Feature

The Kitchen is Where Women Keep the Knives… to cut Sandwiches in Half: 1950s Advertising and the New Electric!!

Canada and the United States emerged from the Second World War determined to prevent a return of the debilitating economic depression of the 1930s. The Cold War state of the late 1940s provided a unique opportunity for both government and businesses to firmly re-establish the definitions of ‘Western living’, ‘American’, and ‘family’ through the triedand-true process of capitalism, now heightened by the beginnings of the McCarthyism and lingering wartime nationalism. There was no greater time to manipulate past national trauma through the subtle wording of flashy advertisements and the overhaul of wartime factories for a dramatic new production of consumer goods. Through the art of advertising, the West was able to impose an ambitious nationalist vision of the perfect family on its 1950s citizens, a process which was merely a reintegration of the Victorian gender binary.

In order to produce a capitalist nuclear family utopia, the people had to be sold on the idea that mass consumption was now an encouraged patriotism, rather than the very personal indulgence wartime propaganda warned against. This was achieved through a direct application of wartime nationalism, in which the sacrifice of one benefitted the whole, only this time the “sacrifice” was purchasing a new appliance. Advertisers argued to the people that “the dozens of things

you never bought or even thought of before…you are helping to build a greater security for the industries of this country…what you buy and how you buy it is very vital in your new life—and to the whole American way of living.”1 Rooted in Cold War mentality, American and Canadian companies argued for a never-before-seen capitalist communism, a chance to experience a progressive social equality, one which did not require a barbaric Russian Revolution. It is an ideology which Lizabeth Cohen has coined the “consumer’s republic,” the lives of all Americans through doing their part in the post-war effort, just as they had during the war.In a foundational play of historical power, North America classified its citizens into good capitalists. If an object can be classified, it can then be equally controlled. Foundational to the classification and order of the “good American” or “good Canadian” was a commitment to the gender binary performed in particular ways in particular spaces. Advertisers studied and targeted the family unit and individual members of that unit. This included fabricating narratives about creating the family unit itself. Stephanie Coontz explores this relation of marriage and culture in the 1950s; as marriage rates increased, it was partly due to post-war relief and hope for the future.3 Young men and women wanted to get married and start a family in what appeared to be the most stable world in recent memory. Yet she also explains the social rewards that married men and women were granted for shaping their new lives to fit the rules of the postwar capitalist world transitioned back to the nuclear family model were regarded as appropriately progressive in their removal of middle-class women from the wartime labour force. Through this system of advertising and rewards, the roles of husband and wife were solidified. According the functionalist perspective,5 the efficient and modern postwar society could best succeed through the foundational building blocks of the nuclear family, most appropriate for the emerging western industrial powerhouse of 1950s America.6 While the extended and blended family served its economic agricultural purpose within a pre-industrial context, the nuclear family provided a contained unit which fit both emerging social and spatial mobility patterns.

you never bought or even thought of before…you are helping to build a greater security for the industries of this country…what you buy and how you buy it is very vital in your new life—and to the whole Rooted in Cold War mentality, American and Canadian companies argued for a never-before-seen capitalist communism, a chance to experience a progressive social equality, one which did not require a barbaric Russian Revolution. It is an ideology which Lizabeth Cohen has coined the “consumer’s republic,”2 a republic in which it was every American’s civic responsibility to enhance the lives of all Americans through doing their part in the post-war effort, just as they had during the war.In a foundational play of historical power, North America classified its citizens into good capitalists. If an

