Selling Domesticity: How Food and Consumption Launched a Feminist Revolution
Science and food technology increased opportunities for women in the 20th Century. So, why were housewives so unhappy?
At varying points during the twentieth century, American women were in position to gain many new rights. Starting in the 1910s, they demanded and received rights to vote. In the 1940s, they worked for excellent wages to support the war effort. During those same thirty years, the American home experienced a marketing revolution. The fruits of industrialization permeated laundry rooms and kitchens, and women responded to their new helpers enthusiastically. However, the life of early century women was one of give and take; they earned some rights, but society dealt a backlash after each gain. This was especially apparent after World War II, when some women left the work force and reentered a domestic role. The increase of technology had some interesting long term effects on American women, including the definition of “domesticity” as a feminine quality, as well as the role of women in the work force. By mid-century, as advertising agencies increased pressure on women consumers, food played part of the battle in the fight for gender equality. Prolific food choices, coupled with manipulation of consumers, made the homemaker’s life quite confusing — evening supper had transformed from a meal of simple foods into a disguised conglomeration of packaged foods. Some women yearned to discard their domestic obligations and enter the workforce, but they were constantly under barrage from advertisers and women’s magazines that encouraged traditional female roles.
Access to food often plays part in revolutions, but this time it would be different: instead of food shortages that so often go hand in hand with rebellions, American homes had unlimited access to food that was inexpensive. This revolution would be one against conflicting values. The societal cult of true womanhood was an unrealistic expectation for many women, and emphasized a disconnect with the daily reality of women’s lives. As women adapted to their new roles as consumers in a post-industrialist economy, many felt manipulated by corporate advertising that was not congruent with the reality of America. The kitchen would serve as a key battleground for feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Teaching Domestic Science
A new science emerged in the early part of the twentieth century. It was based on years of research and standardization measures. This new discipline was called “domestic science,” and it capitalized on consistent leavening agents, industrial milling of grains, and better food distribution in the United States. In short, higher education facilities started teaching women how to cook and keep a home. The institutionalization of home economics was a change that had long lasting effects on women. One of the first institutions of food preparation was the Boston Cooking School, which was established in 1879. Victorian-era obsessions on morality and femininity were entangled with baking and cooking to marry science with home. The school enabled young women to learn the rules of domesticity in an intellectual way. Parents who had money clamored to enroll their daughters in the school. Because of such a great response, the American Home Economics Association was established in 1910. This organization marked the “transition between pure domesticity, an abiding virtue, and domestic science, the new profession.” As an institution, the AHEA established schools of cooking and domesticity. The schools taught women attendees to embrace a quintessentially Victorian style of homemaking: proper, puritanical, methodical, and very racially white. The food used in the lessons was affordable to middle and upper class people, and did not emphasize ethnic food. The schools taught young women the skill of homemaker as an occupation, but of course there was no pay for this new type housewife. The appropriation of homemaking skills in favor of domestic science was an interesting way to validate women as producers, but the organization further expanded a growing rift between first-wave feminist movements and post-Victorian idealized femininity.
Laura Shapiro, noted food and feminist historian, stated that “domestic scientists saw their revolution beginning where feminism left off.” Proponents of domesticity, such as the American Home Economics Association and the Boston Cooking School, correlated femininity with being dainty, and accused Suffragist feminists of encouraging female superiority over men. Domestic scientists believed that men made women’s lives less burdensome by giving technology to women, and that feminists were ungrateful. The goal of the domestic scientist movement was to make the world outside the home more like the inside: clean, pure, peaceful, and well regulated. This was apparent in food preparation. A proponent of traditional roles for women, the school taught women how to cook like proper New England women (regardless of their geographic locations.) Menus consisted of roasts, seasonal and fresh vegetables, seafood, potatoes and breads, all cooked to perfection, every time. Shapiro stated, “The hope was that the kitchen would provide not only impeccable New England cookery, but absolutely invariable New England cookery.” The domestic science movement left no room for artistic license in preparation; that was left for presentation only. The emphasis was on precision and beauty, and women added flowers, color coding, and elaborate molds to accentuate their food. Presentation allowed women to show their femininity alongside their cooking skills.
