December 18, 2019 • 35 mins
Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima, Mrs. Butterworth - are any of these famous female food mascots based on a real person? What does pancake syrup have to do with it? What's the deal with Mrs. Butterworth and KFC's Colonel Sanders? All these ingredients make up a recipe for a fascinating historical deep dive on the female faces behind some of our most iconic food brands.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuff.
I've never told you a protection of I heart radios
have stuff work. Oh that's gonna make me hungry. Yeah. Yeah,
it's very rare that we do episodes on this show
(00:25):
that I have crapings them. I'm gonna need some pancakes
now that we've been talking about them. I could go
for pancakes. I have a pancakes wherever. We need to
go to the Pancakes Social Right near us. There is
a pancake restaurant in here. I've never been to it.
Not a sponsor, just located near us. On lists list listen.
(00:45):
You say, well, then we must go. Well, we're gonna
have to persevere it through this. First. I wanted to talk.
I wanted to ask you, are you a cook, Samantha. Well,
I am a box or an instructions kind of cooker.
So essentially, if you hand me tell something and tell
me to do it this way, then I'm like, cool,
let me do that. But I'm also one of those
(01:06):
worriers when it comes to cooking, so I will overcook
almost everything, yes, because I don't want to die or
have some kind of body malfunctions. Because of my dinner
or I don't want anyone else to experience that. So
chicken is always gonna be a little more cook than not. Um. Fish, Yeah,
(01:29):
probably a little more cooked than not. Now, steak I'm
pretty good with. But it's like ground bee ground truck
ground turkey. Yeah, I'm gonna probably overcook back quite a bit,
but I'm gonna add a lot of spices to it. Um.
I'm pretty good at when it comes to baking, because
you have to follow those instructions. There's no real way
to like navigate away from that without making a complete
disaster unless you are trained or having right It's good.
(01:52):
But even with baking, like you have to have a
certain amount of liquid to go with all of the
dry or you're gonna have something really bad if you
have expired things which I figured out, like baking powder
or baking soda. You know that it messes up things
as well, so that I have kind of figured out.
But I'm also one of those that, oh, I did it,
and then I try again. I screwed it up somehow,
(02:14):
like it turned out so well last time, and no
one believes me. It's the humidity I always blame that.
I love cooking, I'm the opposite of you. Right, you
make full on festive mills. I do those out of
boxes once again, like everything comes out of a macaroni
cheese box or canned veggies that I'm going to reheat somehow. Yeah, yeah,
(02:38):
I I love it. I don't necessarily love the obligation
of it. It was something I struggled with for a
while when I was like, I'm a feminis, Now should
I cook for other people? The answer is yes, but
it's fine if you like to do it then yeah, um,
but I I am. I'm risky perhaps with my behavior cooking.
(02:58):
I don't overcook ill on the edge of yes, that's
that's an that makes I'm not gonna eat with other people.
Come okay, then I won't risk your health. You're not
going to make one of those. I was like, look,
chicken medium, well or medium? I'm like, what the hell's
wrong with you? You're gonna die. I won't impose my
behavior upon you or any of my uncooked but you know,
(03:20):
my first experiences. Maybe that's what this is why I
like like box things. Is from my easy bake ovin.
All you do is add water and then you stick
it into the light bulb. I wanted an easy bake
oven so badly, and I got it as a gift
when I was seven, way too old. Friends, I haven't
asked for this shares, so I just got it and
(03:44):
kind of put it away and donorated it. Uh. Look,
I love those sugary paper tasting cookies so much. Well,
I was very jealous of you. I didn't know you,
but I used to um and my French class we
had a day where everyone will bring in desserts and
at the time, I wasn't that into cooking, and I
(04:05):
would bring in a Duncan Hinz brownie mix brownie box
mix every year and people loved it, and they would
always ask me the recipe and I would act all coy.
Oh it's secret recipe. As far as I know, no
one ever figured it out. Oh you're a commercial. Well
that's what they do in commercials. Yeah, it's a family recipe.
(04:25):
And I used to look around it is like a
box of something. Yeah, people were so they wanted it
so badly. I even had one of my schoolmates mom
asked me for it. Well, you know a little, but
we're not talking about Duncan Hines to day. Who is
a real person. We're talking about some famous female faces
(04:46):
on food products, which is one big famous box product.
What Betty Crocker, she has all those box products, Yes, exactly,
Betty Crocker, Antemima and Mrs Butterworth. Briefly, um, and since
this is a time of a lot of cooking for
many of us, we thought it would be time like maybe, yeah, yeah,
I will be bringing some kind of dessert to my
(05:08):
friends giving friends Christmas. Thing for friends Christmas, Yes, feast
mus Oh. I like what they named it because we
also do like people all whatever white elephant thing dirties,
and I think that might be a different thing. Maybe. No,
I think this. Someone's gonna tell me something else. Don't
(05:31):
send me anything, don't send me pictures, don't send any
dirty Santa pictures. Please, Antic you know it's really good. No,
I'm the one who message here with the impacts. Don't
do it. And I just want to say before we
get into this that when I was researching it, I
got a ton of results, like the top five sexiest
(05:54):
food icons. Just made me think, why does the green
emma and then have to be sexy because the legend
and duh that if you're eating it. It's gonna make
you horny. Yes, because always I grew up knowing this,
and we were all felt a little naughty. We'd save
the green for the last. I don't think it worked, though,
I would be shocked. I have never heard this. Wow,
(06:19):
we knew this growing up, the green amine, the things
you know when you're a kid, the things you believe.
I think you're so witty when you're a kid. And
then the red eminem's were poison. Oh no, I didn't
hear that. The brown eminems are like whatever. Yeah, but
I like, of course, I actually really like the yellow ones.
(06:39):
This is a real journalistic deep keep going, now, Okay,
so let's talk about Betty Crocker. There's a fascinating history
here until she was dethroned by Flow of the insurance.
What insurance is that progressive has like ten representatives and
one of them is that? And yeah, okay, so Flow.
(07:00):
Betty Crocker was the most famous fictional female in the US,
according to ad Week. New York Daily News article listed
her alongside Barbie, Santa Claus and Uncle Sam as one
of the world's most influential fictional figures. Over two hundred
grocery products carry her name. These days, Betty Crocker graces
(07:23):
many boxes of cake mix and canned icing, but she
used to be someone women could contact for cooking advice.
Dear Betty Crocker, my cake won't rise. Dear Betty Crocker,
was the secret to fluffy pancakes. Dear Betty Crocker, I
need a good pie recipe. Betty Crocker not only provided
the answers to cooking questions like these, she was also
(07:43):
a proponent of trying new things in the kitchen, and
she would be there as a safety net if something
went wrong. But now for the important question, is she
a real person? And the answers Nope. The Washburn and
Crosby Company, a flour milling which would go on to
become General Mills, developed the character of Betty Crocker as
(08:04):
a part of an advertising campaign. So Washburn Crosby got started.
In eighteen eighty entered the International Milling Competition with their
new Flower, and they won the gold Medal. They were
so thrilled that they changed the name of their product
to Gold Medal Flower, which still exists and the number
one selling brand of flower to this day. The company
decided to run an ad for Gold Medal Flower in
(08:26):
the Saturday Evening Post. The ad consisted of a jigsaw
puzzle of a small town square, and the prize for
correctly solving the puzzle and sending it in was a
gold medal flower shaped in cushion, which I actually would
really like myself, even though I don't so Wait is
it like a shape of the actual Over thirty thousand
(08:47):
people sent completed puzzles to Washburn and Crosby, and a
lot of them included baking questions. To the company's surprise,
the smallesh advertising department, composed entirely of men and led
by Samuel Gale, had dealt with customer questions and completes previously.
