Housework and housewives in American advertising

By Jessamyn Neuhaus

Subjects: HISTORY / United States / 21st Century, Social psychology, Sex role in advertising, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies, Housewives as consumers, Stereotypes (Social psychology) in advertising, HISTORY / United States / 20th Century, Women in advertising, HISTORY / United States / 19th Century, HISTORY / Social History

Description: "This book traces the surprisingly persistent depiction of housework as women's work in advertising from the late 1800s to today. Asserting that advertising is our most significant public discourse about housework, Neuhaus draws on advertising such as print ads and TV commercials, as well as ad agency documents and trade journals, to show how the housewife figure framed household labor as exclusively feminine care for the family. Paying particular attention to the transitional decades of the 1970s and 1980s, the author demonstrates that when overtly stereotypical images of housewives became unmarketable, advertising continued to gender housework with the more racially diverse and socially acceptable "housewife moms" that appear in today's advertising"-- "This book traces the surprisingly persistent depiction of housework as women's work in advertising from the late 1800s to today. Asserting that advertising is our most significant public discourse about housework, Neuhaus draws on advertising such as print ads and TV commercials, as well as ad agency documents and trade journals, to show how the housewife figure framed household labor as exclusively feminine care for the family. Paying particular attention to the transitional decades of the 1970s and 1980s, the author demonstrates that when overtly stereotypical images of housewives became unmarketable, advertising continued to gender housework with the more racially diverse and socially acceptable "housewife moms" that appear in today's advertising"--