The 1920s heralded a culture obsessed with science, and colleges and universities with agricultural extensions launched what they called “the science of home economics.” Essentially, they co-opted the Boston Cooking School style into a university setting. Now that higher education was on board, women with financial means learned domesticity as a craft rather than a traditional skill passed from mother to daughter. The science was not much different than home cooking, and by no means did home cooking disappear. However, for women with financial backing, it became precise and a study. Domestic science schools were also able to capitalize on technological innovations of the early century. Most notably was the development of temperature controls for ranges and ovens, as well as formulated flours and leavening agents that were consistent and reliable. The Boston Cooking School Cookbook (known as Fannie Farmer) emerged during the 1920s, giving women a strictly structured cookbook with scientific terminology to boot. It was the first to include specific timetables and temperatures. The tone was matter-of-fact, much different from mother-to-daughter teachings of the past. It embraced the concept of homemaker as a serious (if unpaid) occupation.
In the early part of the century, realities across class and gender lines varied immensely. Financial wherewithal afforded some white women different opportunities than others, such as the luxury of hiring domestic help and fewer work hours. Historian Stanley Lebbergott explained that that in 1900, American women averaged forty-four hours a week cooking and meal cleanup. By 1965, that number dropped to fifteen. There are many facets to the decrease in labor hours, most notably technological inventions that drastically cut work hours. It is also important to also keep in mind that the middle class diminished dramatically in the early century. Previously, a household with financial means had access to hired domestic help. Between 1900 and 1927, homes with domestic servants decreased by one half due to economic upheavals (especially related to World War I) and tightening wage restrictions. Labor movements found their way into homes all over America, and that ultimately meant more hands-on work for the lady of the house. Yes, there was a substantial decrease in labor hours for food preparation, but there were also fewer hands to do the work. Many women were unsure how to respond to their new roles as primary laborer in the kitchen. The American homemaker looked for guidance from cookbooks and advertising icons, and advertisers were more than happy to provide information in return for customer loyalty.
By supporting domestic science, the American Home Economics Association stressed traditional gender roles for women. Women’s studies historian Mary Drake McFeeley said that, “as ‘women’s work,’ cooking has been used — and resisted — as a tool of repression.” Interestingly, some women embraced the validation of domestic work. For the first time, universities, government, and corporations saw women as active participants in society, even though it was within the confines of their homes. Cultural expectations did not change, rather the job description had. Universities decreed that the job of homemaking was a respectable occupation rather than a predictable path for young women. In the end, though, the intent was the same. Society encouraged women to embrace domesticity and make sure that dinner was on the table for the husband when he returned home from work.
The kitchen has always been the heart of private domain for women. If schools and corporations could encourage women to stay in the kitchen, they could preserve the status quo that afforded men more rights than women. This is mainly because wage inequality and unfair hiring practices favored men over women for occupation outside the home. Within the home, the skill of cooking was the yardstick that society used to measure the value of a woman. The Boston Cooking School and others in the domestic science movement worked diligently to preserve gender roles and appease progressive women by validating their domestic “occupation.” Of course, simply changing a job’s description rarely changes the work preformed.
The Cult of Consumption
Shapiro stated that, “Beginning in the 1920s, a new image of the American housewife took shape, an image suitable for a new age of material invention and consumption.” This type of consumption was different than in previous decades, but it capitalized on the science embraced by the Boston School of Cooking. Obsession with perfection made for consistent cooking results. Product dependability launched commercial brands into modern homes. These brands guaranteed American homemakers the same results, every time they cooked. Kraft, Nabisco, Kellogg, and Campbell’s Soups were all in high production by the 1920s, but women needed a place to purchase these new brands. In 1916, Piggly Wiggly supermarkets launched just in time to cash in on convenience foods, and the store saw enormous profits. By 1920, just four years later, there were 404 stores operating. Previously, women relied on grocers who sometimes strong armed customers into buying food that needed to be sold fast. Grocers had some sway over consumer habits. The emergence of grocery supermarkets gave women a level of consumer independence that was not possible previously. They were able to choose their food selections without pressure. Walking through the aisles of a grocery store, women demonstrated their autonomy with each food selection. As the stores proliferated, advertisers quickly came to realize that women, not men, were the primary consumers of goods. Advertisers grasped at the opportunity to systematically target women and their consumption habits.
