Lecture: Gender and the Rise of Consumer Culture in the 1920s

1. Gender and the Rise of
Consumer Culture in the 1920s
HIUS157/Prof. Rebecca Jo Plant

2. Consumer culture
• Historians debate how to interpret the rise
of mass culture
– Conspiracy of mass producers?
– Mass producers and advertisers as “apostles of
modernity”
• People at the time were ambivalent
– Feared decline in values
– Welcomed material wealth

3. Consumer culture and women
• Women as the “purchasing agent”
– By 1920s, ad men constantly stressing that
women made 80% of all purchases
• Fostered women’s increasing presence in the
public realm
– Prior to 1870s, good restaurants generally did not
serve women
– New forms of leisure and consumption allowed
“respectable” women to escape the house

4. Rise of the department store
• Took shopping off the street, into a
protected area
• Feminized spaces
• Very visible public institution that catered
to women consumers
• Leveling effect in terms of class
– Clerks instructed to call all female shoppers
“ladies”

5. A.T. Stewart’s “Marble Palace,” 1862

6. Dry goods store, Scranton, PA

7. Department Store, Gackle, ND, 1920s

8. Women shoppers in Chicago, outside Marshall Fields, 1904

9. “Industrial revolution” in the home
• 1920: Roughly half of
all homes electrified
• Many tasks became
much easier
– Ironing; washing
• But did not reduce
time spent on
domestic labor

10. Changing role of the housewife
• Workforce became less differentiated
– Housewife increasingly the only one performing
domestic work
• Work becomes less specialized
• Emotional meaning of the labor enhanced
• Middle-class women lose their managerial
function
– Decline in “domestics”

11. Ad for SOS
cleaner
“…women today
don’t need to spend
their lives keeping
house if they use the
quick, easy shortcuts
that actually do work
better than the old-
fashioned methods.”

12. Rise of scientific motherhood
• Idea that mother doesn’t know best
• Sources:
– Growing prestige of science
– Persistent fear of child mortality
– Rise of a commercial market devoted to infant
products/advice
• Change in tone
– 19th century: Presented as useful information to aid
mothers
– 20th century: More punitive tone in tone

13. 1929 American Journal of Nursing

14. Ad for Fletcher’s
Castoria, a laxative
ca. 1927

15. Lifebuoy ad,
1920s

16. John B. Watson (1878-1954)
• Behaviorist
– Idea of “conditioned reflexes”
– Infant as tabula rasa
– Strict schedules; regularity
– Focus on making children independent as quickly as
possible
• Extremely negative view of mothers
– Belief that coddling produced “invalidism”
• “Mother love is a dangerous instrument”
– Regarded women as more “adolescent” than men

17. Advertisement
John B. Watson’s
Psychological Care
of Infant and Child
(1928)

18. Medicalization of Infant Feeding
• Increase in bottle feeding
– No evidence of benefits
– Some commercial formulas were actually harmful
• Contributing factors
– Rise of pediatrics
• Idea that infant feeding required supervision
• Strict schedules
– Changing roles of women
• MC women most likely to adopt bottle feeding
– Opposite of today

19. Trends in Infant Feeding

20. Gerber’s ad,
1933
“Is your baby
enjoying the
results of
progress?

21. Weight Loss Quackery, 1920s

22. Diet manuels
• Lulu Hunt Peters
– Popular writer and
columnist
– Diet and Health was a
bestseller from 1922-
26
– Helped popularize
new concept of
“calorie counting”

23. First Miss
America
pagent, 1921

24. Athleticism

25. “Thirty years of
progress,1896-1926”
Life Magazine, 1926

26. Flappers

27. Howard University students at a
football game

28. Mexican American flappers in
SoCal

29. Rise of the movies
• In virtually every community by the 1920s
– 100,000 viewers every week
• Movie palaces – designed to allow viewers to
live out fantasies
• “Stars” were the most admired role models
for young Americans
• Fan magazines
• People modeling their behavior after what
they see on screen

30. Heroines of silent screen
• Modified Victorians
– Mary Pickford
– Lillian Gish

31. “Vamps” of the talkies

32. Movie stars and magazines

33. Learning how to be romantic

34. Feminizing Smoking
• Traditionally
associated with
masculinity
• 1920s: Tobacco
companies seek to
expand market share
• “For a slender figure,
reach for a Lucky
instead of a sweet.”

35. Chesterfield
Cigarette Ad, SEP,
1933
“Women began to smoke,
so they tell me, just about
the time they began to
vote, but that’s hardly a
reason for women smoking.
I guess I just like to smoke,
that’s all.”

36. Liberating for women?
• Rise of consumerism took place before
women begin to gain economic equality
• Allowed for more open expression of desire
– Including sexual desires
– Overwhelmed emphasis on self-sacrifice
• BUT, women themselves were increasingly
commodified
– Unrealistic expectations
– Glamour/wealth v. equality/power