I love how this ad from the 1950s acknowledges how exhausting and mind-numbing housekeeping and childcare can be!
The ad also illustrates the post-WWII efforts to cultivate a market for new food technologies (easy and instant foods that were developed for the war). This ad for Campbell’s soup describes the phenomenon in more detail.
For another vintage Jell-O ad that takes an entirely different approach, see here.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Comments 5
Depressing 1950s Jell-O commercial | linkthe.com — August 12, 2009
[...] from Sociological Images came across this grim animated commercial from the 1950s for Jell-O. It shows a haggard woman on a [...]
Luey — August 12, 2009
I like that the boy is helping to make the pudding, instead of a little girl doing it.
Nique — August 12, 2009
The song is cute, it made me smile haha. I love how the baby starts crying as it floats in the air!
Anonymous — August 12, 2009
I was thinking the other day about the fact that it is funny to me that in the United STates there is debate about whether or not to care for sick people and the idea of affordability. Affordability, being an artificial circumstance, embedded in the notion of necessary poverty.
Much of the debate has centered on the the notion that the inaffordability to care for people is the fault of the sick, vulnerable and impovershed people. It is propogated that ignorance and laziness are the key culprits. There is constant bombardmeent with images made to make people feel inadaquate about their own selves and raising false consistent expectations for the entire populace to adhere to. Much of the imagery regarding the debate seems to blitz the public with images of obese people. Meanwhile people are fed food tat is incredibly unhealthy...
And all this cycle can happen in daily routine taking place in structures built and in every community and neighborhood and operated by economic exploited people. We call them "Super Markets"
It seems sad that this is a world in which a system has been built and operated by druglords, thieves, and murderers. We are told not to trust you and me.
Yet, we are told that the notion of caring for people is the horror of mankind because we are to not trust each other. Such a system in which everyone is taken care of leads to unfit society of lazy people.