Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 128

124 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