Description
Review the various advertisements presented in both chapter 9 and chapter 10 (see pages 528–534 and 590–596). How do these images work to construct social attitudes about and expectations for women and gender? Are there changes in the representation of women that you notice from decade to decade and/or compared to the present day? Refer to at least two specific advertisements in your response of at least 250 words.
Textbook Pages (528-534) & (590-596)
PRIMARY SOURCES Beauty Culture between the Wars THE 1920S MARKED THE EMERGENCE of a highly commercialized beauty industry that built upon the growing interest in cosmetics of the prewar years. Cosmetic use expanded after 1900, but because such products were associated with prostitution and the seductive “painted lady,” concern about respectability meant that many women were cautious about using beauty aids. As interest grew, hundreds of women operated small businesses and a handful turned cosmetics into lucrative beauty empires. Among these were Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubenstein, who catered to white women, and Annie Turnbo Malone and Sarah Breedlove (later known as Madam C. J. Walker), who focused on African Americans. These entrepreneurs pioneered marketing techniques and the concept of using a beauty “system” of related products. They hired women as agents, demonstrators, and clerks, thus making the beauty industry largely female. After World War I, the nature of the cosmetic industry changed for both white and black women. Beauty salons, which mostly offered hair care, multiplied dramatically, growing from five thousand in 1920 to forty thousand by 1930. At the same time, the sale of cosmetics grew an astounding 400 percent. As fears about respectability receded with the popularity of the New Woman of the 1920s, rouge, lipstick, mascara, and nail polish were added to women’s makeup routines. This growth took place in the context of a modern consumer culture dominated by corporations. Although the prewar companies of Arden, Rubenstein, Walker, and Trumbo persisted, male-dominated firms increasingly took over the beauty industry. Firms that marketed to black women were run not only by men but by white men, although consumers rarely knew this. A smaller niche focused on Mexican American women, with mainstream companies like Max Factor advertising in Spanish-language newspapers. This essay focuses on a key part of beauty culture — advertising — and explores the differences and similarities in marketing strategies directed at black and white consumers. Generous advertising budgets (mass-market magazines’ expenditures for ads reached $16 million in 1930, up from $1.3 million in 1915) led to the marketing not just of products but also of an idealized beauty that emphasized youth and sexuality. Ad agencies seized on public fascination with glamorous Hollywood stars to sell products as well. The techniques we recognize today were already in place in the 1920s. All the advertisements reprinted here come from movie fan magazines and as such were primarily targeted to young and working-class women. One of the most common themes in cosmetic advertising is what historian Kathy Peiss terms the promise to women of the “democratic” ability to remake themselves, to choose and to have the resources to be beautiful.48 How does the 1926 Tre-Jur ad in Figure 9.3, part of a series that featured beautiful unknown women in the fan magazine Photoplay, demonstrate this motif? Note that although the emphasis is on face powder, the young woman has bobbed and marcelled hair, providing a modern look typical of the era’s flappers. This ad also demonstrates the new emphasis on attractive packaging for cosmetics that appeared as mass-market corporations took over the industry. Figure 9.3 “Can you tell us her name?” (1926) A variety of cosmetic products are shown below along with text passages describing them. Despite the Great Depression, the cosmetic industry continued to flourish. “Irresistible” was a low-cost line sold in dime stores. The heavily made-up face of the woman in the dramatically colored (in reds and purples) 1938 ad in Figure 9.4 further suggests that these products were marketed to working-class women, because the trend in 1930s higher-end cosmetics was toward the “natural” look. What were the advertisers promising consumers who bought the Irresistible line? Figure 9.4 “Irresistible” (1938) Text below reads, IRRESISTIBLE LIP LURE-THE NEW GLOWING VIBRANT LIPSTICK. Cosmetic ads used Hollywood stars to promote their products, with the promise that ordinary women could be as glamorous as the women they saw on the screen. Ads featuring stars often had tie-ins to their latest movie. The 1942 ad in Figure 9.5 links Max Factor products, movie star Rita Hayworth, and her film You Were Never Lovelier. Hayworth, who was born Margarita Carmen Cansino and was of Spanish descent, had small parts in dozens of movies before she changed her name in 1937. She also altered her hairline and dyed her hair red to look less like the Spanish dancer she was often typecast as. Actively seeking publicity, she frequently told the story of her makeover as a typical American success story and retained her ethnic identity even as she rose to extraordinary stardom in the 1940s. An icon for Mexican Americans, she was widely popular and was one of the era’s most glamorous and sexy stars. Although publicity stills showed more skin and erotic energy than the image used here, in what ways does the ad stress Hayworth’s sexual appeal? Do you think the phrase “beauty of your type” reflects any ethnic or racial preference? Figure 9.5 “You Were Never Lovelier” (1942) A set of cosmetics is shown in the advertisement next to which there is a passage describing the advantages of using cosmetics of the same brand. Text at the top and bottom reads Color Harmony face powder! and Max Factor Hollywood respectively. In the prewar era, Madam C. J. Walker, highly celebrated for her financial success and commitment to civil rights, stressed the ways in which her firm represented the success of black businesses and gave