They would direct these questions to the women who worked
at the Gold Medal Home service staff. However, Gail wasn't
(09:09):
a fan of using his name when he signed off
on this advice. He suspected the customers would rather get
advice from a woman, who, of course did most of
the cooking and the home at the time. Gunder norm's
being what they were. The very fact that these men
consulted women before answering questions reinforces that um, that whole
thing that whole idea, and most people writing in were women.
(09:32):
The amount of questions the company received as a part
of the contest really emphasized the need for a woman
to answer these questions, so a woman people would trust,
So they invented a fictional woman to fill their needs,
Betty Crocker. Her last name was actually borrowed from William G. Crocker,
who at the time had just retired as the director
of Washburn Crosby. The first name was chosen because it
(09:52):
sounded all American, both cheery and unthreatening. With the name
decided upon, they needed a signature a female employees were
called upon to submit their ideas. The winning signature was
Secretary Florence Limbard's, so any letter answering a customers question
would be signed Betty Crocker quote unquote. People were even
trained to match the signature. Such was the demand for
(10:12):
Betty Crocker, the company created the Betty Crocker Kitchens cooking
schools that they sponsored throughout the country. Women who worked
in the home department at the company who were involved
in answering mal addressed to Betty were called the Croquettes.
The Crockett which is really kind of gross sounding I
don't know why. For three years, Betty Crocker existed primarily
and written format or in name at these schools. That
(10:35):
changed in when she debuted on Washburn Crosby's new radio
cooking show on Minneapolis w c c O, which stood
for Washburn Crosby Company. This was a station they saved,
the company saved from bankruptcy. The show was called Betty
Crocker Cooking School of the Air. Graduates of the on
air school sent in reports to be graded by Betty Crocker.
(10:58):
That first year there were two hunt thirty eight graduates.
The show was written and hosted by home economist Marjorie
Child hosted. The show pretty quickly went nationwide after that,
and each region had their own Betty Crocker voice. The
scripts were written at the company's national headquarters. It had
featured prominent guests like Joan Crawford and Carrie Grant In
(11:20):
The radio show became a part of the new NBC network,
where it would remain for twenty four years. Over a
million listeners enrolled into the on air cooking show over
that time. So when Hustard was later asked about the
whole thing, she said, it is very interesting to me
to look back now and realize how concerned I was
about the welfare of women as homemakers and their feelings
(11:40):
of self respect. Women needed a champion here where millions
of them staying at home alone, doing a job with children, cooking, cleaning,
on minimal budgets, the whole depressing mess of it. They
needed someone to remind them that they had value. Very smart.
The first grocery item bearing Betty Crocker's name was a
super mix in and the cake Mix appeared a few
(12:01):
years later in n and then in nineteen fifty, Betty
Crocker's picture cookbook hit the shelves. It sold two million
copies in its first two years and has sold over
sixty million copies since, and it's still available under the
name the Betty Crocker Cookbook Do They Really Uh? It
is sometimes referred to as the Kitchen Bible or Big
(12:23):
Red Recipes complete with pictures. That was a new thing
that was very exciting at the time. It was another
way to make cooking less intimidating. In Fortune magazine named
her the second most popular woman in the United States
behind Eleanor Roosevelt. They also outed her as a fraud.
She wasn't a real person, but nobody seemed to carry
(12:45):
out uh and this whole thing on to her nickname,
The First Lady of Food. Surveys from this time period
found that nine out of ten women were familiar with
Betty Crocker. She was getting about five thousand letters a day,
according to Susan Marks in her book Finding Betty Crocker,
The Secret Life of America's First a Lady of Food.
(13:06):
People who visited the headquarters to find out Betty Crocker
wasn't real often started crying, and the company even kept
tissues at hand for this. Yeah, I guess that's really
heart piking, and I think we forget too. There was
no Internet at this time. Um, you're really dependent on
either people you knew in your life teaching you or
(13:27):
sharing the recipes with you or recipe books. And if
you're trying to mix things up, especially on a budget,
which women were pretty judged for at that time, how
fancy of a thing can you make? This cheap thing?
That's why we got things like aspects. Um, that is
a lot of stress, and I'm sure it was very
comforting to have someone you could call and who just
(13:50):
be someone you could talk to about it at the
behest of the U S Office of War Information in
Betty Crocker spent four months on the radio show Our
Nations rations aimed at helping listeners be creative and resourceful
when it came to cooking with rationed foods and parallel
there was a Betty Crocker pamphlet about the same thing,
(14:11):
called Your Share. Seven million copies of it were distributed.
A second pamphlet, Through Highway to Good Nutrition, was recognized
by the American Red Cross for contributing to the national interest.
Well that's big so. In nineteen fifty one, the advent
of televisions in home across the U S. Met Washburn
and Crosby needed to find someone to be the face
(14:31):
and voice of Betty Crocker. They hired actress Adelaide Halloway
for the role. Betty Crocker showed up a handful of
television programs at the time, including Betty Crocker Television Show
and The Betty Crocker Star Mattenee. There were illustrations previously.
The first official portrait, completed in nineteen thirty six, was
a composite of the faces of the women who worked
in Washburn and Crosby's Home Service Department by NASA McMain.
(14:53):
It didn't change for two decades. The image has since
been updated seven times to reflect current taste. In eighteen
sixty five, she was depicted as sort of a Jackie
Kennedy esque, but in general she stayed pretty much the same.
A white woman with brown hair around the age of
thirty two, wearing red and white. A nine condition by
painter John Stewart Ingle did image her with olive skin
(15:15):
in an attempt to make her more inclusive. He created
this portrail based on seventy five images of women. General
Mills thought captured the spirit of Betty Crocker. By observing
the evolution of Betty Crocker, we can get an idea
of the evolution of American women, yeah, and especially how
we perceived them. From a nineteen fifty four to nineteen
seventy seven high school seniors competed for scholarships around their
(15:38):
skills in homeck and the Betty Crocker searched for the
All American Homemaker of Tomorrow. The Betty Crocker monthly recipe
magazine debuted in nineteen seventy two called Sphere. The Betty
Crocker magazine. I found an excellent archive of all of them,
and people are still into this magazine. They remember this
(15:59):
recipe that so good, and they try to find it
on the archive. In the comment section, you can see
people helping each other out about just researching the levels
of ingredients and recipes. I wonder how that has changed
over time. Yes, challenge, fascinating, Let's do this, don't tep me.
The magazine opened with this quote, as women were lucky
(16:20):
to be alive right now amid the universal tumult. It's
more than ever a woman's world, with twentieth century reality
located somewhere between the swooning vapors of Victorian forebears and
the militant fervor of women's lib Wow. There's just some
really big extremes. So seven can I be the swooning
victorianka cool? So nowadays she has a website full of
(16:43):
recipes and advice. When the Betty Crocker iPad app debuted
in two thousand ten, it was among the most popular
free apps. Betty Crocker pamplets are available in grocery stores.
Still really yeah wow. In two thousand fourteen, she got
some media attention when the company started supplying same sex
wedding cakes in a Minnesota, their home state, when gay
marriage was legalized, the company gifted the first three gay
(17:05):
couples married in Minnesota with gifts and a wedding cake.
In the same year, her website launched thirty cakes for
thirty days of Ramadan. The Middle East is the brand's
second largest market. A two thousand and sixty update of
her cook book added an entire chapter for vegetarians and
recipes like Chicken to Jane. It's also been translated into Spanish.
