Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 128
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Popular Culture Review
found that half of all working class families surveyed owned cars, a
fact which disrupted their savings patterns and often meant that
they had to do without such necessities as medical care and adequate
clothing. The car had also become the center of family leisure
activities, providing a means to visit friends and family who lived
beyond walking distance and facilitating entertainment in itself as
long drives became a favorite pastime.^ ^
As these ads demonstrate, in the 1920s the homemaker's first
priority was to spend more time with husband and children—time
that had previously been devoted to housework. Like automobile
ads, appliance ads promised to help housewives do chores well in less
time. The time saved could be spent with the family. An ad for an
Armstrong Table Stove shows a wife cooking waffles for her family at
the table. A woman in a dressing gown serves coffee from a silver
service in an ad for Manning-Bowman Electric Appliances that
proclaimed, "It takes her just six minutes to get breakfast." A mother
smiles as she opens her Frigidaire to pour milk for her son and
daughter while ad copy explains how the appliance simplifies her
life.^^ All these appliances were enabling the women portrayed to
spend "quality time" with family members by lightening the burden
of chores.
The successful homemaker may have been spending more time
with her family, but ads urged her to continue doing a good job with
domestic chores. Standards for the quality of housework had not
changed and neither had the assumption that women would do it.
Advertisements promised that new appliances would resolve this
paradox. Nonetheless, ad copy said that women did not need to
understand how appliances worked in order to benefit from them,
sending the subtle message that perhaps the mechanical details of
appliance construction were beyond a woman's comprehension or
interest. A Hoover ad showed a wonrtan vacuuming in her best clothes
with apparent ease. The ad copy said, "You need not know the
technical details of electric cleaners, the mechanical differences
between them, in order to choose rightly. There is only one thing you
need to know about electric cleaners—which one removes the most dirt
per minute."^ ^
Smart women used appliances; dumb ones did not. An ad for
General Electric appliances showed a smiling woman in a summer
dress reclining in a wicker lawn chair. "Some women sensibly shift