Advertising campaigns in the 1930s for the first time ran national ads for canned food at local supermarkets. Supply chains brought the same things to every city in America and advertisers focused on women: Shapiro mentioned, “Intelligent buying — meaning, of course, the homemaker’s willingness to believe what a manufacturer chose to tell her — easily became a more important domestic function than intelligent cooking and cleaning.” Instead of grocers acting as consumption mediators for households, advertisers focused their new products solely on the primary consumer, housewives. After the Depression, the wartime economy of the Second World War brought prosperity to many American homes. With increased income came a corresponding increase in consumption. Consumers were seduced by advertising and peer pressure, and this came to an apex during the 1950s. Lebbergott calls mid-century advertising the “Babel of Greed,” likening the persuasive power of commercials to a scourge of biblical proportions. Responding to advertising, women stopped making their own food and home wares, opting to purchase inexpensive and prolific consumer goods. This was a major shift for women: they transitioned from a state of production into a state of consumption.
Additional income from working mothers in the 1950s saw a correlating increase in purchasing power. Instead of producing their homes’ needs, women were then charged with procuring the needs from elsewhere. This meant that they were not only responsible for purchasing goods, but traveling to get them. Especially in suburban areas, women spent considerable time driving to urban shopping centers and supermarkets. Herein was an important issue: had the American home simplified with technology, or diversified and spread out the homemaker’s work? Even with all the new technology, American women were spending more time keeping their homes stocked, and feeling more and more frustrated with their domestic lives.
Food Production Techniques
Until the 1900s, women were the primary producers for the home. They made clothing, cooked meals, tended gardens and crops, and washed clothing. All these chores took up considerable hours in the day. At the onset of the century, many innovations ameliorated the work conditions in the home. Anthropologist G. Terry Sharrer described how cities and urban centers exploded in population: as residential concentrations increased, so did large-scale industries. “Large volume brewing, meat packing, grain milling, and canning already existed to serve the urban population before 1900, but the growth of cities encouraged smaller industries (e.g., dairying, soft drinks, candy and breakfast cereals) into larger operations.” Bakeries especially reduced the amount of time a housewife had to spend in the kitchen. A loaf of bread that previously took at least two hours to tend now was available via a five-minute walk to the store. Many advancements in food existed in previous centuries: automation, milling, ice cream, condensed milk, canned beer and food, and pasteurized cheese all date to before the Civil War. The turn of the century brought freeze drying, granulated gelatin, and puffed rice. By the 1930s, the Birdseye Company introduced slow freezing, an advancement that paved the way a huge increase in frozen vegetables and meats. This food availability was a game changer in many American homes, and demand increased with the expansion of electricity: now the modern housewife would have a refrigerator in which to store those prepackaged and frozen goods.
Advancements continued through 1940s. Food dehydration emerged, just in time to serve the wartime needs of an overseas military. During the war, dryer technology ushered in instant foods such as eggs, dry milk, and coffee crystals. After the war, demand for goods increased in the domestic market. Frozen and canned foods were mainstays on supermarket shelves and in pantries, and sales increased every year. Margarine was often the source of contention in agricultural areas because farmers had interest in sales of butter. However, advertisers and producers touted margarine as a safe, shelf-stable, and healthy alternative to butter, and sales shot through the roof. Seeking to simplify their kitchen chores, women clamored for the new offerings. Bisquick, Cool Whip, and Egg Beaters all offered convenience to the modern cook and sales of fresh milk and eggs dropped accordingly. Quite apparently, there was an explosion of food technology that was available to every home, and advertisers fought for consumers, who again, were the housewives of America. All these food innovations made the American home run with much less physical effort, but women were still responsible for the actual housework.
