August 29, 2016 • 55 mins
In the early advertising industry, career-minded white women were copywriters, department heads and even agency owners. But their very mission of selling products to women helped erect the industry's glass ceiling. Cristen and Caroline talk trailblazers, monetizing femininity and the whiteness of early ad industry in part one of Mad Women.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how stup
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and we are about to spend
two episodes talking about the history and the marginalization of
(00:26):
and the contemporary landscape four women in Advertising. Yeah, that's right,
I mean Kristin and I. If you've listened to the
podcast at all ever, have covered a lot of topics
in the past related to how women are portrayed in
the actual advertisements. We've talked about photo shopping, We've talked
about body image, We've talked about really just traditional notions
(00:49):
of femininity and gender roles as they are presented through
the lens of advertising and marketing. But we have not
yet talked about actual female advertise users and copywriters and designers. Yeah,
at all, So we we should probably do that. And uh.
Two of the things that I found as fascinating and
(01:10):
doing this research Christian, that I was not aware of
before were a how intimately sort of connected women were
to the birth of advertising as an industry, um, and
how so many of them quickly rose to the highest
ranks of the advertising industry when it was brand new.
(01:30):
But b I hope I'm on being not to but
be uh to b B. Two of how women played
this role in advertising, of essentially helping to market that
traditional femininity and gender norms to other women. That was
big business for women in advertising was being the voice
(01:51):
and perspective of women in general. Yeah, I mean being
the Peggy Olson of the office. Um, And speaking of
Peggy Olson and Mad Men, it seems like we haven't
really paid much attention to the history of women in
advertising until that show became such a blockbuster. And while
it does a decent job of accurately portraying what life
(02:13):
would have been like for a woman and a copywriter
in an agency in the nineteen sixties, it was a
very different place when advertising first began developing in more
of the late nineteenth century. And Yeah, like you said,
there's this unfortunate irony that you quickly run into when
(02:36):
it comes to women in the ad industry, which is
that the the asset that made us so successful also
erected a glass ceiling and really reinforced institutional lives sexism
that is still rampant today, which we're going to cover
more in our next episode. And it's no surprise that
(03:02):
feminists talk about advertising a lot, because that's where a
lot of these troublesome images and stereotypes of women's roles
um historically and still today reside. But what I didn't
realize so much that Julia se Volca notes in her
(03:22):
book ad Women, how they impact what we need, want
and buy, is that quote the history of advertising is
deeply entwined with feminism. Yeah, advertising in it as well
as feminism had three waves, three early waves as it developed.
(03:44):
So it's first wave, as Kristen said, is in the
late nineteenth century, alongside uh, the industrial Revolution, the emergence
of the modern consumer economy, and alongside the suffrage movement itself.
So all of a sudd and you've got, you know,
products that are ready made. It's you don't have to
(04:04):
be making everything yourself. You've got people, men and women
and children going to work in factories with their tiny
hands um and wrapped up in all of this is
women fighting for the right to vote, to become full citizens.
And so it's kind of not a coincidence then. You know,
we mentioned that women have been involved in advertising since
(04:24):
the get go. It's not a coincidence then that many
of those first successful ad ladies were feminists. And then
if you look at second wave feminism, women are really
championing the right to pursue professional careers and achieve personal success.
And you see a similar trend in advertising as well,
(04:45):
in the ways that women are being represented not just
at home anymore, but also hey baby, look you've come
a long way. So light up that Virginia Slim. Here's
your independence with a side of cancer. And arguably third
wave feminisms relationship to advertising is pushing for it to
(05:07):
reflect the lived realities of being women. Yeah, and all
of this, as we move through time, more women are
entering the workplace, more women are entering different male dominated
industries and fields. But as we'll get into through this
episode and into the next, women haven't quite shattered the
(05:29):
glass ceilings of the advertising industry, no matter their early involvement.
And I got to say, white men have done a
tip top job of gate keeping within the industry because
you know, diversity in or the lack thereof, in the
ad business is not just something that applies to women,
(05:51):
but people of color as well. So with all of
this in the back of our minds, the way this
part one is going to be structured is breaking it
down into three major themes in that earlier history of
women and advertising. So theme one we have to look
(06:12):
at just the basic feminization of consumption, or in other words,
how ladies be shopping came to be because you know,
shopping outside your home at some point was a new behavior,
and even shopping had to be sold and advertisers sold
it as a lady thing. Um. So let's travel back
(06:36):
to the seventeen seventies, do we have to? It's it's
a great place to be, um if if you are
a white man, yeah, probably a terrible place to get
your period. Oh yeah, I get your period, or just
you know, a great a great time if you love
independence and industrialization. Well that's right, because we see in
(06:58):
Britain the dawn of the Austrial Revolution. It would take
about another hundred years for it to fully come into
vogue slash change the world in America because we were
we were a tad more rural, a lot a lot
more farms and space. Things were a lot more spread
out over here on the side of the pond, so
(07:18):
we just got things a little slower. But once steam power,
factories and railroads arrive, the Industrial revolution takes off and
for the very first time, things start costing less to
buy pre manufactured than two d I Y. Well, plus
(07:39):
you have all sorts of variety now too, so your
bonnet didn't just have to be white. You could buy
like a purple bonnet, or a blue bonnet, poka dotted bonnum,
maybe even a pokonuted bonnam. So leading up to the
Civil War we also have a media boom. This is
part of technological advances taking place that of course would
(08:00):
greatly impact and facilitate really the advertising industry. So you
have the emergence of daily, weekly, and monthly papers and
magazines as well as women's magazines. In the premier women's
magazines of the day were Goadie's Ladies Book, which was
(08:21):
the magazine. Then you had the Ladies Home Journal, of course,
because how else are you going to learn how to
bake that apple crumble that sounds? Then in the you
gotta get that l h J. Script. And then you
also have Peterson's Magazine, which when I first read that, Caroline,
it reminded me of J. Peterson on Seinfeld Peterman, J Peterman,
(08:46):
so close Peterman Peterson Yeah. Well, and then yeah, with
with all all of the fancy descriptions of things. Yes,
his his outdoor expensive khakis. Yeah, but I think Peterson's
was a bit different because they probably did not want
women going outdoors too much. Women had to learn how
(09:07):
to stay at home better. Yes, And if you did
go outside, don't move too quickly, you know, stay close
and walk slowly. So with that, in the eighteen fifties
you start getting the earliest ad departments and agencies beginning
to form. Yeah, because I mean what goes in all
(09:28):
of these new daily, weekly and monthly papers and ladies
mag's advertisements? Yeah, because publishers have to make money somehow,
and that somehow is advertising. Yeah. And so by eight
sixty three, of course, we have the introduction of common currency,
which definitely helped things, helped people shop more effectively. We
also see all of those new ready made goods requiring
(09:51):
branding and merchandizing, trademarking, positioning in the market, all these things.