Foundational to the classification and order of the “good American” or “good Canadian” was a commitment to the gender binary performed in particular ways in particular spaces. Advertisers studied and targeted the family unit and individual members of that unit. This included fabricating narratives about creating the family unit itself. Stephanie Coontz explores this relation of marriage and culture in the Young men and women wanted to get married and start a family in what appeared to be the most stable world in recent memory. Yet she also explains the social rewards that married men and women were granted for shaping their new lives to fit the rules of the postwar capitalist world4; married couples who transitioned back to the nuclear family model were regarded as appropriately progressive in their removal of middle-class women from the wartime labour force. Through this system of advertising and the efficient and modern postwar society could best succeed through the foundational building blocks of the While the extended and blended family served its economic agricultural purpose within a pre-industrial context, the nuclear family provided a contained unit which fit both emerging social and spatial mobility patterns.7 A family consisting of a mother, father, and two or more children provided instrumental

gender roles in family interactions, socio-economic status, and suburban settlement. Marriage therefore was seen as the only culturally acceptable role to both adulthood and independence.8

While men were regarded as the backbone of the public labour force, middle -class women were persuaded to settle into more nurturing roles in private.Middle-class white women found themselves back in their homes, readjusting to the domestic sphere which seamlessly expanded to lure them out of their wartime factory positions with the appeal of shiny new appliances, and a husband who could surely cover electricity bill. The kitchen itself was portrayed as a sort of sanctuary in which women were granted the “similarly” independent working role they had acquired during the War, only this time it was producing for the frontline of the nuclear family. This transition is best summarized by Coontz, who argues that although the world appeared to be changing for the better, “the image of the emancipated woman of the 1950s was not the working girl but the full-time housewife, armed with timesaving appliances that freed her from the drudgery of old-fashioned housework.”9

Advertisers represented women as humble servants, mothers whose main source of joy was serving their families and keeping up social appearances. American President Richard Nixon declared that the good life of families was one of consumerism, fun, recreation, and that the superiority of capitalism over communism was seen through the comforts of the suburban home, “designed to make things easier for our women.”10 Although Chatelaine magazine offered a space for the discussion of difficulties women faced throughout their suburban transition,11 its content was easily overshadowed by psychiatrists and mass media, which perpetuated the idea that if a woman did not find her ultimate fulfillment in homemaking, she should take it as a sign of underlying psychological problems.12 The solution to these problems was none other than kitchen appliance therapy, another gadget that would surely make home life more appealing, time saving, and better tasting.

Television advertising increased by four hundred percent between 1945 and 1960.13 Because women were thought to buy more than seventy-five percent of all commodities, naturally most advertising was aimed towards them.14 Wedding silver was popularized, presented in advertisements as an enduring symbol of marriage: high-quality silver and a long-lasting marriage were equated clearly. Reed and Barton claimed, “from the very start you’ll want to entertain at home,” and that there was no better blessing for a new wife than the ability to feed her husband for the rest of their lives.15 But advertisers also reminded women that silverware alone was not enough. Reddiwip made it clear that men stayed in their marriages by choice, not necessity, and wives could drive husbands away with poor culinary skills. No matter how appealing the china plates, they will not save a failing marriage.16 Men functioned as foundational economic units within the nuclear family model; a man would establish himself and then seek out a wife, offering a relationship of romantic choice for the man, and economic dependence for the woman. This created a strong

boundary between the male-dominant public and female-dominant private economic spheres.

This new mass market of dependant female homemakers allowed for a key integration of subconscious personal and social identity ideology. Women’s fashion transitioned back into fuller skirts and the illusion of smaller waists, a parallel to the era of the Victorian corset. These subliminal messages are explored in The Codes of Gender, as advertising then and now exercises the art of “commercial realism”; attempting to present the world in a way that could be real, in order to reference deep aspects of personal identity.17 These personal elements of identity, such as one’s value as a spouse to one’s value as a consumer, are designed to be quickly recognized because they are so ingrained into the cultural mind. They appear to be natural without any further examination. Femininity itself has become recognized as submissive, powerless, and dependent.18 What more, of course, should a woman be dependent on than her husband and his appliance purchasing power?

