Abstract
This chapter traces the reframing of laundry work as gendered house-work and homemaking via the figure of the housewife and the house-wife mom in ads and commercials for laundry products beginning during the emergence of modern advertising in the late 1800s. Early soap ads and the first detergent marketing depicted housewives eagerly embracing these products as a way to reduce the hard work of doing laundry but also as an aid to good homemaking and care for the family. Advertising from the 1890s through the 1950s emphasized not only the almost magical ability of a soap product to thoroughly clean clothes and linens with ease, but also its ability to help wives and mothers keep their families safe and healthy. Agency documents indicate that although a variety of marketing strategies shaped laundry advertising, ad makers returned again and again to images and copy linking laundry soaps with good homemaking.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Susan Strasser, Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York: Henry Holt, 1982, 2000), 109, 105.
Research Department, “Lever Brothers Company Advertising History” (1944), Lever Brothers Account Files, JWT Collection (hereafter cited as Lever Brothers Company Advertising History); Lucy Saddleton, “Tide Rolls On,” Strategy. October 2008, http://www.strategymag.com.
Roland Marchland, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 202–203.
Jennifer Scanlon, Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies Home Journal and the Promises of Consumer Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995), 34.
Marilyn Maness Mehaffy “Advertising Race/Racing Advertising: The Feminine Consumer (-Nation), 1876–1990,” Signs 23, no. 1(1997): 158, argues that the depiction of white “French” maids in 1920s advertising would not have been possible without the earlier depiction, on ad trade cards, of black female servants.
Creative Staff Meeting, “Mr. Day Presiding,” May 25, 1932, Lever Brothers Account Files, JWT Collection.
Christine Zmroczek, “Women, Class, and Washing Machines, 1920s-1960s,” Women’s Studies International Forum 15, no. 2 (1992): 175.
Juliann Sivulka, Stronger Than Dirt: A Cultural History of Advertising Personal Hygiene in America, 1875 to 1940 (New York: Humanity Books, 2001), 208.
Carole Lopate, “Selling to Mrs. Consumer,” College English 38, no. 8 (1977): 831.
On “daintiness,” see Phyllis Palmer, Domesticity and Dirt: Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920–1945 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 33.
Suellen Hoy, Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 147.
Guliz Ger and Baskin Yeniciglu, “Clean and Dirty: Playing with Boundaries of Consumers’ Safe Havens,” Advances in Consumer Research 31 (2004): 462–467.
Morleen Rouse Getz, “Daytime Radio Programming for the Homemaker, 1926–1965,” Journal of Popular Culture 12, no. 2 (1978): 315–327.
Jack Neff, “Marketers of the Century: Proctor and Gamble,” Advertising Age, December 13, 1999, 24–27.
Susan Smulyan, “Radio Advertising to Women in Twenties America: ‘A Latchkey to Every Home,’” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 13, no. 3 (1999): 299–314.
Marilyn Lavin, “Creating Consumers in the 1930s: Irna Phillips and the Radio Soap Opera,” The Journal of Consumer Research 22, no. 1 (1995): 75–89.
Kathy M. Newman, Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1933–1947 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 9.
See also Ruth Palter, “Radio’s Attraction for Housewives,” Hollywood Quarterly 3, no. 3 (Spring 1948): 248–257.
Creative Staff Meeting, “Mr. Day Presiding,” May 25, 1932, Lever Brothers Account Files, JWT Collection; “History of Lux Flakes, 1916–1951,” Lever Brothers Account Files, JWT Collection.
Andi Zeiser, Feminism and Pop Culture (Berkeley: Seal Press, 2008), 58–59.
Morleen Rouse Getz, “Daytime Radio Programming for the Homemaker, 1926–1965,” Journal of Popular Culture 12, no. 2 (1978): 315–327.
Jack Neff, “Marketers of the Century: Proctor and Gamble,” Advertising Age, December 13, 1999, 24–27.
Susan Smulyan, “Radio Advertising to Women in Twenties America: ‘A Latchkey to Every Home,’” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 13, no. 3 (1999): 299–314.
Marilyn Lavin, “Creating Consumers in the 1930s: Irna Phillips and the Radio Soap Opera,” The Journal of Consumer Research 22, no. 1 (1995): 75–89.
Kathy M. Newman, Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1933–1947 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 9.
See also Ruth Palter, “Radio’s Attraction for Housewives,” Hollywood Quarterly 3, no. 3 (Spring 1948): 248–257.
Creative Staff Meeting, “Mr. Day Presiding,” May 25, 1932, Lever Brothers Account Files, JWT Collection; “History of Lux Flakes, 1916–1951,” Lever Brothers Account Files, JWT Collection.