Because if I make oatmeal and and you make oat me,
but it's basically like from the same oats, how are
we going to how are people going to know that
our oats are different oats? They're not different oats. I
might put a Quaker man on mine, and you might
(10:12):
put a Quaker gal ms, Quaker oats, thank you very much, ms. Period.
She can't vote, but she'll fill you up in the morning.
Looks good. And as the manufacturing industry develops, you know,
you have all of these mail order catalogs, which then
(10:33):
leads to brick and mortar stores and the retail industry
boom with early stores like Woolworth's five and Dime, A
and P Grocery. Don't forget Piggy Wiggly. Piggy Wiggly was
an original and also J. C. Penny. So we have
these places outside of our homes where we can now
go and buy stuff. We don't just have to flip
(10:54):
through the Sears catalog place our orders and wait and wait. Well,
that is something that was definitely something that people in
the rural areas of America still definitely relied on, and
it was something that boomed. Uh similarly in the wake
of the Industrial Revolution. It's like, oh, well, okay, I
may not be able to walk into a J. C.
Penny when I'm out here on the frontier, but I
(11:16):
can get a fancy catalog. I just imagine it's like
me when I get the I K Catalog, which is
always an exciting day and I always certified like forty
five minutes to sit down and flip through the I
K Catalog. I love that. Um. I gotta tell you
my favorite catalog that my husband and I did not
subscribe to is Costco Connection. Yeah. You know you're thirty
(11:39):
when suddenly a Costco connection ends up in your mailbox
hashtag this is thirty? Yeah? Is it? Is it taped
together with a an A RP catalog? God, it might
as well be. I feel like that was just right
around the corner. Um. But I was delighted to learn that, Yeah,
(11:59):
there's a whole lifestyle magazine devoted to Costco, because really,
once you start going to Costco, it does become a
way of life. Dude. I know my boyfriend just reapped
our Costco membership, and so does the catalog just show
people living the life of a Costco member. Are they
like enjoying the giant thing of cheetahs? Yeah? I mean
it's just Kirkland brand shirts and piles of canned goods
(12:21):
for days? Can I jump into a swimming pool in
this catalog? Full of of sharmon ultrastrong toilet paper. You
know what, in the costco connection, you can anything. Anything
is possible. Any who. Um, well, you also have to
keep in mind the context of the time. I'm sorry
if that was jarring, going from like a mental image
of me in a pool of toilet paper, unused, unwrapped, wrapped, sorry,
(12:45):
to the Civil War. But you've got to keep in
mind the context, which is that men going off to
fight the Civil War and some women covertly, uh, but
a lot of them died. It should be news to
no one that when the men went away and a
lot of them didn't come home, you had this man
drain on the economy and on the workforce. So a
lot of women started entering higher education, they started entering
(13:09):
the workforce and just public life in general, which afforded
them some financial agency that they didn't previously have. Yeah,
I mean you start to have laws being enacted around
the eighteen eighties that radically allowed women to claim their
own wages even when they were married, because for a
(13:32):
long time they couldn't. Some states were starting to allow
married women to even enter business partnerships and sign contracts.
So you're starting to see um, not only more job opportunities,
for you know, respectable middle class read white women outside
the home. They're also starting to win a few financial
(13:55):
rights here and there. And we see this really showcase
in eighteen eighty with Matilda Sea Wheels first women run
ad agency, the mc wheel Agency opens. Yeah, and she
had moved to the U s from Germany in the
eighteen seventies with her husband, but he dies suddenly. It's
(14:19):
very tragic. How am I going to keep myself afloat?
How am I going to make money? Well, she quickly
realizes how profitable it can be selling ad space in
newspapers and magazines for products, being the go between, sort
of the ad representative or account manager of year old
early days. And she and her friend and business partner
(14:41):
Meta Volkman saw this advertising path as a terrific new
job opportunity for women as copywriters or clerks, solicitors, commercial artists,
especially because at this point, like so many of the
industries and careers that we talked about on the podcast,
it was too new to be gendered yet. Yeah. I
(15:03):
mean that's the same thing that you see with computer science.
Before we realize what a boom programming would be, women
were the original quote unquote computers and programmers. Um. And
in early advertising, not only did you have a gender free,
essentially environment, UM, but you also have what we're called
(15:27):
nostrums or the tonics and cure alls that were really
the backbone of the ad industry. Uh in post Civil
War time. They were a seventy million dollar industry, which
was no small potitos. Yeah, I mean, these ads for
these tonics basically made up a third of American publishers revenues.
(15:51):
So I think that's a very interesting cycle. You know,
you talk about today, um, maybe negative images and advertising
sort of normalizing certain body types for instance. UM, So
apply that pattern and knowledge to uh, the ideas around
these nostrums that Okay, well we're gonna run these ads.
(16:12):
We make a lot of money, so we're gonna run more.
We're gonna make even more money, and on and on
and on and so people are going out and buying
in huge droves these really ineffective quote unquote medicines that
were honestly mostly alcohol. And because women were in charge
of advertising, so many of these products, and so many
(16:33):
of these products were advertised to women. It was basically
like kind of a wink wink, nudge and nudge for
women to get wasted, Like it was definitely an early
way for women to be like, I'm just gonna drink
this to feel better. Leave mommy alone with her tincture.
And since women were buying these tinctures and uh, you
(16:54):
know a lot of the other cure alls and even
say maybe the first um underarm depilatory powders are being
sold to women to cure and quotes their pit hair
essentially um. In the eight nineties, this very young industry
starts to recognize how getting a woman's point of view,
(17:16):
so to speak, is really profitable, because this is when
they start to also realize how influential women were as
buyers because they influenced obviously not only household purchases, but
also things that men themselves bought. Yes, women swaying their
(17:37):
husband's opinions on things. And and you have, of course,
different industries orbiting this burgeoning ad industry. For example, in
the eighteen nineties and the early eighteen nineties, you get
Beatrice and Clara Tonison who started the first professional modeling agency.
