Utilizing Newspaper Advertisem Essay Research Paper The

Utilizing Newspaper Advertisem Essay, Research Paper

The 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s are often considered three of the most controversial, radical, and progressive decades in American history. Many politically, socially, and economically vital events took place during these eras that forever transformed America and its citizens. However, while domestic and global catastrophes such as the Great Depression and World War II enabled certain minorities, such as women, to achieve limited social progresses (temporarily increasing their number in the work force and higher wages), it also provided an opportunity for the society to reinforce traditional perceptions of women. One medium in which this notion is clearly exhibited is in newspaper advertisements. After systematically analyzing several newspaper advertisements from the nationally distributed newspaper, the Saturday Evening Post, from three different decades, separated from one another by exactly ten years starting with 1925, the pitch and language used in these advertisements seemed to support the idea that despite the historical events that occurred during these time periods, mainstream advertisements consistently reinforced America s conservative belief that a proper woman s place was still in the home taking care of her children and performing domestic tasks.

The 1920s, also known as the Roaring Twenties, produced an era of prosperity and well being as the result of the second industrial revolution in manufacturing. Yet, contrary to this popular depiction, America s increased wealth during this time was not equally distributed among its people:

Amid prosperity and progress, there were large pockets of the country that lagged behind. Advances in real income and improvements in the standard of living for workers and farmers were uneven at best. During the 1920s one-quarter of all American workers were employed in agriculture, yet the farm sector failed to share in the general prosperity (Faragher 429).

Consequently, the perception of wealth being equally distributed is one of the many misconceptions of the 1920s. Another important misconception of this time period is the emergence of the New Women, also known as flappers, and how their presence challenged not only society s traditional expectations of women, but also the standards that defined their womanhood.

Flappers were one of the many sub-groups that existed at the time composed of mainly middle-class women whose financial security enabled them to participate in activities, such as booze-drinking, cigarette-smoking, wearing knee-length dresses, and flirtatious behaviors that were traditionally categorize as taboos to women. However, despite this commonly shared belief that the development of flappers symbolized a sudden and radical shift in mainstream America s perception of women or a loosening of restrictions, it did not. In fact their appearance had a very minimal affect on the society as a whole. For the most part, the American society still promoted and reinforced the conservative stereotypes of women as housewives and domestic servants. This idea is clearly displayed in many of the 1925 newspaper advertisements from the Saturday Evening Post.

Both the March 21st, 1925 Red Star Oil Stove and the Inlaid Flooring advertisements (Ad #1 & 2) exemplify the American society s conservative promotion of the proper woman. They illustrate the two common spheres that women in the 1920s were expected to fill and maintain: child-rearing and cooking. While the Red Star Oil Stove advertisement expressed society s expectations of a married woman to take care of her children by making sure they are properly groomed and educated (the advertisement show that she is reading to her son), the Inlaid Flooring advertisement promoted the idea that women should not reject their domestic lives but seek comfort and joy out of it (the apparent smile on the woman s face as she proudly carryies a cake she had baked):

By the end of the decade, the magazines [and newspaper advertisements] were articulating what historian William Chafe calls an elaborate ideology in favor of home and marriage . [Moreover] Women s magazines advised her [women] not to reject femininity but to enjoy it, to approach domesticity with a positive outlook (Woloch 409, 411).

Thus, these advertisements directly linked a woman s femininity to her ability to perform appropriately in both of these vital spheres.

Newspaper advertisements further reinforced the domestication of women in 1925 by specifically targeting females to buy home-related products that would in one way or another ease their daily tasks. To advance this idea, advertisers used catchy pitches such as thoroughness of cleaning and saves her the arm-aching pressure in advertisements for products like Eureka Vacuum Cleaner and Sunbeam Iron (Ad #4 & 5). Moreover, these advertisements also tried to appeal to women and subconsciously promote the society s belief that domestic tasks such as vacuuming and ironing clothes are activities specifically reserve for women by depicting women, not men, performing these sexist choirs (Ad #3, 4, & 5).

By 1935, America s greatest economic disaster, now referred to as the Great Depression, had lingered for more than six years. Everyone in the nation felt the economic consequences of this catastrophe. Women were one of the groups most affected