Other books have been added to the enterprise as well,
(17:26):
like Betty Crocker's Home Indian Cooking. Two fifty books with
her name have been published at General Mills headquarters in Minnesota.
There's a Betty Crocker available for questions seven. So now,
if you go there will be a Betty Crocker. If
you go looking for Betty Crocker, someone will be there. Wait, so, like,
did they just all change it out? I guess that's
(17:46):
a shift. There's shifts, sure, sure, sure, what had to
be on the night shift. I would love to interview
someone who've been Betty Crocker. Does anybody know anyone that's
been Betty Crocker. Please let us know we need to
interview Betty Probles. We can we have a ten minute
session where people sending in questions. Yes, I would love
(18:07):
to think it would be awesome. Yeah. I have to
say the story of Betty Crocker was a lot more
interesting than I thought it was going. Very interesting. It's
also a great It just shows how we've changed and
it's interesting to look at it through this character as
kudos to them progressing over time. Yes, well, we have
(18:27):
some other food characters to talk about, but first we
have a quick break for word from our sponsor, and
we're back. Thank you sponsoring. Oh is it time for
(18:49):
the sexy syrups? Apparently Samantha doesn't agree with my characterization
of syrups, but I find most commercials to pick them
as sexy. I see all. I think it is sticky
and I don't like it. Well, don't I mean not
to get too into sex in this episode, But isn't
that a thing people put like honey or syrup and
people's bodies don't all alright? All I could think it
(19:12):
was like, well, we agree to disagree, sexy Tom, I'm
not saying they are sexy. I'm just saying they're depicted
as sexy. Yes, And so we're talking about Aunt Jemima.
This discussion around sexy syrup goes back to my question
of why everyone, every character we're talking about is somehow
related to pancakes and syrup. I didn't find the answer
(19:34):
to that, but we're going to talk about Yes, an Jemima.
She is the face of a line of pancake mixes
and syrups. To get to the bottom of Aunt Jemima's history,
we have to go back to eighteen ninety and a
former slave by the name of Nancy Green, then living
in Chicago after being born into slavery in thirty four
in Kentucky. The original creators of the mascot, Charles Rutt
(19:57):
and Charles Underword, came up with her look of an
apron and bandana in eighteen eighty nine. They had just
purchased Pearl Milling Company and they were looking for something
to someone to represent their new idea of a self
rising pancake flower that only required water. And this is
one of the first mixes available in the US. They
(20:19):
drew inspiration for this character from a minstrel show that
was popular at the time and just a refresher. Minstrel
shows where a popular nineteenth century and later form of
American entertainment in which white actors and black face portrayed
black people as lazy, stupid, easily frightened, and highly superstitious.
A popular song of these minstrel shows was penned in
(20:40):
eighteen seventy five by a black performer, Billy Currsands, and
it was called Old Aunt Jemima and Minstrel Shows. It
was performed by people in black face, and a white
man portrayed Aunt Jemima as a slave on a Southern plantation.
He wore the look that they ended up going with.
The two original creators of Aunt Geo Mama's character in
regards to selling a food product sold a company the
(21:02):
same year they came up with her to RT Davis.
He found Nancy Green and with her created the Antjemima brand.
People were intensely curious about the true identity of Anti Mima,
so much so that the police were called to control
the crowd at the Antemma exhibit at the World's Colombian Exposition.
Green served thousands of people that visited the exhibit. Pancakes
(21:25):
and people reportedly were so charmed by her kind demeanor
that she was awarded for her show woman shift at
the exhibition. As a result of her extremely successful appearance there,
the company received fifty thou orders for their pancake mix
in the wake of it. They renamed their company to
Aunt Jemima Mills Company in nineteen fourteen, and they were
(21:46):
so impressed with Green's performance they offered her a lifetime
position as their spokesperson as sales of their products continued
to soar. However, that came to an rupt end in
when she lost her life in a car crash. The owner,
Artie Davis, was forced to sell the company to Quaker
Oats due to financial issues. Soon after, Anna Robinson was
tapped to be the new face of ant Jemima, a
(22:08):
portrait now appearing on packages. She also appeared at the
nineteen thirty three World's Fair, which was followed by Chicago
based blue singer and actress Edith Wilson. She became the
first person to appear as the character in commercials, and
at this time as still included racial dialects like Isa.
Former teacher and actress ethel Ernestine Harper assumed the mantle
after Wilson. After that, an advertising employee, a Quaker Oates
(22:31):
named Rosie Hall, took on this position. When she died,
her grave was deemed as a historical landmark. In nineteen
fifty five, Eileen Louise made her first public appearance as
the mascot of an Jemima restaurant in Disneyland, and A
Short Harrington also did a stand as an Jebama at
public events in the New York area. The Antjemima radio
show ran for from nineteen thirty to nineteen two. Jemima
(22:55):
was played by a white black face actress who portrayed
Antjemima and other formats. It was essentially a minstrel show
for radio. As early as the nineteen fifties, people were
questioning the races undertones of Aunt Jemima. The n double
a CP started strongly recommending that schools not invite Antjemima
to speak at them. Increased public scrutiny led Quaker Oats
(23:16):
to cancel a television campaign in nineteen sixty seven, around
the time we got the Civil Rights Act, and ditch
her name from their Disneyland restaurant. The brand updated Aunt
Jemima's image in nineteen eighty nine, in an effort to
avoid criticisms of a mammy stereotype, gone was the headscarfor
traded out instead for a lace collar and pearl earrings,
(23:37):
and her skin was lightened. She also gradually got thinner.
Many historians argue that the mammy stereotype is the stereotype
of something that never existed, and said it was a
fiction cooked up by white Southerners to placate themselves around
relationships between white men enslaved black women. The mammy was
sexually undesirable and not a threat to white women or
(23:58):
social norms, happy to serve the white man, and played
into the narrative that black women were happy to be enslaved.
According to Kimberly Wallace Sanders in her book Mammy, A
Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory, quote Antimima's success
was predicted upon a fascinating interweeding of commerce, memory, and
racial nostalgia that served as a vehicle of post Civil
(24:18):
War national consolidation. An African American woman pretending to be
a slave was pivotal to be the trademarks commercial achievement
in eighteen It's success revolved around the fantasy of returning
a black woman to a sanitized version of slavery. The
anti Mamic character involved the regression of race relations, and
her character helped usher and a prominent resurgence of the
happy slave mythology of the Antebellum South. This popular recreation
(24:42):
of an African American woman's lives stood in direct opposition
to the efforts of real African American women struggling to
publicly assert their citizenship. As a symbol of racial harmony,
An Jemima proved to be preferred version of African American
womanhood and exultation of slave aucuracy nostalgia. Beginning in Latice
Night appeared and as for spokespersons for Quaker Oaths very
(25:03):
briefly presented her as Aunt Jemima herself. As two of
Harrington's great grandsons were suing Aunt Jemima's parent company, Quaker Oats,
for two billion for unpaid royalties and damages, Harrington played
Antemima previously. According to them, their mother and Green Nancy Green,
were instrumental in developing the self rising pancake mix. Even
(25:27):
before she was Auntjemima, Harrington had a reputation for her
delicious pancakes. One of Harrington's great grandsons wrote in the suit,
Aunt Jemima has become known as one of the most
exploited and abused women in American history. It's really kind
of gross. I was wondering how much they paid these women.
Ah yeah, I'm sure it was not at all reasonable. Yeah. Yeah,
(25:51):
so that's a bit of that's a pretty dark history
for that. Um when we do have a little bit
more for you, but first we have one more quick
break for word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you, sponsor,
(26:19):
And we're back with Mrs Butterworth. More's up, more syrup.