So they're early lady entrepreneurs providing fresh face young women
(18:01):
for advertisements. And in a woman named Kate Grizzwold becomes
the publisher of the trade magazine Profitable Advertising, and it
was highly influential at the time. And Grizzwold becoming publisher
of this is you know, noted in advertising histories as
(18:22):
an example of the potential power that women did wield. Well, yeah,
you see a bunch of these trade magazines popping up
just a year later. Woman's World, Uh described how great
advertising was for women. And obviously they didn't mean the
ads themselves, they meant it as a profession. And they
were one of several of these trade magazines that talked
(18:46):
about what it took to be a good ad woman. Um. Basically,
an ad woman had a great understanding of human character
and human nature. They should have some literary skill and ideas. Uh,
they have to be able to put themselves in the
customers shoes. I mean, this is nothing new to anyone
today who's in advertising. You still need to have an
(19:07):
understanding of psychology and human nature and the way to
really market something to someone. Um. The article ended up
getting reprinted four years later in nineteen hundred because so
many women had started being attracted to the job. They
were curious about the job they were writing into these
trade magazines, and the magazine was like, jeez, well we
published a thing a couple of years ago. I guess
(19:28):
we'll reprint it. Um. But they were thought to be
most successful in the job women were when they were
capitalizing on gender norms rather than trying to act, dress
or right and pitch ideas like men. Of course, I mean,
this is the turn of the century. We don't want women,
(19:49):
you know, emulating masculine values. Um. And it's also around
that time in the turn of the century that the
advertising industry not only is attracting some women into you know,
it's workspace, but also it's marketing consumption as a lady thing.
This is how ladies Be Shopping came to be, because
(20:13):
I mean, the advertising industry really sold going out in
shopping as part of your feminine duty. While your man
is away earning the money, you, as a woman, spend
it to make your home, your kids, yourself of course,
look and feel good. So really, spending money is a
(20:36):
woman's job. And we still see that stereotype so much today. Yeah, well,
I mean you see the stereotype that you see plenty
of people still embracing that division. You know, I mean,
you still see plenty of people with the attitude of like, yeah,
women should just be shopping. Yeah. It reminds me of
a Real Housewives of New York binge that I've been
(20:58):
on lately, and and one of the couples is, um,
I don't know what the dude is. It doesn't even matter.
All the men or footnotes in that show anyway, UM,
but the the woman UM does not work. And they're
like at a dinner and she's the one commenting like, oh, yeah,
(21:18):
you make that money so I can spend it, just
cringing as I'm like buying the next episode on Amazon. Um.
But that was that was such a I mean, it
makes sense that consumption was gendered, but I guess I
didn't realize before reading about this how explicit and strategic
(21:39):
it does me too. I didn't either, I didn't realize
that it was basically like a mandate. But the thing is,
I mean, it was a mandate to a certain class
of white women because in terms of working class women
women of color, the advertising industry had no interest in
reflecting them them in their images. Why would they want
(22:02):
to sell to them? They aren't ideal, Which is the
same the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I mean, if if you look at money as votes
or you know, money is the key to participation in representation,
advertisers are of course going to pitch to um that
(22:23):
those uh, advertisers are of course going to pitch to
that more desirable demographic of like young, wealthy or middle
class consumers. Yeah. I mean, also you've got the fact
of disposable income. But really, as we're going to see
with theme number two, it's all about creating this myth
of idealized white femininity. UM. Because when we get into
(22:47):
the next stage of the industry around World War One, before, during,
and after this is when we really see the monetization
of that female viewpoint. Because leading up to World War One,
advertisers are seeing women as really worthwhile to their business
(23:08):
for three main reasons. Uh, they'd already figured out how
influential they were on men's consumption, So I mean, what
a bargain. Um. They're also cheap, you know, the gender
wage gap existed way back when. Um, And they bring
the feminine point of view. Yeah. Well it's funny that
(23:31):
you you put it like that, because one of the
first badass ladies in advertising was definitely not a shrinking violet. Uh.
In nineteen eleven, the j. Walter Thompson Agency JWT hired
its first female copywriter and frankly rab feminist lady Helen
Landsdown Resort, who ended up staffing an entire department with
(23:53):
female copywriters. So she's actually responsible. It turns out this
is another tidbit I learned for the original UH like
sex cells concept. She showed a man embracing a woman
in an ad for Woodberry soap, accompanied by the headline
A skin you love to touch? Was it the same
(24:15):
ad or was it a different one that featured a
naked lady for soap? There was like a really scandalous
early ad for soap that also featured like a nakedly
kind of hunched over and facing away from the camera
kind of looks like are you are you cold? You
probably really cold. I don't know if that was also
or they caught her off guard? Yeah, who let you
(24:36):
in my house to sketch me for the past two hours? What? Um?
And so. By nineteen just a couple of years later,
JWT's women's department, helmed by Reasor, attracted more than half
of the agency's billings, and I don't have the exact
number of accounts in front of me, but that meant
(24:58):
that the staff of women in like the women's editorial department,
was doing far and away a bulk of the creative
work in the agency. But we're being paid less than
the men who had far fewer accounts that they were managing.
But again, like you said, the more things change, the
(25:20):
more they say the same. And by the time Resort
makes it to the JWT boards, she's incredibly successful. You see,
you know, her star rising, But by that point most
women in the agency were secretaries. So you have some
breakout stars like a Resort, but it's not a universal
(25:40):
story by any means. One woman's success at the top
of corporate America does not translate to general women's equality,
which is something that, of course we talk about today
with anything in terms of women making to the c suite.
But if you look at how you know, women in
advertising were being reported on in you know, the teens,
(26:03):
it's so strikingly different than the kind of headlines that
we see today. So in nineteen twelve, first of all,
you have the founding of Advertising Women of New York,
which still exists, and is still a highly influential group.
