Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 124

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Popular Culture Review

The Housewife-Changing Roles, Changing Images
Historians have noted the significance of the shift to a
consumption-oriented economy for the lives of American women. As
Glenna Matthews points out, in a capitalist industrial economy,
consumer spending was important because it created a larger market
for products which in turn kept factories expanding and people
working.
Matthews maintains that the role of "household
purchasing agent" was assigned to women as an extension of their old
domestic producer role. Experts in the newly emerging field of home
economics encouraged wonwn to be discerning consumers who devoted
hours to selecting products of the highest quality and value.
Historians have also pointed out that the meaning given to
gender roles in the home had undergone a transfonnation from the
beginning of the century when women controlled the very complicated
and important business of running the modern "scientificallymanaged" home. The 1920s saw the rise of a new view of the roles of
wife and homemaker. Domestic work became something to be
completed as quickly as possible in order to allow wonren more time to
care for themselves and their husbands—a task vastly more
important than cooking or cleaning. Sexual attractiveness had
become a very important part of being a successful wife, and advice
literature and ads told women that intelligent buying was the way to
cope most effectively with domestic chores—chores for which quality
standards had not diminished as they became lower priorities. Now
wives were told to combine the role of excellent housekeeper with
that of sexual temptress.^
Advertisers encouraged this shift in the housewife's role by
developing visual advertising images designed to appeal to and
influence the female consumer. The nineteen twenties saw
considerable improvements in photography and in printing techniques
which allowed for high quality reproduction of images in mass
market publications. Consequently, more ads used illustrations.
Words and pictures worked together to show consumers how using a
particular product could improve their lives. John Berger has pointed
out that "every image embodies a way of seeing" and that placing
words with in^ges changes their meanings with the words becoming
part of an argument that may have little to do with the image's