I'm telling you. So, I didn't even consider her when
I was originally planning who who do involve in this episode,
but that the study we mentioned earlier finding Betty Crocker
is the most recognized woman in the United States or whatever.
Mrs Butterworth was behind her, which is interesting. I do like,
(26:41):
as we're talking, I can see the picture of the
children talking to the bottle. Yeah, that's what I'm saying
right now, But I don't remember that commercial pretty distinctly.
They have a whole wealth of commercials available throughout the
decades if you would like to see them, So yes,
let's talk about her. She is now synonymous with a
brand of box pancake mixes and syrups, although her most
(27:04):
iconic iteration is as the shape of the pancake syrup
bottles that shape a bottle in the shape of Mrs
butter with a woman who was patented in nineteen sixty six.
Mrs Butterworth is unique in this sense. She was one
of a few, if not the only, products shaped after
their namesake. I couldn't really think of anybody else, all right.
(27:29):
She's sort of a grandmotherly in her shape, a button
down dress with a collar, a wide skirt. Her hair
is up in a bun. I suppose the sweetness of
syrup is sort of symbolic of the sweetness we assume
women have. She does cross her hands in her lap
almost yeah and yeah. Since Ginger norms at the time
(27:51):
place women in charge of all things domestic, including the kitchen,
she in theory she was a real person would know
what she was talking about. These are the speculations when
I was really trying to get to the bottom of
why why why why just why? Mrs Butterworth's history is
a bit murky. First off, when you search for Mrs Butterworth.
(28:13):
One of the first suggested search terms is is Mrs
Butterworth Black. Rumor has it she was originally modeled after
actress Thelma Butterfly McQueen, who posed for the iconic bottle
soon after she wrapped up filming as the mammy character
Prissy and got into the wind. However, that doesn't really
square with her first on air appearance, where actress Cliff
(28:34):
are Cut as Charlie We represented her as an older
white woman. Actress Mary Kay Bergman went on to later
provide the voice of Mrs Butterworth, similarly in the style
of an older white woman. A lot of questions around
racism and Mrs Butterworth seems system from her proximity to
and perhaps mimicry of Anjemima. In two thousand nine, Pinnacle
(28:55):
Foods revealed Mrs Butterworth's first name is Joy. Prior to
the reveal, the company launched a contest encouraging people to
guess the name. Two people won five dollars are correctly
guessing and a case of the syrup. Of course, this
is interesting because, according to a brand manager, no one
bothered to ask what the first name was until an
employee's son asked, this could be because she's fictional, or
(29:16):
it could be because, at least partly because the most
important part of her identity is that she's married. Obviously, right,
what else do you need to know? She's worth is marriage?
Does her worth is butter marriage? An Onion headline from
TWI seventeen read Mike Pence asked waiter to remove Mrs
Butterworth from table until a wife arrives, s poking fun
(29:37):
at his reluctance flash refusal to be alone with a
woman other than his wife. Here is the article that's
really brief, expressing concerns about the propriety of being left
alone with a certain container of the opposite sex. Vice
President Mike Pence reportedly asked the waiter Thursday to remove
Mrs Butterworth from the table until his wife rapped to
join him at a local diner. Excuse me, sir, would
(29:58):
you please take this out of my line of sight
and full my wife gets here, said Pence, who reportedly
attempted to put the table sugar dispenser and salt and
pepper shakers between him and the feminine syrup bottle, before
deciding that even having Mrs Butterworth within arms reach could
lead him to have impure thoughts. It just would not
be right for me to sit here alone with a
woman's shape container, particularly one as shapely as this. In fact,
(30:19):
I would advise you to do the same for the
man sitting over there I see is seating very close
to Mrs Butterworth, even though he appears are we wearing
a wedding ring? At press time, Pence had to ask
the wayer to pour syrup on his pancakes for him,
as it would be unseemingly to handle the curves of
the plastic woman in such a public place. And she
like a bell shape she is. But one of the
(30:41):
second most return search items for me was what happened
to Mrs Butterworth's boobs? And there's a whole Breddit threat
about didn't she used to have big boobs? What happened
to the boobs? I don't remember boobs. Most it wasn't
looking for them. Maybe I don't know. Most people seem
to say they were at the shape well. Apparently a
(31:03):
commercial that came out in early two thousand nineteen depicted
Colonel Sanders of KFC and Mrs Butterworth. The life size bottle.
What flirting? Yeah, yeah, so Mrs Butterworth makes the first move,
so I guess that's progress. She's the one that's coming
on to him, and they go in for a kiss
and the commercial ends a cliffhanger none of us ever
(31:25):
expected to have to contemplate. Ever, No, it cuts instead
to a covered waffles and add for their fried chicken
and waffles and another example of the sexualization of food.
Maybe yeah no, um. This was a sequel to the
previous ad for the same product that depicted the two
mascots recreating the scene from the end of Dirty Dancing. Yes,
(31:49):
and I happened to see that. I wasn't looking for
this ad. It happened to come up for me when
I was watching a YouTube video today and it's ghost
It's the scene from Ghosts Or they are doing the
clay thing, and I think the wait is a Dirty
Dancing There is the clay thing. I think there's more
than one. So they just really like Patrick Swayzy, that's
(32:09):
what you're trying to tell me? Could be true? Well,
I learned that they have a Nashville Hot version of
this now for limited time, so of course I'm not
gonna lie that sounds delicious. Okay. First and foremost, however,
do I want it to be sexualized? No? I don't
want to think about Colonel Sanders being sexual not that
do I want to think Mrs Butterworth, you do you
(32:30):
I want to be I'm telling her to do her thing,
do your thing. I'm just gonna eat the chicken with syrup.
Oh my gosh, it is really creepy. It reminds me
of the Burger King mascot because it's oh they are Yeah,
that's not okay, it's you already know how about life
(32:52):
size things coming to life, in animate objects coming to live.
So this is not cool. This is butter coming off. Also,
I can't even say the words starrup, right, So this
is a nightmare in itself. There's a lot of layers
of terror happening. Well, it was a successful ad, I
would say, because we're talking about it, we remember it.
(33:13):
But also I've been trying to forget it. You'll never
forget it. You'll never forget it. There actually wasn't that
much out there on on Mrs Butterworth. So if any
listeners happen to have the low down on any of
the okay, you don't send me pictures. Don't send me
pictures of whatever you said earlier. I'll take pictures of
(33:35):
Mrs Butterworth, Okay, I don't want anything about Dirty Santa,
and everything else is open, I will take it. We
do have a pretty strong spam filter. Uh. And obviously
there are a lot of other other things we could
have talked about when it comes to to food mascots,
female food mascots like um, The Land of Lakes, Wendy,
(33:58):
Little Debbie Morton, Salt Girl, Jikida, Banana Sun Maiden from
the Raisins, the Green Eminem and now the Brown Eminem. Yeah,
well did you know that I tell you? Ever tell
you the story? Side note about the dude that I
went on a couple of days with talking about knowing
Little Debbie the woman and how awful she was. She's real,
She's apparently real. Yeah, he couldn't lie, But I'm just
(34:20):
saying he told me the story. I was like, cool, cool,
A little listener of ours actually have no idea how
old little Debbie is. Well, if any anybody has information
on that, will you welcome that as well? And if
food things are of interests of you, as always, you
can hear her more of me nording out about food
(34:40):
over on the Safer Podcast. But if you would like
to contact this podcast, yes you can. You can email
us at Stuff Media, mom Stuff at iHeart media dot com.