Um and the New York Evening Telegram reported women advertising
(26:24):
managers now entrusted with the spending of twenty million dollars
a year. So you would probably think, if you were
a reader at that time, that, hey, this new advertising
business is really welcoming to women. Women are really you know,
busting down some doors, making making some cash. Well, I
mean yeah, but the whole reason behind Awnie's founding is
(26:48):
that women weren't allowed in the all male advertising league. Yeah,
and and again, I mean there, that's that's sort of
the um, the the temptation of romantis sizing this early
history of advertising when especially in the you know, turn
of the century era, when it was relatively un gendered.
(27:10):
Although it feels like that lasted like a weekend and
then the guys came back and were like, wait, a
tick coiled on. We just want your feminine viewpoint here
is less than what you deserve to earn, UM, but
romanticize it because you do have, you know, these standout
women who were nonetheless climbing the ranks here and there.
(27:31):
So in the nineteen twenties, for instance, Jane Martin was
a stenographer turned ad whiz, whom Julian Savolka in that
Ad Women book describes as an outspoken feminist. She was
single and loving it, and I mean it seems like
she's just got a bulldozed her way through. Yeah, she's
(27:53):
known as the ad woman who made ad Women famous.
So she worked her way up through. Sheer also nous
and you know, hard work, from advertising for a single
manufacturer all the way up to agency work. And she
did it all explicitly for economic independence. Because this is
a lady who never married. Keep in mind, at this time,
typically if you were a lady person in the workforce,
(28:18):
you were expected or in some cases forced to retire
or resign once you get married. Well, and this reminds
me of our two parter on librarians because female librarianship
was also shooting through the roof at this time as well.
And there was that line because kind of that crossroads
if you're a woman in the workplace where you either
(28:41):
get married and quit or work very very little, or
you have to stay single in order to move up.
I mean you can get in a Boston marriage. Yeah, yeah,
Boston marriage being you know, living with a lady friend.
Wink wink, nudge, nudge. Yeah, could just be a lady friend,
or it could be a lady friend with benefits. Yes. Indeed.
(29:02):
By nine though, when Martin did have to retire because
of illness, she was earning eight times the average woman's salaries.
So a survey, for instance, showed that female buyers of
ad space were paid five grand a year, while their
male counterparts were earning about seventy. Martin, at the end
(29:22):
of her career, was earning ten thousand books. Yeah. I
have a feeling that Jane Martin was not one to
take less than she knew she was worth. And that's wonderful.
I wish more people would demand what they're worth. Yeah,
I mean, but I'm saying like that talk about a
radical act. Probably in nineteen five, it still feels like
(29:45):
a radical act, does it does? And around the same time,
in nineteen six, Nedda McGrath becomes the first female art
director in the industry. And this is major because women
were welcome is copywriters, space buyers, and researchers, but art
(30:06):
and creative direction and account management was for the boys.
And this is going to be a major topic for
our second episode. Oh yeah, that's right, because shall we
say it a third time, the more things change, the
more things stay the same. And another issue that we're
going to revisit when we're talking about the lay of
the land today. It's something that harkens back to the
(30:27):
nineteen thirties because you've got a lot of women at
the time working in many sectors of mass marketing. Um,
they just weren't at perhaps as top ranks of art
directors and creative directors. Yeah, and so to give an
idea of the diversity of jobs that were available and
that women were doing, you know, you do have things
(30:47):
like copyrighting, whether for agencies or department stores or mail
order companies. Um, they oversaw publicity campaigns, they were merchandizing consultants.
You have commercial artists, product designers, and photographers. But again,
like there's that gatekeeping issue when it comes to where
(31:09):
the bulk of the money is um up at the
top and with that account management that is I mean really,
I mean just kind of reserved for the guys. So
while there were a good amount of women in the industry,
in fact, by nineteen fifty, women made up a third
of ad industry employees, the glass ceiling was very much
(31:34):
in place. I mean and and you can hear how
hopeful a lot of these women were with this industry
that maybe they thought they could, you know, continue making
in roads in such as Christine Frederick, who was a
consumer advocate and home economists and also one of the
founders of the Advertising Women of New York who in
(31:56):
eight said, nothing is more proof that women are important
and advertise then the plane fact that they've been in
advertising in one capacity or another almost from the very
beginning of the profession. So that was like just a given.
And yet that quote unquote plane fact has been largely
(32:19):
erased over time, and we are only now rediscovering that
that was the case. So what happened because nifty uh,
you know, a third of ad industry employees sisters are
doing it for themselves, some of them. Yeah, well, we
still have to get to theme number three, and we're
(32:40):
going to do that when we come right back from
a quick break. And that third theme is something that
we've kind of been hinting at this whole time, which
is basically that the pigeonholing of women and gendered market
(33:06):
segmentation ultimately proved to be this double edged sword for women,
that whole valuing of women for their female or feminine
point of view um and using women as tools to
market two fellow women. I mean, it's great if if
it helps you get a job and it helps you
get a paycheck. It's not so great if it just
further and further pigeonholes women in the industry. And here's
(33:29):
the thing. A lot of these women in advertising, specifically
a Christine Frederick, who was you know, both in advertising
and was also a home economist, they really thought that
they were improving women's lives through the types of ads
that they were making because they were selling these conveniences.
(33:50):
They were, you know, potentially like freeing women from the
drudgery of chores that they had to do without the
aid of all of these new gizmos and such. Not
to mention that there were enough success stories like a
Jane Martin that ambitious women considered advertising a place that
(34:12):
they could go where they would not just get stuck
in the secretarial pool. They could potentially, with their college education,
climb their way out of the stent a pool. But
what got women in the door was their perspective, that
female point of view on gendered domesticity. And some women
(34:33):
like Helen Lansdowne Razor were able to climb the ladder
above copywriter of course. Um, I mean you also have
Jeane Wade rind Laub, who started as a consumer department
copywriter at B B d oh, and she slayed at
lady brands. Like when she started out, she was writing
(34:53):
for Duff's Gingerbread, Marvelous Makeup, Energetic Shoes. Oh, Energetic, I
just got it. It took you saying it for me
to get it. So listeners, Energetic is E N N
A as in like as if it's someone's first name.
And then getic, G J E T T I C K,
(35:15):
clever um. And then she graduated though two more established
brands like General Mills, the United Fruit Company, UM and
Campbell's Soup, And like Helen Landsdown Razor, you see ran
Loum kind of noticing like, okay, this female point of view,
like selling these women's products, that is something that we,
(35:36):
you know, we as women have a corner on in
this industry. So I'm going to capitalize this for all
it's worth. So she saviely created women's research groups to
get women's product impressions and branding input, and you see
a lot of that, like recreated um on Mad Men Um.