Another matter of consumption revolved around appliances. New post-war commodities such as refrigerators, ranges, ovens, and dishwashers adorned suburban and urban homes around the nation. An important advancement in the home, they dramatically changed the way women managed their work. Interestingly, Gail Collins noted that the appliances did not actually decrease housework hours; the fifty-five hours a woman spent doing housework in the 1950s was about the same as in 1920. She suggested that women responded to their new appliances by raising the bar for housekeeping. Soon enough, stay at home women spent equal hours cleaning as their professional counterparts did at their jobs. Purchasing power played a factor into housework. Women in the 1950s purchased more clothing, doubling their laundry load from just a decade prior. Frankly, women had more things in their homes to keep clean, because modern appliances such as ovens were not going to clean themselves (yet.) As new machines beautified American laundry rooms and kitchens, advertisers for Frigidaire, Kenmore, and Westinghouse played the game of flattery by portraying domestic femininity as the ultimate kitchen appliance. Advertisements, such as the 1959 Hotpoint ad featured above, regularly portrayed women dressed in heels, pearls, and full makeup preparing the evening meal. Whether this was a realistic representation of the American housewife is up for debate, but the truth is that cooking can be messy business and women probably were not wearing evening dresses to baste a roast. Women in advertisements made housewives feel inadequate; this was a concerted advertising effort, and corporations hoped the insecurity would fuel further consumption.
Home Realities and Betty Crocker
Just as the twentieth century theme of food was inextricably tied to consumerism, consumption permeated every aspect of the American kitchen. An excellent example of this occurred in cookbooks. The Fannie Farmer cookbook of the 1920s was responsible for giving a dose of feminine civility to every meal, and American women ate it up. It actively defined the role of food for women, as well as gendered the eating experience. If foods had gender identity, the most overt examples were delicate, feminine salads and brawny, masculine meats.
Salads represented the early century’s idealized version of womanhood. Dainty and light, they brought an air of gentility to meals. Salads gendered meals in a strangely proper way: meat, presiding in the realm of men, was much too crass for women to eat unadorned. A salad on the side, however, gentrified the obscenity of steak. Salad was a way for women to show their elegance at the supper table, and they came in all forms. Something as simple as frozen squares of cream cheese on a bed of lettuce constituted salad. Egg yolks mashed with mayonnaise and rolled in cottage cheese was called Golf Salad, and Waldorf Salad was one of the most famous concoctions to come out of the era.
There was a permeating idea that a salad needed boundaries, just as the kitchen would prove to be the physical boundary for many twentieth century women. Something as simple as a lettuce cup was a suitable boundary; the Boston Cooking School instructed women on choosing the proper iceberg lettuce that would produce the correct sized salad cup. Other salads with boundaries emerged, such as marinated peas in a hollowed out turnip, or a red pepper ring around asparagus spears, but the easiest way to provide boundaries was to suspend the fruit or vegetables in gelatin. A Jell-O mold provided a showcase for dainty womanhood by accentuating the presentation and beauty of food.
Shapiro said that the purpose of salad was to add femininity to meals, but along with the preoccupation with boundaries and suspension, salads also were a metaphor for the societal expectations of women during the early and mid century. These goals were to look festive, make beautiful and appropriate meals, but always remember that the kitchen was the proper feminine realm. Society expected the roles of women to remain unchanged, suspended in a gelatin of domestic idealism and the unwavering cult of true womanhood: however, society is rarely stagnant, and change is inevitable. The Jell-O mold of the cult of true womanhood would prove to be an unsteady boundary for many post-war women who saw their lifestyle options change throughout the latter half of the century.
Historian Jessamyn Neuhaus described how cookbooks engendered cooking by mid-century. She argued that the books encouraged and expected women to please men via food, as if cooking alone makes females productive members of “the cult of womanhood.” There were also male-gendered expectations about food. Societal expectations did not encourage men to cook in the kitchen; they were, however, given liberty to show their skills on the grill. Cookbooks explained to men that their manliness was intrinsically tied to meat. The Boston School, long ensconced in Victorian morality, used sauces to camouflage meat so the “maleness” would not shock proper women. Gender projection onto foods continued through the mid-century, when American cuisine found its way into the suburbs. Sales of barbeque grills exploded during the 1950s and weekends were full of burgers and salads. The leftover relics of gendered food from the 1920s were served up at dinner, picnics, and potlucks.