You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast
or on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks
as always to our superproducer Andrew Howard, have a soaky day.
(35:02):
Thanks to you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You,
the production of I Heeart Radios how Stuff Works. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuff.
I've never told you a protection of I heart radios
have stuff work. Oh that's gonna make me hungry. Yeah. Yeah,
it's very rare that we do episodes on this show
(00:25):
that I have crapings them. I'm gonna need some pancakes
now that we've been talking about them. I could go
for pancakes. I have a pancakes wherever. We need to
go to the Pancakes Social Right near us. There is
a pancake restaurant in here. I've never been to it.
Not a sponsor, just located near us. On lists list listen.
(00:45):
You say, well, then we must go. Well, we're gonna
have to persevere it through this. First. I wanted to talk.
I wanted to ask you, are you a cook, Samantha. Well,
I am a box or an instructions kind of cooker.
So essentially, if you hand me tell something and tell
me to do it this way, then I'm like, cool,
let me do that. But I'm also one of those
(01:06):
worriers when it comes to cooking, so I will overcook
almost everything, yes, because I don't want to die or
have some kind of body malfunctions. Because of my dinner
or I don't want anyone else to experience that. So
chicken is always gonna be a little more cook than not. Um. Fish, Yeah,
(01:29):
probably a little more cooked than not. Now, steak I'm
pretty good with. But it's like ground bee ground truck
ground turkey. Yeah, I'm gonna probably overcook back quite a bit,
but I'm gonna add a lot of spices to it. Um.
I'm pretty good at when it comes to baking, because
you have to follow those instructions. There's no real way
to like navigate away from that without making a complete
disaster unless you are trained or having right It's good.
(01:52):
But even with baking, like you have to have a
certain amount of liquid to go with all of the
dry or you're gonna have something really bad if you
have expired things which I figured out, like baking powder
or baking soda. You know that it messes up things
as well, so that I have kind of figured out.
But I'm also one of those that, oh, I did it,
and then I try again. I screwed it up somehow,
(02:14):
like it turned out so well last time, and no
one believes me. It's the humidity I always blame that.
I love cooking, I'm the opposite of you. Right, you
make full on festive mills. I do those out of
boxes once again, like everything comes out of a macaroni
cheese box or canned veggies that I'm going to reheat somehow. Yeah, yeah,
(02:38):
I I love it. I don't necessarily love the obligation
of it. It was something I struggled with for a
while when I was like, I'm a feminis, Now should
I cook for other people? The answer is yes, but
it's fine if you like to do it then yeah, um,
but I I am. I'm risky perhaps with my behavior cooking.
(02:58):
I don't overcook ill on the edge of yes, that's
that's an that makes I'm not gonna eat with other people.
Come okay, then I won't risk your health. You're not
going to make one of those. I was like, look,
chicken medium, well or medium? I'm like, what the hell's
wrong with you? You're gonna die. I won't impose my
behavior upon you or any of my uncooked but you know,
(03:20):
my first experiences. Maybe that's what this is why I
like like box things. Is from my easy bake ovin.
All you do is add water and then you stick
it into the light bulb. I wanted an easy bake
oven so badly, and I got it as a gift
when I was seven, way too old. Friends, I haven't
asked for this shares, so I just got it and
(03:44):
kind of put it away and donorated it. Uh. Look,
I love those sugary paper tasting cookies so much. Well,
I was very jealous of you. I didn't know you,
but I used to um and my French class we
had a day where everyone will bring in desserts and
at the time, I wasn't that into cooking, and I
(04:05):
would bring in a Duncan Hinz brownie mix brownie box
mix every year and people loved it, and they would
always ask me the recipe and I would act all coy.
Oh it's secret recipe. As far as I know, no
one ever figured it out. Oh you're a commercial. Well
that's what they do in commercials. Yeah, it's a family recipe.
(04:25):
And I used to look around it is like a
box of something. Yeah, people were so they wanted it
so badly. I even had one of my schoolmates mom
asked me for it. Well, you know a little, but
we're not talking about Duncan Hines to day. Who is
a real person. We're talking about some famous female faces
(04:46):
on food products, which is one big famous box product.
What Betty Crocker, she has all those box products, Yes, exactly,
Betty Crocker, Antemima and Mrs Butterworth. Briefly, um, and since
this is a time of a lot of cooking for
many of us, we thought it would be time like maybe, yeah, yeah,
I will be bringing some kind of dessert to my
(05:08):
friends giving friends Christmas. Thing for friends Christmas, Yes, feast
mus Oh. I like what they named it because we
also do like people all whatever white elephant thing dirties,
and I think that might be a different thing. Maybe. No,
I think this. Someone's gonna tell me something else. Don't
(05:31):
send me anything, don't send me pictures, don't send any
dirty Santa pictures. Please, Antic you know it's really good. No,
I'm the one who message here with the impacts. Don't
do it. And I just want to say before we
get into this that when I was researching it, I
got a ton of results, like the top five sexiest
(05:54):
food icons. Just made me think, why does the green
emma and then have to be sexy because the legend
and duh that if you're eating it. It's gonna make
you horny. Yes, because always I grew up knowing this,
and we were all felt a little naughty. We'd save
the green for the last. I don't think it worked, though,
I would be shocked. I have never heard this. Wow,
(06:19):
we knew this growing up, the green amine, the things
you know when you're a kid, the things you believe.
I think you're so witty when you're a kid. And
then the red eminem's were poison. Oh no, I didn't
hear that. The brown eminems are like whatever. Yeah, but
I like, of course, I actually really like the yellow ones.
(06:39):
This is a real journalistic deep keep going, now, Okay,
so let's talk about Betty Crocker. There's a fascinating history
here until she was dethroned by Flow of the insurance.
What insurance is that progressive has like ten representatives and
one of them is that? And yeah, okay, so Flow.
(07:00):
Betty Crocker was the most famous fictional female in the US,
according to ad Week. New York Daily News article listed
her alongside Barbie, Santa Claus and Uncle Sam as one
of the world's most influential fictional figures. Over two hundred
grocery products carry her name. These days, Betty Crocker graces
(07:23):
many boxes of cake mix and canned icing, but she
used to be someone women could contact for cooking advice.
Dear Betty Crocker, my cake won't rise. Dear Betty Crocker,
was the secret to fluffy pancakes. Dear Betty Crocker, I
need a good pie recipe. Betty Crocker not only provided
the answers to cooking questions like these, she was also
(07:43):
a proponent of trying new things in the kitchen, and
she would be there as a safety net if something
went wrong. But now for the important question, is she
a real person? And the answers Nope. The Washburn and
Crosby Company, a flour milling which would go on to
become General Mills, developed the character of Betty Crocker as
(08:04):
a part of an advertising campaign. So Washburn Crosby got started.
In eighteen eighty entered the International Milling Competition with their
new Flower, and they won the gold Medal. They were
so thrilled that they changed the name of their product
to Gold Medal Flower, which still exists and the number
one selling brand of flower to this day. The company
decided to run an ad for Gold Medal Flower in
(08:26):
the Saturday Evening Post. The ad consisted of a jigsaw
puzzle of a small town square, and the prize for
correctly solving the puzzle and sending it in was a
gold medal flower shaped in cushion, which I actually would
really like myself, even though I don't so Wait is
it like a shape of the actual Over thirty thousand
(08:47):
people sent completed puzzles to Washburn and Crosby, and a
lot of them included baking questions. To the company's surprise,
the smallesh advertising department, composed entirely of men and led
by Samuel Gale, had dealt with customer questions and completes previously.