She also voiced Betty Crocker, which I did. Did I
(35:58):
know that Betty Crocker had a voice. Betty Crocker began
as a radio personality, uh okay, and as part of that,
she started the industry's first test kitchen. I mean, this
woman was quite the innovator, and as evidence of that,
she became the first woman elected vice president of b
(36:19):
B d Oh. So there again you have these instances
of women here and there breaking through. But there's the catch, right,
the catch being you've got these go getters, but they're
selling domesticity aproned baking. Not that there's anything wrong with
(36:39):
that hashtag, not all baking, but it was selling the
very gendered identity of a woman being in her sphere
at home, supporting the man while he went out and worked,
which is ironic for someone like a Christine Frederick, who
is one of the co founders of Annie. She was here.
(37:01):
She was this go getter, a woman who wanted to
pursue career success um. But she also knew that advertising
to women and wives out there to get them to
be consumers, it meant selling to a more conservative general
public who were more comfortable with the idea of women
(37:21):
staying at home, which led Frederick to focusing on home economics. Basically, yeah,
it seems like Frederick really wanted to compensate for what
she knew was her violation of like feminine gender norms
by being this progressive professional woman, which was like those
were politics that she didn't want to push. I mean,
(37:42):
she was a relatively conservative woman, and it seems like
her whole home economics spin on things, which was really
hot at the time, UM, was sort of compensating for that.
So her whole perspective on it was like women who
cares that, you know, the workplace is not so welcoming
(38:03):
of us because our homes can be treated like factories.
We can systematize things, you can be your own assembly line,
so you see, I mean there's so much UM literature
in advertisements these days of literally like teaching women how
to wash their dishes and fold their clothes, etcetera in
(38:24):
more efficient ways. So from that perspective, you have a
Christine Frederick and others being like, I'm not selling you know,
women up the river, like I'm making their lives better.
I'm teaching them how to you know, get spotless silverware
and have the time. You know, it's not like they.
(38:44):
I mean, we also have to give these women, um,
a little bit of h I think some of the
past for not having like the full scope of history
to look at, you know, and maybe like a full
understanding of I don't know, like intersectional feminism to realize like,
wait a minute, you're kind of digging a grave for us. Well,
they're busy reading all of those trade magazines about understanding
(39:07):
human nature and putting themselves in consumers shoes. I mean,
but I mean women, women like Frederick or Rin lab
were frankly a rare site in the market or the
economy in general. I mean, women having the ability to
be these career focused individuals. Um. But you know, like
we've said, there still was that glass ceiling to contend
(39:27):
with in the industry itself, despite the fact that the
door was open to an extent. Because here's the thing,
the advertising industry was not and still is not, insulated
from its own messages that it's selling. So the same
kind of essentially like female subordination and narrow and quote
unquote acceptable gender roles that they are selling to women
(39:50):
is translated to the workplace so where all of these
guys are like, ladies, you are terrific at selling to women.
You know. This is also another like through line that
you see on Mad Men, where you know, Peggy of
course is a sign like pantios and stuff like that.
And she was like, really okay, um, because they're like, no, ladies,
this is what you're good at. You know, you stay
(40:12):
in your corner um, you know. So they were, I
don't know, it's like it gets kind of meta at
some point where it's like it almost feels like women
accidentally sold themselves out because in fact, it's still a
boys club at the top of the industry. Uh. The
Advertising League, for instance, was all men's. A lot of
(40:35):
these professional organizations were all men, hence the founding. Like
you said of the advertising women of New York, there
was a noticeable gender wage gap for men and women
who would be doing the same thing. You have male
executives reluctant to promote women beyond copyrighting for female products. Um,
(40:55):
you have women being denied access to um leadership in
the creative department, and even down to the gendered language
in job announcements in the newspaper. Looking for ad men
or salaried men. Rarely would you see advertisements from a
like a j W T asking for ad women. Yeah.
(41:18):
And and even back then, the women who did break
through and climb up the ranks, they were perceived as
being these geniuses of the industry as as total outliers
who were somehow different than the rest of the women
around them. And one thing in the background of all
of this is the fact that, yeah, I mean white
women were having a tough time of it, you know,
(41:40):
busting through that glass ceiling if they wanted to. There
were probably plenty of women who were cool with being
secretaries and then getting married. That was a perfectly acceptable
and desired path that a lot of women took back then. Um,
but in no way could have possibly been easier for
are not just women of color, but people of color,
(42:03):
I mean African American men were a rare site on
Madison Avenue because of just basic media segregation and racist
publishing policies. And this is something that Jason Chambers writes
about in the book Madison Avenue in the Color Line,
African Americans and the Advertising Industry. Yeah, and so you know,
(42:24):
we mentioned earlier all the trade magazines that we're telling
women how to be good ad women add people. Uh,
and and they advocated a lot of the ability to
put yourself in the consumer's shoes. But there was a
basic flat out assumption that, you know, because white and
male is the dominant, and white and female is also
(42:47):
something that happens in the ad industry, you can be
white and female in the office, uh, but still your
only sort of targeting other white women. So there was
this idea that like, how in the world world could
a black man at the office or a black woman
at the office write copy or design an ad or
a campaign that could possibly target the general population. Oh
(43:10):
and the idea of a black male copywriter writing to
appeal to white women, I mean that would simply be
inconceivable because of all of the racism and hyper sexualization
and like white dude fears around the relationship between you know,
the potential sexual threat. You know that black men might
(43:33):
pose too white women. So that translates even two jobs
in the advertising industry. That is how like how deeply
embedded this kind of racism is. And initially advertising was
small enough that it didn't attract a lot of pushback
from the black community. Um, but of course once you
start seeing black owned ad agencies developing. Because black businesses
(44:00):
could not buy advertising in white or quote unquote mainstream
publications a lot of times, um, their opportunities were were limited,
although in their own ways, they were also selling idealized
images of a middle class yeah, a middle class black
(44:23):
family in order to counteract so many of the prevailing
racist stereotypes out there of black families as across the
board being poor and unstable and missing a father, all
of that stuff, of showing the happy Norman Rockwell version
of family in the ad just black, Yeah, I mean,
because consumer rights are part of full citizenship. Um. But
(44:49):
then we get to double edged sword number two, because
black enterprise both flourished and was hampered at the turn
of the century because of seid gregation, where you have
white owned brands that could sell to black consumers but
not vice versa. So by though, the white ad industry
(45:10):
begins paying more attention to the black market with the
launch of Ebony. UM. This also relates back to your
episode on Black newspapers and Ethel Payne where we go
into more detail about that. UM. But Ebony really changed
a lot and advertisers. White advertisers saw it as like
(45:30):
oh wait, hold on, there's all this this money out there.
