Folgers Coffee Ad from the Fifties
Advertisers like to convince us that we just cannot live without their products, whether it is true or not. Usually the commercials imply one of two things, neither of which is pleasant. One is that if we do not have this thing, we are not one of the elite and therefore losers. The other is that we are just too completely incompetent to do the simplest tasks without it.
How many of us grew up believing that is its hard, almost impossible, to cook rice correctly? That is why we just had to buy the instant rice that made it impossible to make rice wrong. For four decades now, we have been told that paper diapers are better for our papers than cloth. After all, no one could admit that using them was a great big convenience, something no “good” mother would admit.
All those ads for detergents, cleaners, and air fresheners are enough to give anyone a cleaning fetish. You would think a speck of dust or a spot on the carpet was a criminal offense. In fact, one detergent company thought it was such a crime that they put homemaker on trial–in their commercial. She was tried for using the wrong detergent and not getting her husband’s clothes clean enough.
Do you notice that all these are aimed at homemakers and mothers, not at the men? One reason for that is that the homemakers were the ones that bought the household products. She was the one who chose the furniture polish, the meat, the detergent because she was responsible for making a lovely home. At one time being a bad housekeeper was one of the worst things a woman could possibly be.
One might think that it had always been that way, but that is not actually so. During WWII, women were actively encourage to work leave their homes and go to work. The able-bodied men were fighting the factories needed workers. The government actually ran billboard and radio ads telling women working outside the home was their duty. Then the war ended, the men came home, and suddenly there were not enough jobs to go around.
Advertising came to the rescue again, now convincing women of just the opposite of what they were told during war. Now, to get women out of the workforce, they put being a homemaker and mother on a pedestal. Her “goodness” was measured by how well she cleaned, cooked, and made coffee. To see what it was like back then, just look at this video showing the importance of coffemaking.
brewed on Mar 17th, 2010
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