They would direct these questions to the women who worked
at the Gold Medal Home service staff. However, Gail wasn't
(09:09):
a fan of using his name when he signed off
on this advice. He suspected the customers would rather get
advice from a woman, who, of course did most of
the cooking and the home at the time. Gunder norm's
being what they were. The very fact that these men
consulted women before answering questions reinforces that um, that whole
thing that whole idea, and most people writing in were women.
(09:32):
The amount of questions the company received as a part
of the contest really emphasized the need for a woman
to answer these questions, so a woman people would trust,
So they invented a fictional woman to fill their needs,
Betty Crocker. Her last name was actually borrowed from William G. Crocker,
who at the time had just retired as the director
of Washburn Crosby. The first name was chosen because it
(09:52):
sounded all American, both cheery and unthreatening. With the name
decided upon, they needed a signature a female employees were
called upon to submit their ideas. The winning signature was
Secretary Florence Limbard's, so any letter answering a customers question
would be signed Betty Crocker quote unquote. People were even
trained to match the signature. Such was the demand for
(10:12):
Betty Crocker, the company created the Betty Crocker Kitchens cooking
schools that they sponsored throughout the country. Women who worked
in the home department at the company who were involved
in answering mal addressed to Betty were called the Croquettes.
The Crockett which is really kind of gross sounding I
don't know why. For three years, Betty Crocker existed primarily
and written format or in name at these schools. That
(10:35):
changed in when she debuted on Washburn Crosby's new radio
cooking show on Minneapolis w c c O, which stood
for Washburn Crosby Company. This was a station they saved,
the company saved from bankruptcy. The show was called Betty
Crocker Cooking School of the Air. Graduates of the on
air school sent in reports to be graded by Betty Crocker.
(10:58):
That first year there were two hunt thirty eight graduates.
The show was written and hosted by home economist Marjorie
Child hosted. The show pretty quickly went nationwide after that,
and each region had their own Betty Crocker voice. The
scripts were written at the company's national headquarters. It had
featured prominent guests like Joan Crawford and Carrie Grant In
(11:20):
The radio show became a part of the new NBC network,
where it would remain for twenty four years. Over a
million listeners enrolled into the on air cooking show over
that time. So when Hustard was later asked about the
whole thing, she said, it is very interesting to me
to look back now and realize how concerned I was
about the welfare of women as homemakers and their feelings
(11:40):
of self respect. Women needed a champion here where millions
of them staying at home alone, doing a job with children, cooking, cleaning,
on minimal budgets, the whole depressing mess of it. They
needed someone to remind them that they had value. Very smart.
The first grocery item bearing Betty Crocker's name was a
super mix in and the cake Mix appeared a few
(12:01):
years later in n and then in nineteen fifty, Betty
Crocker's picture cookbook hit the shelves. It sold two million
copies in its first two years and has sold over
sixty million copies since, and it's still available under the
name the Betty Crocker Cookbook Do They Really Uh? It
is sometimes referred to as the Kitchen Bible or Big
(12:23):
Red Recipes complete with pictures. That was a new thing
that was very exciting at the time. It was another
way to make cooking less intimidating. In Fortune magazine named
her the second most popular woman in the United States
behind Eleanor Roosevelt. They also outed her as a fraud.
She wasn't a real person, but nobody seemed to carry
(12:45):
out uh and this whole thing on to her nickname,
The First Lady of Food. Surveys from this time period
found that nine out of ten women were familiar with
Betty Crocker. She was getting about five thousand letters a day,
according to Susan Marks in her book Finding Betty Crocker,
The Secret Life of America's First a Lady of Food.
(13:06):
People who visited the headquarters to find out Betty Crocker
wasn't real often started crying, and the company even kept
tissues at hand for this. Yeah, I guess that's really
heart piking, and I think we forget too. There was
no Internet at this time. Um, you're really dependent on
either people you knew in your life teaching you or
(13:27):
sharing the recipes with you or recipe books. And if
you're trying to mix things up, especially on a budget,
which women were pretty judged for at that time, how
fancy of a thing can you make? This cheap thing?
That's why we got things like aspects. Um, that is
a lot of stress, and I'm sure it was very
comforting to have someone you could call and who just
(13:50):
be someone you could talk to about it at the
behest of the U S Office of War Information in
Betty Crocker spent four months on the radio show Our
Nations rations aimed at helping listeners be creative and resourceful
when it came to cooking with rationed foods and parallel
there was a Betty Crocker pamphlet about the same thing,
(14:11):
called Your Share. Seven million copies of it were distributed.
A second pamphlet, Through Highway to Good Nutrition, was recognized
by the American Red Cross for contributing to the national interest.
Well that's big so. In nineteen fifty one, the advent
of televisions in home across the U S. Met Washburn
and Crosby needed to find someone to be the face
(14:31):
and voice of Betty Crocker. They hired actress Adelaide Halloway
for the role. Betty Crocker showed up a handful of
television programs at the time, including Betty Crocker Television Show
and The Betty Crocker Star Mattenee. There were illustrations previously.
The first official portrait, completed in nineteen thirty six, was
a composite of the faces of the women who worked
in Washburn and Crosby's Home Service Department by NASA McMain.
(14:53):
It didn't change for two decades. The image has since
been updated seven times to reflect current taste. In eighteen
sixty five, she was depicted as sort of a Jackie
Kennedy esque, but in general she stayed pretty much the same.
A white woman with brown hair around the age of
thirty two, wearing red and white. A nine condition by
painter John Stewart Ingle did image her with olive skin
(15:15):
in an attempt to make her more inclusive. He created
this portrail based on seventy five images of women. General
Mills thought captured the spirit of Betty Crocker. By observing
the evolution of Betty Crocker, we can get an idea
of the evolution of American women, yeah, and especially how
we perceived them. From a nineteen fifty four to nineteen
seventy seven high school seniors competed for scholarships around their
(15:38):
skills in homeck and the Betty Crocker searched for the
All American Homemaker of Tomorrow. The Betty Crocker monthly recipe
magazine debuted in nineteen seventy two called Sphere. The Betty
Crocker magazine. I found an excellent archive of all of them,
and people are still into this magazine. They remember this
(15:59):
recipe that so good, and they try to find it
on the archive. In the comment section, you can see
people helping each other out about just researching the levels
of ingredients and recipes. I wonder how that has changed
over time. Yes, challenge, fascinating, Let's do this, don't tep me.
The magazine opened with this quote, as women were lucky
(16:20):
to be alive right now amid the universal tumult. It's
more than ever a woman's world, with twentieth century reality
located somewhere between the swooning vapors of Victorian forebears and
the militant fervor of women's lib Wow. There's just some
really big extremes. So seven can I be the swooning
victorianka cool? So nowadays she has a website full of
(16:43):
recipes and advice. When the Betty Crocker iPad app debuted
in two thousand ten, it was among the most popular
free apps. Betty Crocker pamplets are available in grocery stores.
Still really yeah wow. In two thousand fourteen, she got
some media attention when the company started supplying same sex
wedding cakes in a Minnesota, their home state, when gay
marriage was legalized, the company gifted the first three gay
(17:05):
couples married in Minnesota with gifts and a wedding cake.
In the same year, her website launched thirty cakes for
thirty days of Ramadan. The Middle East is the brand's
second largest market. A two thousand and sixty update of
her cook book added an entire chapter for vegetarians and
recipes like Chicken to Jane. It's also been translated into Spanish.
Other books have been added to the enterprise as well,
(17:26):
like Betty Crocker's Home Indian Cooking. Two fifty books with
her name have been published at General Mills headquarters in Minnesota.
