Perfectly Average ─ The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America

At the end of World War II, many Americans longed for a return to a more normal way of life after decades of depression and war. In fact, between 1945 and 1963 the idea of "normality" circulated as a keyword in almost every aspect of American culture. In Perfectly Average, Anna Creadick investigates how and why this concept reemerged as a potent homogenizing category in postwar America. Working with scientific studies, material culture, literary texts, film, fashion, and the mass media, she charts the pursuit of the "normal" through thematic chapters on the body, character, class, sexuality, and community.

"Anna Creadick discovers an extraordinary archive—of sociological studies, advertisements, novels, and films to explore how the culture circulated the traits and values with which it most wanted to identify itself and against which it most feared identification."—Gordon Hutner, author of What America Read: Taste, Class, and the Novel 1920-1960

"An inquiry into the elusive quest for post-WWII normality. Anna Creadick draws on evidence ranging from anatomically correct models, gray flannel suits, and picture windows to soldier stories in From Here to Eternity and sexual revelations in Peyton Place to provide rich new insights into American culture in the 1950's."—Judith E. Smith, author of 'Visions of Belonging: Family Stories, Popular Culture, and Postwar Democracy, 1940-1960

"Anna Creadick demonstrates all the complexities and contradictions of the postwar American drive to create perfectly average citizens. The abnormal and queer were the dirty underside of the conformist model, and Creadick proves highly sensitive to the inequities."—John Howard, author of Men Like That: A Southern Queer History

Anna G. Creadick is associate professor of English at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.