On this day in 1963 the U.S. Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, a law designed to end wage discrimination against women.
How to get the word out? Advertising of course!
Thanks to Sean D. for the link!
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Yesterday, in honor of May Day, Anna North at Buzzfeed Shift posted a set of photos on the history of women in the (mostly U.S.-based) labor movement. One that I found particularly interesting was this 1918 poster urging women to be both thrifty and productive industrial workers as they play their role in winning World War I:
Note how patriotism is clearly connected to the idea of women having more opportunities:
To woman, the possession of a home, the opportunities of education for herself and her children, the betterment of her own social conditions, should always be the dominating thought.
But the poster simultaneously warns them against using their freedom for their own pleasure at the expense of the nation:
…restlessness urges the breaking up of home life and the shifting of occupations. It is for her to think well before jeopardizing the future for the sake of temporary gain…it is hers to show industrial stability and check the dangerous tendency to shift about and gamble with the future. America’s women can best serve American by being steadfast — bending to their task and holding it — and by saving all they can from today’s pay envelope for future needs.
So women are encouraged to think of themselves as empowered workers, with increased opportunities available to them, but only to the degree that this makes them reliable, productive workers and thrifty citizens, drawing on ideas of women’s special role in the home. Just as women are the “custodians” of their homes, they must also ensure “industrial stability” by sticking with their jobs for the good of the nation — a choice which might, of course, conflict with a woman’s efforts to improve her own or her family’s social conditions by, say, taking a job that pays more or has better working conditions. The poster encourages women to consider their opportunities, but ties those opportunities tightly to the common good of the nation and the family, ultimately warning women against too much pursuit of individual self-interest.
Here we have another great vintage ad (1962) that upsets the idea that today’s norms are trans-historical. First, the idea of having a “pint about midday” would be considered inappropriate by many U.S. employers (though, as several commenters have pointed out, not necessarily elsewhere). Second, the large print — “Beer, It’s Lovely!” — sounds unmasculine today, even though these grizzled sea-farers likely would have seemed perfectly masculine enough at the time.
From the RAF Flying Review, found at Retronaut.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
It’s a Leap Year for those using the Gregorian calendar, noteworthy because we get an extra day in February to correct the slight difference between our calendar year (365 days) and the actual amount of time it takes the Earth to revolve around the sun once (365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds). Over the last few days I’ve heard several news stories about the Leap Day tradition of gender norms being inverted, so that women are able to ask out or propose to men. I was either entirely unaware of this or perhaps I learn it and promptly forget it every four years, but Laura E. sent in a link to a set of vintage postcards posted at Slate that illustrate the existence of this idea in the early 1900s. The postcards present this upending of the accepted gender script as a terrifying situation for men, who become prey to suddenly emboldened husband-hunters:
Text:
“John! I have some thing to ask you. Don’t be in a hurry.”
“Ah, say Mabel, please let me go home?”
The dog: “Poor John. I see his finish.”
In a recently-published article on this tradition, Katherine Parkin points out that women in such postcards are often presented as larger, brawnier, and more aggressive than their poor male prey; the women empowered to ask men to marry them are inherently unfeminine:
For more on portrayals of gendered dating/proposal norms and the Leap Year exception, see the full Slate slideshow and Parkin’s article. Now excuse me, I’m going to go see about ambushing myself a husband.
[Full cite: Katherine Parkin. 2012. “Glittering Mockery: Twentieth-Century Leap Year Marriage Proposals.” Journal of Family History 37(1): 85-104.
Edward Bernays (1891-1995) is largely considered the founder of public relations (or “engineering consent,” as he called it) but is not known very well outside of the marketing and advertising fields. A nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays was the first to theorize that people could be made to want things they don’t need by appealing to unconscious desires (to be free, to be successful etc.). Bernays, and propaganda theorist Walter Lippman, were members of the U.S. Government’s Committee on Public Information (CPI), which successfully convinced formally isolationist Americans to support entrance into World War I. While propaganda was commonly thought of as a negative way of manipulating the masses that should be avoided, Bernays believed that it was necessary for the functioning of a society, as otherwise people would be overwhelmed with too many choices. In his words:
Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.
[Source: Bernays, Propaganda, 1928, p. 52; available here.]
After WWI, Bernays was hired by the American Tobacco Company to encourage women to start smoking. While men smoked cigarettes, it was not publicly acceptable for women to smoke. Bernays staged a dramatic public display of women smoking during the Easter Day Parade in New York City. He then told the press to expect that women suffragists would light up “torches of freedom” during the parade to show they were equal to men. Like the “You’ve come a long way, baby” ads, this campaign commodified women’s progress and desire to be considered equal to men (relevant clip starts at 3:00):
“Cigarettes were a symbol of the penis and of male sexual power…Women would smoke because it was then that they’d have their own penises.”
Here are some of the news photographs of women smoking publicly during the Easter Parade:
[Photos via.]
The campaign was considered successful as sales to women increased afterward. Cigarette companies followed Bernays’s lead and created ad campaigns that targeted women. Lucky Brand Cigarettes capitalized on recent fashions for skinny women by telling women to “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet”:
Marlboro, in stark contrast to the Marlboro Man ads we’re familiar with today, started the “Mild as May” campaign to encourage women to take up smoking cigarettes that were appropriately mild and easier to smoke:
Chesterfield, in a 1930s ad, argued that “women started to smoke…just about the time they began to vote”:
A later ad for Phillip Morris tells women to “Believe in yourself!”
Cigarette makers also worked to teach women how to smoke properly. Ads often depicted women in the act of smoking. Some companies, like Philip Morris, even held smoking demonstrations for women:
[Via.]
The article describes how a “pretty registered nurse” is touring the country to teach women proper smoking etiquette. The article also lists “men’s pet peeves” and “women’s pet peeves” for men and women smokers. (Full text after the jump below.)
Together, these efforts to conflate smoking with freedom and make smoking acceptable for women created a new set of consumers and reinforced Bernays’s argument that demand could be created.
Cross-posted at Jezebel.
I am convinced that women could pee standing up, with the same accuracy as a man (which means, what, 90% accuracy?), if they practiced as often as men do.
There, I said it.
In any case, I’m not the only one and, in fact, in 1953 American Standard unveiled a urinal for women (via Vintage Ads):
Close up:
A commenter says she remembers seeing these in roadside rest areas for a time. But, obviously, they didn’t catch on. I suspect that they were made with women in skirts in mind, and involved squatting more so than standing and leaning back. This set of instructions for an another women’s urinal may or may not have applied to this one:
In any case, I like to imagine an alternative future in which women use urinals as easily and lightheartedly as men. It makes me appreciate the historical contingency of our everyday lives. Reminds me of the horizontal wall refrigerator.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Feast your eyes on this:
Social change makes life interesting.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
After the recent scandal over LEGO Friends, I am excited to report that I am in the process of working with a LEGO “fanatic,” David Pickett, on a series of posts about gender and the history of LEGO. In the meantime, as a teaser, I wanted to offer you two LEGO ads that were from the same campaign as the one making its semi-viral way around the internet (1980-1982). As with the original, these are evidence that advertising doesn’t have to reproduce the idea of “opposite sexes”:
Thanks to Moose Greebles and his Photostream.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
