Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 129

Images of the Housewife

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household drudgery to electrical servants. Some women—why not
you?" asks the ad. Another GE ad showed a woman washing dishes
as her daughter showed her something in a book. "Any woman who
washes dishes by hand is doing the work that a little electric motor
can do for 2 1/2 cents an hour," it read. The implication was that
women were not using their time efficiently unless they used
appliances. In washing dishes by hand, the woman in the GE ad was
doing a task that could be completed by a machine at minimal
expense and in the process, depriving her child of her undivided
attention. Another ad showed a woman in a limp, shapeless dress
with her hair coming out of its pins mopping her forehead with the
back of her hand as she slaves over an ironing board with a cast flat
iron. "Banish this drudgery with a Simplex ironer," promised the
copy. Again, the message was that the purchase of a simple home
appliance could transform a woman from a household slave into a
modem housewife. The most extreme of these ads found in this study
depicted a woman in a dunce cap perched upon a stool. The headline
said, "1 wish I'd seen the Hoover first!"^^ Obviously, the message
was that only a real dunce would buy something other than a Hoover.
Although the successful woman in the ads had household
appliances, in reality these conveniences remained out of reach for
the average American family. Only eight tenths of one per cent of
total consumer spending in 1925 went for the purchase of household
appliances. Families who did purchase appliances and other large
consumer items often did so through the use of installment credit, a
practice which was to have a profound impact on family finances.
The Lynds reported that both "business class" (white collar) and
working class families in their study used installment credit to buy
appliances they saw advertised. They concluded that these new
desires for material possessions were leading to the "social problem of
'the high cost of living,'" making money more necessary to families.^^
Clearly advertisements helped create these desires which in turn
established a new and higher standard of living for American
families.
Not only did the smart advertising housewife use appliances to
lighten the load of cleaning, but she was also a good cook who used
new food products to make cooking easier. A woman with healthy
pink cheeks wears a matronly dress and apron as she whips up a
batc h of cookies with Snowdrift shortening. Another woman in a