1. My investigation of the playboy's domestic realm builds on Barbara Ehrenreich's insights about Playboy's attempt to reclaim indoor space for men in The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/ Doubleday, 1983), 43-4. For an excellent discussion of commodity consumption and postwar masculinity, see Bill Osgerby, Playboys in Paradise: Masculinity, Youth and Leisure-Style in Modern America (New York: Berg, 2001).
2. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 3-8; Jessica Weiss, To Have and To Hold: Marriage, the Baby Boom, and Social Change (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2000 ); Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 23-29; Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 183-184; Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985 ), 233, 240-41; and Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1992), 177-180.
3. "It's Good to Blow Your Top": Women's Magazines and a Discourse of Discontent, 1945-1965