The Boston School of Cooking had surely found its way into the postwar kitchen. However, the role of women had changed from the early 1900s through World War II. Women entered the workforce in large numbers to support the war effort and at the end of the war, many women were not very happy with losing their productive occupations. Coupled with the loss of additional income, some homes were in a state of upheaval when the soldiers came home. Women, no longer needed to fuel industry, returned to their former status as homemakers. The postwar era ushered in a baby boom, and many former war machinists would spend the next fifteen years being pregnant and raising children. Advertising and government idealized a tightening of morality, a nuclear home, and most importantly, a stay at home mother to rule the roost. Neuhaus explained that the changes to food reflected home expectations for women in the mid-century. Dinners ensconced in heavy sauces were a metaphor for society at the time: women, stripped of their income and public lives, were kept under a thick cloak of home-bound isolation, like a Velveeta sauce covering broccoli. The idea of ornamental food, popularized by the Boston Cooking School, reflected the idea of the cult of femininity: women should be beautiful ornaments in their own private spheres, hidden from reality and outside recognition. Mass advertising took advantage of the idealization and actively persuaded women that their kitchens were sanctuary from the external political madness of the Cold War era.
Historians Arlene Voski Avakian and Barbara Haber argued that cookbooks were a mark of women’s oppression. They said that America did not really adjust to meet the changing needs of women, and that it became more gendered as a result of the 1950s consumerist idealism. Food in cookbooks did this, as well as identification of certain foods with genders: meat for men, sweets for women. Advertising for new foods was used a way to lure women out of the work force and back into the kitchen. Dinner did not have to be difficult, and women did not have to go outside the home to find satisfaction. All they needed to do was open a Swanson’s Salisbury Steak TV dinner. Success was inevitable with convenience foods (or so advertisements cooed.) The idea that food preparation was a patriotic endeavor defined women as loyal Americans simply by putting food on their table. The Cold War permeated society so deeply that even the private realm responded, however, the reaction was based on advertising and supermarket coercion more than anything else.
Nowhere is the apple-pie ideal more supported than through one of the most successful advertising campaigns, Betty Crocker. She emerged from the depths of the Great Depression to endear women to their frugal kitchen duties. She was not a real person, rather a highly successful advertising scheme that made her a credible source for the home cook. Part of Crocker’s allure was that the actress who portrayed her seemed like a great kitchen confidant. She exemplified a simplified Boston Cooking School theory by utilizing convenience foods. Her radio show was matter-of-fact, professional and authoritarian Shapiro said that Betty Crocker “emphasized that good cooking was an achievement in which women could take pride.” Advertisers pushed the kitchen mentor model to instruct women not how to cook properly but how to use packaged foods as an illusion for gourmet cooking. Many women benefitted from the expertise her radio show described. Her image portrayed her as a spokesperson for women, but in reality, she was a formulated advertising campaign.
Shapiro noted that by the mid 1950s, the Betty Crocker of radio days was an archaic notion: processed foods replaced expertise, and Crocker was relegated to pitching products like Bisquick. Once and always an advertising tool, even Betty Crocker was not cooking in the home anymore. Shapiro said that her disappearance was “as if a human presence was no longer relevant to cooking.” Commercials featuring cartoon wooden spoons magically mixing cake batter took the place of the matronly and competent kitchen confidant. Betty Crocker, the radio star, endeared women to their kitchens. Betty Crocker, the picture on a cake box, rang the bell of obsolescence for mid-century women.
By the 1950s, Shapiro described the idea of “wholly compliant femininity,” a concept that valued patriotic domesticity for women. The ideal woman had goals: be a great housekeeper, mother, citizen, and above all, feed your family well. The government, advertising, and cook books all touted similar versions of domesticity for the new American woman. Women’s magazines, such as Woman’s Day, reiterated the domestic ideal by including menus and recipes that, miraculously, coincided with supermarket sales on Campbell’s Soup, Bisquick, or Birdseye frozen vegetables. An important change was occurring: subtly, and for the first time, idealized domesticity dropped the idea of “home cooking” as a necessity. Scientific cooking was on its way out in favor of ease and culinary trickery. “Cooking could be seen as a brief and impersonal relationship with food,” rather than an extensive, time consuming chore.