There's look at look at this like premium publication targeted
to black people. Okay, we can have like blue chip
advertisers in this in this magazine. Yeah. And and the
thing is, when you get to the nineteen seventies, you've
got these ad agencies that again are mostly run by
(45:50):
white guys, and they're starting to realize that they should
hire more women and African American people. Uh, but that's
a lot due to affirmative action. That's not them being like, oh,
I should really get a diversity of viewpoints in my
staff so I can uh, you know, better serve my clients. Um.
And so basically that's where it stops. It's not like
(46:13):
there is some massive push from the actual higher ups
in these ad agencies to try to diversify. And in
the process of all of this, you see, you know,
some black agencies that are smaller and don't have as
big of budgets being shut out because white owned agencies
are coming in stealing business and stealing talent um. And
(46:37):
within all of this, though, there are a couple of
rowd ladies that way want to highlight who were making
their way through this career while facing double discrimination of
you know, not only being a woman, but being a
woman of color. So in nine three you have Caroline
Jones who is hired by j w T as its
(46:58):
first African American copywriter, and she later became the first
female African American vice president in a major agency. Still
at jw T, and early on in her career, Jones
was expected to focus on accounts that were geared toward
black consumers, just in the same way that we've been
(47:19):
talking about how women are expected to market to women. Well,
black people are expected to market to other black people.
But some of her campaigns for things like Campbell Soup
and KFC were actually taken national, although I believe the
imagery in those ads when they were taken national were
changed to white families instead of black families. Uh yeah, well,
(47:42):
and then um, maybe because of that. In six UM
she rolls solo. She had already I think opened a
couple of other agencies before UM, but in X she
opens up Caroline Jones Incorporated, and it's very six US
full through that. Ten years prior, you have Barbara Proctor
(48:05):
founding Proctor and Gardner Advertising, which was the second largest
black agency in the US, and Procter is the first
and only black woman helming an agency until the late eighties,
and she really had a social uplift mission with her work.
She really understood how ad images could influence people's perceptions
of the black community, and so she would not work
(48:27):
for cigarette or alcohol companies that targeted women and people
of color. And speaking to the l a times in,
Proctor said, I'm not nearly as successful as I would
be if I were a white male. If I were
a white male, I'd be among the fortune five hundred companies.
I had hoped to nurture this company into a Leo Burnett.
(48:49):
And for those of you outside the industry, Leo Burnett
is one of the biggest agencies. So I mean she's
calling it like it is right there. Um. But speaking
of Leo Burnett. In nine, the same year Barbara Proctor
found her advertising agency, Carol H. Williams becomes the first
black female creative director at a major agency at Leo Burnett.
(49:16):
And uh, this tagline that she came up with might
ring a bell to deodorant fans, doesn't make sense. She
came up with a whole strong enough for a man,
but made for a woman, which was secret deodorance campaign
for Forever. Yeah. Did I still use that? I don't
think so. It's kind of like that's how good some
(49:36):
of these taglines are that marketers and advertisers came up with,
because I literally still associate them with the brand, like
I still think of, uh, we love to fly on
it shows for Delta, which I love to say uh
to my mother because she is a Delta flight attendant
and it doesn't show I love you, Mom. But anyway,
(49:58):
according to add Women author Julianne Savolca, what these three
women that we just mentioned have in common is that
they knew when to pack up and head out, when
to leave the agencies that they were in and take
things entrepreneurial. Yeah. I mean it seems like they, you know,
(50:18):
recognize like, Okay, I've hit the ceiling or I'm about
to hit the ceiling. So I've just got to do
this for myself because all these white dudes at the
top have no interest in promoting me. You know, they
don't want me going to their all male clubs. Um.
I mean because they were also male clubs, you say,
(50:41):
because there were the I mean, and I want to
say that one still existed like quite recently, but they
are these like men's only clubs where advertisers would take
clients you know, to do their like schmoozing and wheeling
and dealing. Um, and like, yeah, that is that is
(51:01):
the world where we're in. So no surprise if you
are someone is talented as say like a Carol H. Williams,
yeah you might as well just like make your own paper, um,
and a lot of us really explains the hot mess
that the ad industry finds itself in today with a
lot of these same issues still persisting. Has it gotten better? Yes?
(51:26):
Are more women even more women in the advertising industry, yes,
and there are more women in leadership positions, but there
are still very familiar roadblocks for women, especially like you said, um,
in the creative department. And we're going to talk about
(51:48):
all of that in our next episode, part two. So
in the meantime, I know that we have a lot
of folks in the industry listening to this and I
would love to hear your thoughts about this. Um. Mom
Stuff at how stuffworks dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
(52:10):
messages on Facebook. And I realized that you know, we
just cited a limited list of these trailblazers in the
ad industries. So if there are rad women that we
did not mention that we should shout out, please also
let us know. And we've got a couple of letters
to share with you right now. Okay, Well, we've got
(52:35):
a set of letters here about our saggy boobs science episode.
This one's from Ashley. She says, Hi, ladies, just listen
to your podcast on boob sagging and it made me
so angry and a little self conscious, not at you,
but at the ridiculous standards we are held to. I'm
a thirty six h and according to the Tosa scale,
I've got some Grade two sagging going on. My boobs
(52:58):
have never been perky. They're so heavy that I have
large knots in my back that I have to constantly
get worked out by massage therapists and chiropractors. I've never
before expected them to defy gravity and not sag. In fact,
I'd be super surprised if they didn't sag. Despite this,
hearing about this scale made me feel abnormal, even though
you were pretty adamantly calling it out for its ridiculousness.
