Journal
Aprilk13
Journal9.docxJournal 9
Review the various advertisements presented in the module (additional selections available in the textbook both on 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.
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More Info from the module:
Visual Sources: Advertisements
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.
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.
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.”
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.