Artherton W. Hobler, “The Triangle of Marketing Success” Mss. (1970s), 125, DMB&B Archive (hereafter cited as Hobler, “The Triangle of Marketing Success”).
Andi Zeiser, Feminism and Pop Culture (Berkeley: Seal Press, 2008), 58–59.
Steve Craig, “Madison Avenue Versus The Feminine Mystique: The Advertising Industry’s Response to the Women’s Movement,” in Sherrie A. Inness, ed., Disco Divas: Women and Popular Culture in the 1970s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 15.
Consultive Panel of the National Advertising Review Board, “Advertising and Women: A Report on Advertising Portraying or Directed to Women” (New York: 1975), 10, Marketing Vertical Files, J. Walter Thompson Company Collection, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University.
As cited in Barbara Stern, “Literary Analysis of an Advertisement: The Commercial as ‘Soap Opera,’” Advances in Consumer Research 18 (1991): 167.
See Bonnie Fox, “Selling the Mechanized Household: 70 Years of Ads in Ladies Home Journal,” Gender and Society 4, no. 1 (1990): 29.
Denise Warren, “Commercial Liberation: What Does ‘She’ Mean?” Journal of Communications 28, no. 1 (1977–1978): 169–173.
Christina Cheddar Berk, “P&G Will Promote ‘Green’ Detergent, Wall Street Journal, January 19, 2005, 1.
Laurie Freeman, “P&G Takes the Lead with High Tech Detergents,” Advertising Age, April 14, 1986, 3–4.
Carol Hill, “Lever’s Surf Detergent: Winner by a Nose,” Marketing and Media Decisions, March 1987, 37–41.
Walecia Konrad, “Tide’s Quest for Liquid Success,” Madison Avenue. June 1985, 44–47.
Jennifer Lawrence, “P&G Tries New Ultra Detergents,” Advertising Age, February 2, 1992, 1.
David Moin, “Ann Taylor Loft and P&G Put Fresh Spin on Laundry,” Women’s Wear Daily, August 22, 2008, 10.
Jack Neff, “Tide Coldwater,” Advertising Age, November 7, 2005, 76.
Saddleton, “Tide Rolls On;” Adam Newman, “The Man of the House,” Adweek. August 11–18, 2008, 18.
Anne-Christine Diaze, “The Work,” Advertising Age, May 23, 2011, 23.
On the impact of social media on advertising, see Teressa Iezzi, The Idea Writers: Copywriting in a New Media and Marketing Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Thanks to John Neuhaus for this reference. On social media and marketing to moms, see, for example, Christine Birkner, “Mom’s the Word,” Marketing News, May 15, 2011, 8.
Barbra Grondin Francella, “Want to Reach Moms? Find Her on Facebook,” Convenience Store News, January 11, 2011, 63.
Pradnya Joshi, “Harnessing the Power of the Mom Blogger,” New York Times, March 3, 2011, 3+; “Study: Stay-at-Home Moms Dominate Social Media,” Denver Business Journal, September 6, 2009, http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2009/09/14/daily43.html (accessed May 29, 2011).
Robert Berner, “Detergents Can Be So Much More,” Business Week, May 1, 2006, 66. Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts argued that in the twenty-first century, the worn-out concept of “branding” needed to be replaced by strategies to inspire consumer “loyalty beyond reason” rooted in a deeply personal and satisfying love for certain specific consumer products—“lovemarks.” See Kevin Roberts, Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands (New York, NY: Powerhouse Books, 2004), 66.
Gabrille Sandor, “Attention Advertisers: Real Men Do Laundry,” American Demographics, March 1994, 13–14.
Theresa Howard, “Tide Washes Hands of Demonstration Ads and Aims for Fun,” USA Today, May 8, 2006, B6.
Lenore Skenazy, “That Supermom in Your Ad? Real Moms Can’t Stand Her,” Advertising Age, October 29, 2007, 20.
Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Has Undermined Women (New York: Free Pess, 2004), 110–139.
See also Susan J. Douglas, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done (New York: Henry Holt, 2010), 259–261.
Joyce Cohen, “Washday Blues Really Are a Thing of the Past,” USA Today, August 8, 2003, 5D.
Denise DiFulco, “Luxe Laundry Rooms are Putting a New Spin on Old Chore,” Washington Post, November 10, 2005, H1.
Cohen, “Washday Blues Really Are a Thing of the Past”; and Patricia Gaylor, “Laundry List,” Kitchen & Bath Business, January 2009, 3.
Elaine Wong, “How P&G Fights the Tide of Private Label,” Adweek, June 7, 2010, 21–22.
Copyright information
© 2011 Jessamyn Neuhaus
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Neuhaus, J. (2011). The Laundry Room. In: Housework and Housewives in Modern American Advertising. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337978_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337978_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29618-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-33797-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)