(53:20):
I wish people didn't find it necessary to quantify perceived
problems with women's bodies. Thanks for the great show, Keep
it up. I really look up to you as feminist
role models. Well thanks, Ashley, and I'm glad you're in
agreement about how silly the what do we call like
the Tosas Circus tight rope? Was the Tosas tight rope? Yeah,
that makes more sense alliteration. Okay, So I've got to
(53:41):
let her hear from Sharon also about our Tosas episode,
and she writes, First, I have two kids, and despite
returning to my pre pregnancy weight, my boobs are a
cup size bigger and let's just say, no longer self supporting.
But she says, the truth is my husband actually likes
sagging boom better than he did my perfect perky ones. Second,
(54:04):
you talked a lot about the ligaments. I felt a
lump in my breast and brought it to the attention
of my midwife. She scheduled a mammogram and an ultrasound,
and it turns out they said it was just that
I have firm ligaments. And I think she used the
word tough a few times, and it makes me feel
like a badass in some ways. Lastly, my series occasionally
(54:25):
comes on for no reason when listening to the podcast
and attempts to search for something. The host said it
tried to search a sentence that included boob science and
told me it couldn't find anything. Well, if that doesn't
sum up the lack of research, then I don't know
what does. Well. Thanks Sharon, and thanks to everybody who's
written into us mom stuff at how stuff works dot
(54:46):
com is our email address and for links to all
of our social media as well as all of our blogs,
videos and podcasts with our sources. So you can learn
more about the history of women in advertising, head on
over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com. Um
or more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
(55:06):
how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how stup
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and we are about to spend
two episodes talking about the history and the marginalization of
(00:26):
and the contemporary landscape four women in Advertising. Yeah, that's right,
I mean Kristin and I. If you've listened to the
podcast at all ever, have covered a lot of topics
in the past related to how women are portrayed in
the actual advertisements. We've talked about photo shopping, We've talked
about body image, We've talked about really just traditional notions
(00:49):
of femininity and gender roles as they are presented through
the lens of advertising and marketing. But we have not
yet talked about actual female advertise users and copywriters and designers. Yeah,
at all, So we we should probably do that. And uh.
Two of the things that I found as fascinating and
(01:10):
doing this research Christian, that I was not aware of
before were a how intimately sort of connected women were
to the birth of advertising as an industry, um, and
how so many of them quickly rose to the highest
ranks of the advertising industry when it was brand new.
(01:30):
But b I hope I'm on being not to but
be uh to b B. Two of how women played
this role in advertising, of essentially helping to market that
traditional femininity and gender norms to other women. That was
big business for women in advertising was being the voice
(01:51):
and perspective of women in general. Yeah, I mean being
the Peggy Olson of the office. Um, And speaking of
Peggy Olson and Mad Men, it seems like we haven't
really paid much attention to the history of women in
advertising until that show became such a blockbuster. And while
it does a decent job of accurately portraying what life
(02:13):
would have been like for a woman and a copywriter
in an agency in the nineteen sixties, it was a
very different place when advertising first began developing in more
of the late nineteenth century. And Yeah, like you said,
there's this unfortunate irony that you quickly run into when
(02:36):
it comes to women in the ad industry, which is
that the the asset that made us so successful also
erected a glass ceiling and really reinforced institutional lives sexism
that is still rampant today, which we're going to cover
more in our next episode. And it's no surprise that
(03:02):
feminists talk about advertising a lot, because that's where a
lot of these troublesome images and stereotypes of women's roles
um historically and still today reside. But what I didn't
realize so much that Julia se Volca notes in her
(03:22):
book ad Women, how they impact what we need, want
and buy, is that quote the history of advertising is
deeply entwined with feminism. Yeah, advertising in it as well
as feminism had three waves, three early waves as it developed.
(03:44):
So it's first wave, as Kristen said, is in the
late nineteenth century, alongside uh, the industrial Revolution, the emergence
of the modern consumer economy, and alongside the suffrage movement itself.
So all of a sudd and you've got, you know,
products that are ready made. It's you don't have to
(04:04):
be making everything yourself. You've got people, men and women
and children going to work in factories with their tiny
hands um and wrapped up in all of this is
women fighting for the right to vote, to become full citizens.
And so it's kind of not a coincidence then. You know,
we mentioned that women have been involved in advertising since
(04:24):
the get go. It's not a coincidence then that many
of those first successful ad ladies were feminists. And then
if you look at second wave feminism, women are really
championing the right to pursue professional careers and achieve personal success.
And you see a similar trend in advertising as well,
(04:45):
in the ways that women are being represented not just
at home anymore, but also hey baby, look you've come
a long way. So light up that Virginia Slim. Here's
your independence with a side of cancer. And arguably third
wave feminisms relationship to advertising is pushing for it to
(05:07):
reflect the lived realities of being women. Yeah, and all
of this, as we move through time, more women are
entering the workplace, more women are entering different male dominated
industries and fields. But as we'll get into through this
episode and into the next, women haven't quite shattered the
(05:29):
glass ceilings of the advertising industry, no matter their early involvement.