There's a Betty Crocker available for questions seven. So now,
if you go there will be a Betty Crocker. If
you go looking for Betty Crocker, someone will be there. Wait, so, like,
did they just all change it out? I guess that's
(17:46):
a shift. There's shifts, sure, sure, sure, what had to
be on the night shift. I would love to interview
someone who've been Betty Crocker. Does anybody know anyone that's
been Betty Crocker. Please let us know we need to
interview Betty Probles. We can we have a ten minute
session where people sending in questions. Yes, I would love
(18:07):
to think it would be awesome. Yeah. I have to
say the story of Betty Crocker was a lot more
interesting than I thought it was going. Very interesting. It's
also a great It just shows how we've changed and
it's interesting to look at it through this character as
kudos to them progressing over time. Yes, well, we have
(18:27):
some other food characters to talk about, but first we
have a quick break for word from our sponsor, and
we're back. Thank you sponsoring. Oh is it time for
(18:49):
the sexy syrups? Apparently Samantha doesn't agree with my characterization
of syrups, but I find most commercials to pick them
as sexy. I see all. I think it is sticky
and I don't like it. Well, don't I mean not
to get too into sex in this episode, But isn't
that a thing people put like honey or syrup and
people's bodies don't all alright? All I could think it
(19:12):
was like, well, we agree to disagree, sexy Tom, I'm
not saying they are sexy. I'm just saying they're depicted
as sexy. Yes, And so we're talking about Aunt Jemima.
This discussion around sexy syrup goes back to my question
of why everyone, every character we're talking about is somehow
related to pancakes and syrup. I didn't find the answer
(19:34):
to that, but we're going to talk about Yes, an Jemima.
She is the face of a line of pancake mixes
and syrups. To get to the bottom of Aunt Jemima's history,
we have to go back to eighteen ninety and a
former slave by the name of Nancy Green, then living
in Chicago after being born into slavery in thirty four
in Kentucky. The original creators of the mascot, Charles Rutt
(19:57):
and Charles Underword, came up with her look of an
apron and bandana in eighteen eighty nine. They had just
purchased Pearl Milling Company and they were looking for something
to someone to represent their new idea of a self
rising pancake flower that only required water. And this is
one of the first mixes available in the US. They
(20:19):
drew inspiration for this character from a minstrel show that
was popular at the time and just a refresher. Minstrel
shows where a popular nineteenth century and later form of
American entertainment in which white actors and black face portrayed
black people as lazy, stupid, easily frightened, and highly superstitious.
A popular song of these minstrel shows was penned in
(20:40):
eighteen seventy five by a black performer, Billy Currsands, and
it was called Old Aunt Jemima and Minstrel Shows. It
was performed by people in black face, and a white
man portrayed Aunt Jemima as a slave on a Southern plantation.
He wore the look that they ended up going with.
The two original creators of Aunt Geo Mama's character in
regards to selling a food product sold a company the
(21:02):
same year they came up with her to RT Davis.
He found Nancy Green and with her created the Antjemima brand.
People were intensely curious about the true identity of Anti Mima,
so much so that the police were called to control
the crowd at the Antemma exhibit at the World's Colombian Exposition.
Green served thousands of people that visited the exhibit. Pancakes
(21:25):
and people reportedly were so charmed by her kind demeanor
that she was awarded for her show woman shift at
the exhibition. As a result of her extremely successful appearance there,
the company received fifty thou orders for their pancake mix
in the wake of it. They renamed their company to
Aunt Jemima Mills Company in nineteen fourteen, and they were
(21:46):
so impressed with Green's performance they offered her a lifetime
position as their spokesperson as sales of their products continued
to soar. However, that came to an rupt end in
when she lost her life in a car crash. The owner,
Artie Davis, was forced to sell the company to Quaker
Oats due to financial issues. Soon after, Anna Robinson was
tapped to be the new face of ant Jemima, a
(22:08):
portrait now appearing on packages. She also appeared at the
nineteen thirty three World's Fair, which was followed by Chicago
based blue singer and actress Edith Wilson. She became the
first person to appear as the character in commercials, and
at this time as still included racial dialects like Isa.
Former teacher and actress ethel Ernestine Harper assumed the mantle
after Wilson. After that, an advertising employee, a Quaker Oates
(22:31):
named Rosie Hall, took on this position. When she died,
her grave was deemed as a historical landmark. In nineteen
fifty five, Eileen Louise made her first public appearance as
the mascot of an Jemima restaurant in Disneyland, and A
Short Harrington also did a stand as an Jebama at
public events in the New York area. The Antjemima radio
show ran for from nineteen thirty to nineteen two. Jemima
(22:55):
was played by a white black face actress who portrayed
Antjemima and other formats. It was essentially a minstrel show
for radio. As early as the nineteen fifties, people were
questioning the races undertones of Aunt Jemima. The n double
a CP started strongly recommending that schools not invite Antjemima
to speak at them. Increased public scrutiny led Quaker Oats
(23:16):
to cancel a television campaign in nineteen sixty seven, around
the time we got the Civil Rights Act, and ditch
her name from their Disneyland restaurant. The brand updated Aunt
Jemima's image in nineteen eighty nine, in an effort to
avoid criticisms of a mammy stereotype, gone was the headscarfor
traded out instead for a lace collar and pearl earrings,
(23:37):
and her skin was lightened. She also gradually got thinner.
Many historians argue that the mammy stereotype is the stereotype
of something that never existed, and said it was a
fiction cooked up by white Southerners to placate themselves around
relationships between white men enslaved black women. The mammy was
sexually undesirable and not a threat to white women or
(23:58):
social norms, happy to serve the white man, and played
into the narrative that black women were happy to be enslaved.
According to Kimberly Wallace Sanders in her book Mammy, A
Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory, quote Antimima's success
was predicted upon a fascinating interweeding of commerce, memory, and
racial nostalgia that served as a vehicle of post Civil
(24:18):
War national consolidation. An African American woman pretending to be
a slave was pivotal to be the trademarks commercial achievement
in eighteen It's success revolved around the fantasy of returning
a black woman to a sanitized version of slavery. The
anti Mamic character involved the regression of race relations, and
her character helped usher and a prominent resurgence of the
happy slave mythology of the Antebellum South. This popular recreation
(24:42):
of an African American woman's lives stood in direct opposition
to the efforts of real African American women struggling to
publicly assert their citizenship. As a symbol of racial harmony,
An Jemima proved to be preferred version of African American
womanhood and exultation of slave aucuracy nostalgia. Beginning in Latice
Night appeared and as for spokespersons for Quaker Oaths very
(25:03):
briefly presented her as Aunt Jemima herself. As two of
Harrington's great grandsons were suing Aunt Jemima's parent company, Quaker Oats,
for two billion for unpaid royalties and damages, Harrington played
Antemima previously. According to them, their mother and Green Nancy Green,
were instrumental in developing the self rising pancake mix. Even
(25:27):
before she was Auntjemima, Harrington had a reputation for her
delicious pancakes. One of Harrington's great grandsons wrote in the suit,
Aunt Jemima has become known as one of the most
exploited and abused women in American history. It's really kind
of gross. I was wondering how much they paid these women.
Ah yeah, I'm sure it was not at all reasonable. Yeah. Yeah,
(25:51):
so that's a bit of that's a pretty dark history
for that. Um when we do have a little bit
more for you, but first we have one more quick
break for word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you, sponsor,
(26:19):
And we're back with Mrs Butterworth. More's up, more syrup.
I'm telling you. So, I didn't even consider her when
I was originally planning who who do involve in this episode,
but that the study we mentioned earlier finding Betty Crocker
is the most recognized woman in the United States or whatever.