employment to women agents. Competition from new white firms resulted in ad campaigns that featured beautiful black women using the Walker products, but ads featuring the company itself continued, as is evident in the 1925 ad in Figure 9.6. The “Tan-Off” product mentioned in the bottom left “note” referred to a skin-lightening cream. Walker had refused to sell whitening products, but after her death in 1919, the company kept up with the competition by offering them. Black critics lashed out at these products as well as hair-straightening processes, viewing them as attempts to emulate white notions of beauty. Manufacturers answered these complaints by insisting that their customers were not trying to be white but aiming to achieve a neat and carefully groomed appearance. Many scholars agree, and one historian has noted that while the ads might stress light skin or soft, wavy hair as a goal in beauty rituals, they nonetheless “reassured black women of their beauty when so much of American popular culture told them they were unattractive.”49 Is this argument evident in the ad? How does the ad justify its claim that the products “glorify” their users’ womanhood? Figure 9.6 “Glorifying Our Womanhood” (1925) An illustration on top of the advertisement also shows a woman addressing a huge mass of women inside a huge hall. A picture at the bottom shows a pile of cosmetics. Text below reads, The Madam C.J. Walker Mfg. Co. Inc. Although there were not many black popular culture stars to choose from, firms marketing to black women used stars to promote their products in much the same way as white cosmetic companies did. In the ad in Figure 9.7, the white-owned firm Golden Brown features popular black recording artists and vaudeville performers Hazel Meyers, Ethel Waters, Rosa Henderson, and Edna Hicks. The “Madame Mamie Hightower” referred to here was an invention, part of Golden Brown’s masquerade as a “race” firm. In what other ways does the company present itself as a black firm? How does this ad compare with Figures 9.5 and 9.6? Figure 9.7 “Golden-Brown Beauty Preparations” (1923) Text reads YOU ARE JUDGED by your personal appearance; THE RACE is judged by you. Golden-Brown BEAUTY PREPARATIONS will help you as they are helping thousands of other men and women all over the world. A free coupon for the product is given at the bottom of the advertisement next to which there is a description of the products. (pg. 534)
(pgs. 590-596)
PRIMARY SOURCES Television’s Prescriptions for Women THANKS TO YOUTUBE AND ONLINE CONTENT PROVIDERS LIKE HULU, viewers today have access to some well-known 1950s television programs and commercials. Some critics explain the popularity of these shows and advertisements by suggesting that for some present-day viewers they are camp entertainment, amusing in their outdated, unintended humor, but for others they evoke a nostalgic sense of simpler, more innocent times. Historians who study 1950s television delve more deeply into the medium and its message and, as with any other historical source, examine both the televised images and the assumptions of the people who created programming and advertising. This essay explores women and television in the 1950s by looking first at the way in which television programming and advertising targeted and understood the female viewer and second at the images of women conveyed in the decade’s situation comedies. While advertising tended to reinforce key aspects of the feminine mystique, especially a relentless depiction of white middle-class women’s role in the home, situation comedies of the 1950s displayed a more diverse and complex rendering of women and their families. Television was a novelty until after World War II. Some national programming began to appear in 1947, and then during the years 1948–1950 the new medium took off: by 1951 there were 107 stations in 52 cities. Rising prosperity and a burgeoning consumer culture facilitated Americans’ eager embrace of TV. By 1955, 65 percent of the nation’s households had televisions, and by 1960 that figure had grown to 90 percent. National networks dominated television from the medium’s inception, and network executives, along with their programs’ sponsors, viewed television’s purpose as the selling of products. This commercial motivation encouraged the networks to promote television as family entertainment and in the process to reinforce conventional notions of women’s roles as housewives and mothers. Many observers in the postwar years argued that television viewing would bring families together, thus stabilizing the home. Women’s magazines ran articles discussing how women might integrate the “box” into their homes. While some authors addressed decorating problems that arose in making room for a large appliance, others explored the placement of the television in the context of family leisure-time patterns. They noted that the TV set was quickly displacing the piano as a source of family entertainment and that it was usurping the role of the fireplace as the focal point for social interaction. The TV had become, many argued, an electric hearth, the heart of family “togetherness.” ADVERTISEMENTS The idea of the television as a means of bringing families together appeared in many advertisements for television sets. Figure 10.1 depicts a comfortable middle-class home with an elegant TV as part of its attractive furniture. The family clusters around the Motorola TV in a semicircle, watching a program designed for family viewing, the variety show starring singer Dinah Shore (who was the television spokeswoman for Chevrolet cars, suggesting another element of the flourishing consumer market of the period). That the mother alone is standing is typical of many depictions of television viewers. Why do you think advertisers chose to show the mother standing? What does the posture and position of the woman suggest about her role in the family? How does the text above the image reinforce the television’s familial function? Figure 10.1 Advertisement for Motorola Television (1951) With text and photos, the advertisement shows what the TV means to the members of