Standing opposite to the appliance-wielding 1950s housewife was her breadwinning husband. Like their Victorian predecessors, 1950s middleclass white men acted in the public commercial sphere; like their Victorian predecessors, middle-class white women performed the supporting role of angel of the hearth, taking their cue from their husband’s work; when men act, women react. While men actively left the home to work and return with a weekly paycheck, women reacted by preparing his living space for a hot meal and rest opportunities. Men were fed images of success, and encouraged to act out above one another, feeding into the pride of the provisional role. Pressured by advertising, fathers felt a sense of pride in their ability to supply their families with the latest material goods, especially television sets “once the sight of rooftop antennas became fairly commonplace, fathers easily felt the urge to keep up with this stage of household consumption.”19 When the working man came home at the end of the day, he was greeted with the by-product of his labour capital; dinner on the table at which his well-behaved children were seated.

As Laura King studies in her book Family Men, similar to mothers, fathers found their children to be a source of pleasure, pain, and frustration.20 Yet unlike the social expectations of women as parents, fathers were considered important to the family, but not necessary in childrearing. This meant that they could be conveniently unavailable from aspects of family life they did not enjoy.21 Advertisements both represented and created public discourse, and the

importance of the father’s role as breadwinner was constantly made clear. The father who was always away at work was seen as a good provider not an absentee parent. In order to fulfil his duties as a good family man, fathers were encouraged to take advantage of home life amongst a sea of single-use electronic products.

If the flurry of new advertisements enforcing ideas of gendered society could be summarized in one word, it would be leisure. In his book Brought to you By, Lawrence Samuel explores the inner workings of the advertisers’ minds. With the emergence of television, consumers could not only hear about the products that were previously advertised on the radio, now they could see them. Very quickly, the number of television sets exceeded the number of bathtubs in the United States,22 and with a free conduit into the centre of American nuclear families, commercials could be created with specific sales goals in mind: the noble aim of the TV commercial is to provide America with more leisure which…America needs like a hole in the head…millions of families will trudge out, hypnotized by the words ‘new’ and ‘different’, to buy the gadget which will provide more leisure to watch TV and discover new timesavers which will provide more leisure.23

What were Americans to do with so much leisure time provided by all of these new products? Thankfully, the advertisements that promised leisure time also offered new and exciting ways to fill that leisure time. As Rutherdale explains, camping with one’s wife and children on sunny weekends was pitched as a cost-effective activity which allowed men to prove themselves as more well-rounded individuals, as well as show their instinctual toughness in the wilderness.24 As the father was mostly present in the evenings and on weekends, camping provided an opportunity for bonding with the children, expanding the image of men into one which was more than just a breadwinner. One advertisement claimed “those primitive skills like fire lighting will impress a woman much more than coming home from the office with news that your Whatzit sales are thirty-eight percent higher than the same month last year. Woman still admires him most in a thoroughly uncivilized back-to-nature role.”25

Defined by one author as masculine domesticity,26 this “back-to-nature role” was to be continued at home as well, where portable barbeques, grass cutting, leaf raking, and maintaining the house exterior offered an opportunity for men to transcend the public and private spheres. The growing emphasis on the importance of fatherhood and relations with one’s children was also attached to an increasing pride in a man’s physical residence. Whether through depictions of men leading their family on a camping expedition or flipping burgers in their backyard, masculine domesticity was ingrained in popular culture through the presentation of father figures directing their material toward domestic conception and leisure. This furthered the idea that fathers were the central figures in the provision and enjoyment of life.27 Fathers were portrayed as ‘spare mothers’, available to intercede in certain elements of the child’s life to produce a more well-rounded character, yet also the enforcer of hard-lined discipline, embedded in the classic line “just wait until your father gets home.”28 However, a father’s role was portrayed as more than just enforcing the rules. Childcare remained a chore under the fixed responsibility of ‘mother,’ yet found itself easily slotted into or out of a man’s leisure schedule according to his desires.29 If a man did not wish to spend time with his children when he was at home, it was assumed that naturally there were more pressing matters for him to attend to.