Mrs Butterworth was behind her, which is interesting. I do like,
(26:41):
as we're talking, I can see the picture of the
children talking to the bottle. Yeah, that's what I'm saying
right now, But I don't remember that commercial pretty distinctly.
They have a whole wealth of commercials available throughout the
decades if you would like to see them, So yes,
let's talk about her. She is now synonymous with a
brand of box pancake mixes and syrups, although her most
(27:04):
iconic iteration is as the shape of the pancake syrup
bottles that shape a bottle in the shape of Mrs
butter with a woman who was patented in nineteen sixty six.
Mrs Butterworth is unique in this sense. She was one
of a few, if not the only, products shaped after
their namesake. I couldn't really think of anybody else, all right.
(27:29):
She's sort of a grandmotherly in her shape, a button
down dress with a collar, a wide skirt. Her hair
is up in a bun. I suppose the sweetness of
syrup is sort of symbolic of the sweetness we assume
women have. She does cross her hands in her lap
almost yeah and yeah. Since Ginger norms at the time
(27:51):
place women in charge of all things domestic, including the kitchen,
she in theory she was a real person would know
what she was talking about. These are the speculations when
I was really trying to get to the bottom of
why why why why just why? Mrs Butterworth's history is
a bit murky. First off, when you search for Mrs Butterworth.
(28:13):
One of the first suggested search terms is is Mrs
Butterworth Black. Rumor has it she was originally modeled after
actress Thelma Butterfly McQueen, who posed for the iconic bottle
soon after she wrapped up filming as the mammy character
Prissy and got into the wind. However, that doesn't really
square with her first on air appearance, where actress Cliff
(28:34):
are Cut as Charlie We represented her as an older
white woman. Actress Mary Kay Bergman went on to later
provide the voice of Mrs Butterworth, similarly in the style
of an older white woman. A lot of questions around
racism and Mrs Butterworth seems system from her proximity to
and perhaps mimicry of Anjemima. In two thousand nine, Pinnacle
(28:55):
Foods revealed Mrs Butterworth's first name is Joy. Prior to
the reveal, the company launched a contest encouraging people to
guess the name. Two people won five dollars are correctly
guessing and a case of the syrup. Of course, this
is interesting because, according to a brand manager, no one
bothered to ask what the first name was until an
employee's son asked, this could be because she's fictional, or
(29:16):
it could be because, at least partly because the most
important part of her identity is that she's married. Obviously, right,
what else do you need to know? She's worth is marriage?
Does her worth is butter marriage? An Onion headline from
TWI seventeen read Mike Pence asked waiter to remove Mrs
Butterworth from table until a wife arrives, s poking fun
(29:37):
at his reluctance flash refusal to be alone with a
woman other than his wife. Here is the article that's
really brief, expressing concerns about the propriety of being left
alone with a certain container of the opposite sex. Vice
President Mike Pence reportedly asked the waiter Thursday to remove
Mrs Butterworth from the table until his wife rapped to
join him at a local diner. Excuse me, sir, would
(29:58):
you please take this out of my line of sight
and full my wife gets here, said Pence, who reportedly
attempted to put the table sugar dispenser and salt and
pepper shakers between him and the feminine syrup bottle, before
deciding that even having Mrs Butterworth within arms reach could
lead him to have impure thoughts. It just would not
be right for me to sit here alone with a
woman's shape container, particularly one as shapely as this. In fact,
(30:19):
I would advise you to do the same for the
man sitting over there I see is seating very close
to Mrs Butterworth, even though he appears are we wearing
a wedding ring? At press time, Pence had to ask
the wayer to pour syrup on his pancakes for him,
as it would be unseemingly to handle the curves of
the plastic woman in such a public place. And she
like a bell shape she is. But one of the
(30:41):
second most return search items for me was what happened
to Mrs Butterworth's boobs? And there's a whole Breddit threat
about didn't she used to have big boobs? What happened
to the boobs? I don't remember boobs. Most it wasn't
looking for them. Maybe I don't know. Most people seem
to say they were at the shape well. Apparently a
(31:03):
commercial that came out in early two thousand nineteen depicted
Colonel Sanders of KFC and Mrs Butterworth. The life size bottle.
What flirting? Yeah, yeah, so Mrs Butterworth makes the first move,
so I guess that's progress. She's the one that's coming
on to him, and they go in for a kiss
and the commercial ends a cliffhanger none of us ever
(31:25):
expected to have to contemplate. Ever, No, it cuts instead
to a covered waffles and add for their fried chicken
and waffles and another example of the sexualization of food.
Maybe yeah no, um. This was a sequel to the
previous ad for the same product that depicted the two
mascots recreating the scene from the end of Dirty Dancing. Yes,
(31:49):
and I happened to see that. I wasn't looking for
this ad. It happened to come up for me when
I was watching a YouTube video today and it's ghost
It's the scene from Ghosts Or they are doing the
clay thing, and I think the wait is a Dirty
Dancing There is the clay thing. I think there's more
than one. So they just really like Patrick Swayzy, that's
(32:09):
what you're trying to tell me? Could be true? Well,
I learned that they have a Nashville Hot version of
this now for limited time, so of course I'm not
gonna lie that sounds delicious. Okay. First and foremost, however,
do I want it to be sexualized? No? I don't
want to think about Colonel Sanders being sexual not that
do I want to think Mrs Butterworth, you do you
(32:30):
I want to be I'm telling her to do her thing,
do your thing. I'm just gonna eat the chicken with syrup.
Oh my gosh, it is really creepy. It reminds me
of the Burger King mascot because it's oh they are Yeah,
that's not okay, it's you already know how about life
(32:52):
size things coming to life, in animate objects coming to live.
So this is not cool. This is butter coming off. Also,
I can't even say the words starrup, right, So this
is a nightmare in itself. There's a lot of layers
of terror happening. Well, it was a successful ad, I
would say, because we're talking about it, we remember it.
(33:13):
But also I've been trying to forget it. You'll never
forget it. You'll never forget it. There actually wasn't that
much out there on on Mrs Butterworth. So if any
listeners happen to have the low down on any of
the okay, you don't send me pictures. Don't send me
pictures of whatever you said earlier. I'll take pictures of
(33:35):
Mrs Butterworth, Okay, I don't want anything about Dirty Santa,
and everything else is open, I will take it. We
do have a pretty strong spam filter. Uh. And obviously
there are a lot of other other things we could
have talked about when it comes to to food mascots,
female food mascots like um, The Land of Lakes, Wendy,
(33:58):
Little Debbie Morton, Salt Girl, Jikida, Banana Sun Maiden from
the Raisins, the Green Eminem and now the Brown Eminem. Yeah,
well did you know that I tell you? Ever tell
you the story? Side note about the dude that I
went on a couple of days with talking about knowing
Little Debbie the woman and how awful she was. She's real,
She's apparently real. Yeah, he couldn't lie, But I'm just
(34:20):
saying he told me the story. I was like, cool, cool,
A little listener of ours actually have no idea how
old little Debbie is. Well, if any anybody has information
on that, will you welcome that as well? And if
food things are of interests of you, as always, you
can hear her more of me nording out about food
(34:40):
over on the Safer Podcast. But if you would like
to contact this podcast, yes you can. You can email
us at Stuff Media, mom Stuff at iHeart media dot com.
You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast
or on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks
as always to our superproducer Andrew Howard, have a soaky day.
(35:02):
Thanks to you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You,
the production of I Heeart Radios how Stuff Works. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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Samantha McVey
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