the family; To Mom, to dad, to the kid, and to the older folks. A photo below shows the entire family watching TV together. Although the television industry generally assumed that its family audience was white and largely middle class, manufacturers did aggressively market television sets to African Americans and routinely ran ads in Ebony, a popular black magazine founded in 1942. Blacks were negatively stereotyped in television programming, but they were interested in buying sets, perhaps because they could enjoy entertainment in their homes rather than suffer the indignity of segregation in public venues. Some ads were identical to those that appeared in white mainstream periodicals, such as a May 1953 advertisement in Ebony that featured glamorous white brides framed by an Admiral TV set, with text noting that a television made a “memorable wedding gift.” Other advertisers attempted to adapt to their black audience. Figure 10.2 is an example of one of a number of 1953 RCA Victor advertisements that featured African Americans watching television. Another ad in this series depicts the Dinah Shore television show (as in Figure 10.1), but this ad displays black singer Eartha Kitt, a frequent performer on network variety shows. Notice that the woman is once again standing, this time in the effort to help her husband select a station, now made easier by an automatic dial. Compare Figures 10.1 and 10.2. How do these advertisements for televisions reinforce conventional roles for male and female viewers? Figure 10.2 Advertisement for RCA Victor Television (1953) A photo shows a happy black couple with a young black man watching TV and his wife looking at him. A text box below reads, Lowest prices ever!. Televisions were often depicted as bringing families together, but some critics worried that the new medium would create new sources of familial conflict, as parents and children and husbands and wives collided over control of the set. Television advertisers themselves often tackled this theme. Their solution, as Figure 10.3 indicates, was multiple television sets! Consider the two-part construction of this 1955 General Electric ad. Why might the advertiser have chosen to use a cartoon to portray family conflict? How does the photograph depict stereotypical gender roles? Figure 10.3 Advertisement for General Electric Television (1955) He seems to have knocked off the vacuum cleaner from his mother’s hand while his father is holding his toe and yelling in pain. Text beside reads, Too much traffic for one TV?. Now…see what you want to see with the new G-E TV from dollar 99.95. Two photos below show a kid and mom watching TV together while the dad is watching separately. Women’s primary roles as housewives became a predominant theme for network executives and sponsors in the early years of television. They were eager to attract women viewers because of their responsibilities as family purchasing agents. One executive noted, “We’re after a specific audience, the young housewife — one cut above the teenager — with two to four kids, who has to buy the clothing, the food, the soaps, the home remedies.”34 As the television industry saw it, the dilemma was whether daytime programming geared to this specific audience would be compatible with women’s patterns of household labor. Unlike radio, they feared, television needed to be watched with some degree of concentration. These hesitations were finally overcome by 1952, when the networks began to offer a full range of daytime programs that included soap operas, quiz shows, and magazine-style variety shows. As the 1955 Ladies’ Home Journal ad in Figure 10.4 indicates, they explicitly marketed their daytime lineup to women by emphasizing that the programs did not interfere with their household duties. Read the descriptions of the seven shows watched by the young housewife in a single morning. How do they attempt to persuade women that television watching hastens rather than hinders their household work? What assumptions does this advertisement make about women’s domestic labor? Figure 10.4 Ladies’ Home Journal Advertisement for NBC (1955) Freeze screens of various TV programs are shown with accompanying text describing how they went about watching it, together with their daily chores. One program the ad in Figure 10.4 featured was Home, a magazine-style variety show modeled after NBC’s Today program, which debuted in 1952, aired between 7 and 9 A.M., and offered short segments of news and entertainment designed for the whole family, plus features on fashion and homemaking directed toward women. Inspired by Today’s success, NBC introduced Home, expressly for women, in 1954. Newsweek noted that NBC’s president, Sylvester Laflin (Pat) Weaver, sought to tap the advertising market that women’s magazines enjoyed. “It is inconceivable to me,” Weaver noted, “that all that advertising money spent on women’s products . . . has been allowed to escape [from television].”35 In keeping with that idea, Home segments were generally tied to specific sponsors and commercials, and indeed NBC described the program’s set as “a machine for selling.”36 The line between programming and commercials was often blurred in shows geared to “Mrs. Consumer.” This was evident in programs featuring Betty Crocker, General Mills’ mythical spokeswoman, who was portrayed by a series of actresses on both radio and television. Figure 10.5 features actress Adelaide Hawley, who appeared in the ABC daytime programs Bride and Groom and Betty Crocker Star Matinee beginning in 1952. In the former, a couple was married on-screen and Betty gave tips to brides on fixing their grooms’ favorite foods, foods that featured General Mills products. Her television appearances featured this verse: American homemakers Keepers of the hearth Whose hands and hearts are filled With the day-to-day cares and joys That, taken with one another Make homemaking a woman’s Most rewarding life.37 How does Figure 10.5 illustrate this verse? What does it suggest about the relationship between popular media and the “feminine mystique”? Figure 10.5 Advertisement for Betty Crocker (1957).