While men may have been choosing to escape the noisy child-filled atmosphere of the home in favour of workplace politics, children were presented with the narrative of a father figure who was always to be regarded as a man with a purpose. Overtime at work provided the funds for higher quality leisure time, and leisure time was defined by the latest television craze. Instead of what may now be considered as absentee parenting, weekday neglect, or emotional dissociation, fathers’ long work days and quiet time in the evenings were portrayed by popular culture as a necessary sacrifice to maintain the idea that the nuclear family was self-sustaining and must be able to keep up with the Joneses. One father, born in 1930 claimed: “it was there for women to have babies and men to have no part in it, all they had part in was making ‘em, no part in seeing them born or being involved in the birth, no part in waking up at night, no part in bathing them, no part in all, your job was to go to work and bring home money to keep them, that was, and provide them with warmth and clothing…I was told that was my job.”30

While mothers’ kitchen residence and concentrated domesticity painted them as yet one more home appliance alongside their KitchenAid mixer, fathers’ authority and ambiguous financial role produced an awe in the little ones. Born in the 1950s, James Bullock reflected on the ritual of his father sitting on his armchair at the head of the dinner table, with his mother seated at the opposite end, claiming “no one would ever have dreamed of sitting in my father’s chair, whether he was in the house or not.”31 Thus, while some aspects of parenting such as breadwinning, allowed men to secure their adult masculinity, childcare, portraying intense emotions, and an interest in the domestic private sphere or “women’s work” equally challenged it.

Trapped in their own perpetually advertised spheres, men and women were challenged to find a common ground which allowed for both survival, as well as a chance to enjoy the new standard of living society had deemed acceptable. In Mirror in 1953, Mary Brown cautioned both men and women: “if a man wants to be a happy king in his home he must earn his title. The mere physical fact of his manhood and his legal status as husband and father does not automatically ensure his kingship or his happiness…the mean man’s wife never knows what is in her husband’s pay packet. He spends plenty on himself but doles her out a weekly pittance just enough to keep them out of debt. His wife is not a partner, she is an unpaid servant and she knows it.”32

Unfortunately for the average 1950s family, materialism was not the answer to personal, social, and marital flourishing. While advertisers and private companies continued to make money in a fast-paced spending culture, the newness of these advertised products served no purpose other than the consumer’s collection of more things. Commercial realism reinforced gender norms, attempting to support the mantra of buying one’s binary happiness. If a woman was displeased with her new role in the kitchen, advertising promised that once she experienced the ease and satisfaction of their products, she would feel right at home again… she needed to feel right at home again. Yet the overwhelming feeling of dissatisfaction remained, identified through the work of Betty Frieden in 1963 as the “Problem That Has No Name” in her book Feminine Mystique, which she defined as “a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning…each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries … she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question – “is this all?”33

No matter the reality behind the freshly mowed lawn of the suburban nuclear family, advertising continued to churn out smiling images of women with new kitchen appliances, and those of men with new leisure boats, both of which played on television sets every commercial break as companies capitalized on the image of the ideal family. With many 1950s parents having grown up in the Depression, “there was no room for arguing, you have to look at the facts and take what was there and go from there.”34 The woman-in-the-kitchen model became as popular as Dow Chemical’s Saran Wrap, in which after a year on TV sales increased from 120 000 to 3.8 million rolls per month,35 as “the successful advertising agency has manipulated human motivation and desires, and developed a need for goods with which the public had at one time been unfamiliar—perhaps even undesirous of purchasing.”36

Yet this model and application of gender roles is far from new and exciting. Instead, it serves as a reminder that the male breadwinner and female domestic model had just transitioned into a time and energy efficient practice, one which is engrained beneath the surface of the calm water of an early morning family boat ride. As we are presented with infinitely more leisure time than ever before, the hidden narratives within this era of advertising suggests that these gender norms have merely been rebranded once again.

Janina Ritzen Pulfer (she/her)

MAIH program (history stream)