Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 133

Images of the Housewife

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John Berger, The Art of Seeing, London: BBC and Penguin Books, 1972,
pp. 9-10, 28.
4
Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for
M od ern ity , (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985),
especially chapter six. For more on the role of advertising in shaping
social change see Ronald Berman, Advertising and Social Change,
(Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1981) and Stuart and Elizabeth
Ewen, Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American
Consciousness, (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1982).
5
Christine Frederick, Selling Mrs. Consumer, New York: The Business
Bourse, 1929, pp. 4-5,143.
6
Good Housekeeping, September 1928, p. 152. (hereafter GH)
I
Saturday Evening Post, October 24,1925, p. 211; Time, July 13,1925, p.
27; Time, February 27, 1928, p. 34.
8
GH, May 1925, p. 114; New York Times, January 25, 1928, p. 12.
9 Virginia Scharff, Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the
Motor Age (New York: Free Press, 1991), pp. 116-122. Both women's
magazines and general interest magazines contained advertisements for
car companies at this point. In later years, car companies refused to
advertise in women's magazines, claiming that women did not buy cars.
The trend was not reversed until the 1980s when Ms. magazine was
able to persuade advertising agencies that women bought cars as well
as influenced family buying decisions. (Gloria Steinem, "Sex, Lies and
Advertising," Ms., July/August 1990, p. 19).
10 Collier*s, August 19,1922, p. 2; LHJ, January 1927, p. 97.
I I Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in
American Culture, New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc., 1929, p.
255.
12 Frederick, Selling Mrs. Consumer, pp. 168-169; GH, September 1922, p.
172; GH, June 1925, p. 137; Collier's, August 11,1928, pp. 32-33.
13 GH, July 1928, p. 123.
14 Collier's, July 7,1928, p. 2; Collier's, December 22,1928, p. 2; GH, May
1925, p. 142; GH, September 1928, p. 119.
15 Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial
Times to 1970, Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1975, p. 320;
Lynd and Lynd, pp. 45-47,239. The Lynds found that other aspects of
the modem consumer culture were a fixture of life in Muncie.
Chain
stores with their national brands were now competing with local
stores. Periodicals such as Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home
Journal, and True Story were popular and supplied enterainment and
exposure to advertising. Two-thirds of the Muncie daily newspaper
was also devoted to ads. (Lynd and Lynd, p. 92).
16 GH, June 1925, p. 100; GH, July 1928, p. 116; Collier's, August 11,
1928, p. 32-33.
17 GH, July 1928, p. 117.