Herein entered the concept of American Cuisine. Despite the efforts of those in the Boston School of Cooking, a singular style of cooking had always eluded American homes. The emergence of convenience foods across the nation spurred a new style of eating that was authentically American. Even “ethnic cooking” took on a distinctively American slant. In the I Hate to Cook Cookbook, Peg Bracken lists the ingredients for “India Chicken Soup”: curry powder, one can of condensed cream of chicken soup, one bouillon cube (chicken flavored, assumedly,) cream and slivered almonds. Mix, cook, and sprinkle with decorative almonds. It seems quite simple, and quite un-Indian. “Rosy Rice” was white rice cooked in V-8 juice, garnished with a pat of butter and salt. “Turkey Divan” included a can of cream of chicken soup, a package of frozen broccoli, turkey, and Parmesan cheese: all ingredients were combined and broiled. Convenience, long the savior of housewives, taught women that “proper” cooking with whole and natural ingredients was not really necessary. Why make cream of mushroom soup with fresh mushrooms, cream, and roux when you can simply open a can of Campbell’s? The domestic scientists would have been rolling in their graves. In fact, very few remnants of the Boston Cooking School remained, but what never went away was presentation, both for food and for the women cooking it.
Feminist Identity Crisis
Food historian Joanne Hollows argued that “through consumption practices, women were active in producing gendered and classed identities in the ways they made their houses homes.” Food corporations used advertising to school women on what constituted “good taste” and women changed their consumption habits. By biting on the lure of advertising, women were active participants in perpetuating gender, racial, and class distinctions. The 1950s accentuated prosperity; coming out of the rationed war years, consumers had increased purchase options. Booming employment and mass production of consumer goods gave the middle class a degree of affluence, and the decrease in goods prices made affluence something that the middle class could buy on a working class budget. Materialistic consumption was visible for both genders, but it society deemed consumption as a feminine trait (and therefore an indicator of gender weakness.) As has been discussed, the prominence of women in the workforce after WWII expanded the consumer culture. More household income meant more purchasing power. Cheaper goods permeated homes because of women in the workforce, despite advertising and television shows that sought to professionalize the role of housewife. The simplification of household chores and industrialization of food condensed preparation time for the postwar homemaker; this theoretically should have given women more time for work outside the home. However, the permeating barrage of advertising encouraged women to stay in their homes. Consumption increased, which increased housework. Women were placed in a no-win situation: if they stayed in the work force, they could purchase more goods and support the post-war consumer culture. If they did not work, they supported the cultural cult of true womanhood by being mothers and family supporters in their homes, but without additional purchasing power. There is no wonder why women of the mid-1900s were confused about their roles in society. Avakian argued that women were in a constant state of conflict: “they want and need work, yet they are still wedded to the notion that ‘good’ women are defined by a clean house and abundant home-cooked meals.”
There was a two-fold issue that increased the dissatisfaction for American women: being cut out of the post-war production cycle, as well as being treated as pawns for advertising campaigns. This put women in a difficult position. Throughout all of the transformations, a crucial problem remained: if women did not belong in the work force, and convenience made their home lives unimportant, what was the true role of women? From a Marxist point of view, active production was an inherently masculine human trait: consumption was passive and the antithesis of work (and, therefore, a feminine trait.) Hollows stated, “People increasingly saw themselves in relation to what they consumed rather than in relation to production.” This certainly applies to women in the post-war era. Of course, some women decided, whether financially or personally, to continue to work after the war. Regardless, the transition from “producer” to “consumer” must have been quite a difficult adjustment for those mid-century women who decided to heed the call of government (and their husbands) to stay home and guide a nuclear family. When they were no longer useful producers, rather degraded to the status of consumer, one can appreciate what the journalist Betty Friedan called “the problem that has no name.” The American housewife, freed from the drudgery of laborious chores, facing better childbirth survival rates, and experiencing greater educational opportunities and consumption choices (cars, appliances, and most importantly, food on supermarket shelves) was suddenly suffering from feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction. According to Marxist correlations, one could say society devalued women by encouraging a system that cherished passivity, daintiness, and consumption over productivity for women.
