSTRACT
The chapter presents the words of Arkansas Senator William J. Fulbright in a 1951 Ladies' Home Journal article urging female readers to do their part in containing the communist forces that threatened Cold War America. It argues that the Cold War was justifiable because communists, by nature of their theoretical principles, would not feel secure as long as any world power was capitalist. Americans, therefore, were unwillingly forced into a Cold War by a Soviet Union which felt compelled to indulge in a perpetual struggle with the non-communist world. The threat of Russian expansionism became a common theme in the Ladies' Home Journal. Rather, postwar women's magazines were largely shaped by the experiences of the Cold War and the threat of Soviet communism contained multiple and often contradictory messages. More than ever before, during the Cold War American capitalism became associated with consumption and therefore happiness.