To further complicate the story, some early feminists saw convenience foods as their ticket out of the kitchen and into the public sphere. Historian Mary McFeeley stated that processed foods played an important role for working women by “relieving the pressure” of nightly dinner. Some later women’s studies historians grieved the loss of female-gendered tradition that revolves around the kitchen, and blamed packaged foods (and the stalwart advertisers of the foods) for the loss of home customs. Hardly does one hear the same lamentation over the introduction of laundry equipment or dishwashers, similar technology that certainly eased the lives of housewives when they proliferated during the mid-century. Most women’s studies historians agree that ready-made foods allowed not only for less time toiling in the kitchen, but for more outside work and leisure time. In the 1950s, when women were transitioning from a wartime national workforce to homemakers (and sometimes back again,) these foods bridged the gap between private and public. Contrary to the idealized post-war story, women were actually quite fluid in the workforce during the 1950s. Nearly thirty percent of American mothers worked, and convenience was crucial for their families. A woman could work all day and come home to have the meal ready for her family at a reasonable time. This was a huge development for the twentieth century household. Dual incomes allowed for more consumption, but also more Marxist fulfillment for women: they could be a type of producer again. Theoretically, this would alleviate the “problem that has no name” that Friedan so clearly explained. However, there is question whether this really happened or not.
A pointed part of the issue lies in home responsibility. Although convenience foods made meals easy, women were still responsible for getting supper on the table. Freed from bread baking, mothers still had to make sandwiches for the school children. Birthday cakes, although now made from a Pillsbury boxed mix, still needed to be cooked and ready for birthday parties. Despite what the advertisements portrayed, there was no magical cartoon spoon that would make the cake. That chore rested almost exclusively on mothers. This was increasingly difficult for women who worked. Minorities especially felt the brunt of uneven gendered responsibility, as they have always worked more outside the home than their white counterparts. By the 1960s, gender gaps in household responsibility held women accountable for almost fifteen additional work hours per week than their male counterparts. That equated to an extra month of labor per year for working mothers. The truth is, despite all the advancements in technology and food, women continually preformed more chores in the home than their male partners, regardless of the fact that the numbers of working mothers increased 400% from 1940 to 1960.
The Crossroads
The pressure of consumption, especially regarding food choices, was intense for twentieth century women. Societal expectations did not line up with women’s needs, and the mid-century homemaker was thoroughly confused. Food preparation was intrinsically tied to womanhood, as it was both a mark of femininity and a heavy hand of oppression. For most women, “The packaged life, it appeared, was less than perfect.” By the 1960s, women who raised children during the 1940s and 1950s now had teenagers and young adults ready to head off to college or the Vietnam War. There was a thirty percent chance that these mothers had worked outside the home at some point while their children were young, but many women, regardless of their work situations, felt a sense of betrayal. They had very little recognition for their post-war sacrifices for their children and homes, and even their home lives were degraded by convenience foods that made homemaking obsolete. American women were at a crossroads. Media portrayed working women as less than ideal mothers. Advertisers treated homemakers as vapid, gullible pawns for consumption. Friedan said that these women had one goal — “to prove that women were not a passive, empty mirror, nor a frilly, useless decoration.” In short, women had to prove that they were human beings. This was not an easy thing, as they had even seen their kitchen identity co-opted by a male-centric media and advertising corps. American women were ripe for a revolution, and the organizations of the 1960s and 1970s were a direct result of confusing home and societal expectations in the previous decades.
The story of the American kitchen is a both love affair and an emotionally abusive relationship. Food advertising degraded women while praising their angelic domestic qualities. Coupled with unrealistic expectations of perfection in the home, women were working harder to prove their worth in an archaic societal system that honored domesticity over all other occupations. Food advertisers, educators, and major corporations used women’s ambitions to further their own financial statuses. One of the biggest losses for American women throughout all the food advancements was a loss of cooking skills. Advertisements that accentuated convenience were active in taking proficiency away from women at a time when they might have needed it the most. Advertisers actively exploited women within their own kitchens, and women responded by launching a battle for respect that opened the door for women’s equality movements.
Bibliography (footnotes available on request)
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