And I got to say, white men have done a
tip top job of gate keeping within the industry because
you know, diversity in or the lack thereof, in the
ad business is not just something that applies to women,
(05:51):
but people of color as well. So with all of
this in the back of our minds, the way this
part one is going to be structured is breaking it
down into three major themes in that earlier history of
women and advertising. So theme one we have to look
(06:12):
at just the basic feminization of consumption, or in other words,
how ladies be shopping came to be because you know,
shopping outside your home at some point was a new behavior,
and even shopping had to be sold and advertisers sold
it as a lady thing. Um. So let's travel back
(06:36):
to the seventeen seventies, do we have to? It's it's
a great place to be, um if if you are
a white man, yeah, probably a terrible place to get
your period. Oh yeah, I get your period, or just
you know, a great a great time if you love
independence and industrialization. Well that's right, because we see in
(06:58):
Britain the dawn of the Austrial Revolution. It would take
about another hundred years for it to fully come into
vogue slash change the world in America because we were
we were a tad more rural, a lot a lot
more farms and space. Things were a lot more spread
out over here on the side of the pond, so
(07:18):
we just got things a little slower. But once steam power,
factories and railroads arrive, the Industrial revolution takes off and
for the very first time, things start costing less to
buy pre manufactured than two d I Y. Well, plus
(07:39):
you have all sorts of variety now too, so your
bonnet didn't just have to be white. You could buy
like a purple bonnet, or a blue bonnet, poka dotted bonnum,
maybe even a pokonuted bonnam. So leading up to the
Civil War we also have a media boom. This is
part of technological advances taking place that of course would
(08:00):
greatly impact and facilitate really the advertising industry. So you
have the emergence of daily, weekly, and monthly papers and
magazines as well as women's magazines. In the premier women's
magazines of the day were Goadie's Ladies Book, which was
(08:21):
the magazine. Then you had the Ladies Home Journal, of course,
because how else are you going to learn how to
bake that apple crumble that sounds? Then in the you
gotta get that l h J. Script. And then you
also have Peterson's Magazine, which when I first read that, Caroline,
it reminded me of J. Peterson on Seinfeld Peterman, J Peterman,
(08:46):
so close Peterman Peterson Yeah. Well, and then yeah, with
with all all of the fancy descriptions of things. Yes,
his his outdoor expensive khakis. Yeah, but I think Peterson's
was a bit different because they probably did not want
women going outdoors too much. Women had to learn how
(09:07):
to stay at home better. Yes, And if you did
go outside, don't move too quickly, you know, stay close
and walk slowly. So with that, in the eighteen fifties
you start getting the earliest ad departments and agencies beginning
to form. Yeah, because I mean what goes in all
(09:28):
of these new daily, weekly and monthly papers and ladies
mag's advertisements? Yeah, because publishers have to make money somehow,
and that somehow is advertising. Yeah. And so by eight
sixty three, of course, we have the introduction of common currency,
which definitely helped things, helped people shop more effectively. We
also see all of those new ready made goods requiring
(09:51):
branding and merchandizing, trademarking, positioning in the market, all these things.
Because if I make oatmeal and and you make oat me,
but it's basically like from the same oats, how are
we going to how are people going to know that
our oats are different oats? They're not different oats. I
might put a Quaker man on mine, and you might
(10:12):
put a Quaker gal ms, Quaker oats, thank you very much, ms. Period.
She can't vote, but she'll fill you up in the morning.
Looks good. And as the manufacturing industry develops, you know,
you have all of these mail order catalogs, which then
(10:33):
leads to brick and mortar stores and the retail industry
boom with early stores like Woolworth's five and Dime, A
and P Grocery. Don't forget Piggy Wiggly. Piggy Wiggly was
an original and also J. C. Penny. So we have
these places outside of our homes where we can now
go and buy stuff. We don't just have to flip
(10:54):
through the Sears catalog place our orders and wait and wait. Well,
that is something that was definitely something that people in
the rural areas of America still definitely relied on, and
it was something that boomed. Uh similarly in the wake
of the Industrial Revolution. It's like, oh, well, okay, I
may not be able to walk into a J. C.
Penny when I'm out here on the frontier, but I
(11:16):
can get a fancy catalog. I just imagine it's like
me when I get the I K Catalog, which is
always an exciting day and I always certified like forty
five minutes to sit down and flip through the I
K Catalog. I love that. Um. I gotta tell you
my favorite catalog that my husband and I did not
subscribe to is Costco Connection. Yeah. You know you're thirty
(11:39):
when suddenly a Costco connection ends up in your mailbox
hashtag this is thirty? Yeah? Is it? Is it taped
together with a an A RP catalog? God, it might
as well be. I feel like that was just right
around the corner. Um. But I was delighted to learn that, Yeah,
(11:59):
there's a whole lifestyle magazine devoted to Costco, because really,
once you start going to Costco, it does become a
way of life. Dude. I know my boyfriend just reapped
our Costco membership, and so does the catalog just show
people living the life of a Costco member. Are they
like enjoying the giant thing of cheetahs? Yeah? I mean
it's just Kirkland brand shirts and piles of canned goods
(12:21):
for days? Can I jump into a swimming pool in
this catalog? Full of of sharmon ultrastrong toilet paper. You
know what, in the costco connection, you can anything. Anything
is possible. Any who. Um, well, you also have to
keep in mind the context of the time. I'm sorry
if that was jarring, going from like a mental image
of me in a pool of toilet paper, unused, unwrapped, wrapped, sorry,
(12:45):
to the Civil War. But you've got to keep in
mind the context, which is that men going off to
fight the Civil War and some women covertly, uh, but
a lot of them died. It should be news to
no one that when the men went away and a
lot of them didn't come home, you had this man
drain on the economy and on the workforce. So a
lot of women started entering higher education, they started entering
(13:09):
the workforce and just public life in general, which afforded
them some financial agency that they didn't previously have. Yeah,
I mean you start to have laws being enacted around
the eighteen eighties that radically allowed women to claim their
own wages even when they were married, because for a
(13:32):
long time they couldn't. Some states were starting to allow
married women to even enter business partnerships and sign contracts.
So you're starting to see um, not only more job opportunities,
for you know, respectable middle class read white women outside
the home. They're also starting to win a few financial
(13:55):
rights here and there. And we see this really showcase
in eighteen eighty with Matilda Sea Wheels first women run
ad agency, the mc wheel Agency opens. Yeah, and she
had moved to the U s from Germany in the
eighteen seventies with her husband, but he dies suddenly. It's
(14:19):
very tragic. How am I going to keep myself afloat?
How am I going to make money? Well, she quickly
realizes how profitable it can be selling ad space in
newspapers and magazines for products, being the go between, sort
of the ad representative or account manager of year old
early days. And she and her friend and business partner
(14:41):
Meta Volkman saw this advertising path as a terrific new
job opportunity for women as copywriters or clerks, solicitors, commercial artists,
especially because at this point, like so many of the
industries and careers that we talked about on the podcast,
it was too new to be gendered yet. Yeah. I
(15:03):
mean that's the same thing that you see with computer science.
Before we realize what a boom programming would be, women
were the original quote unquote computers and programmers. Um. And
in early advertising, not only did you have a gender free,
essentially environment, UM, but you also have what we're called
(15:27):
nostrums or the tonics and cure alls that were really
the backbone of the ad industry. Uh in post Civil
War time. They were a seventy million dollar industry, which
was no small potitos. Yeah, I mean, these ads for
these tonics basically made up a third of American publishers revenues.
(15:51):
So I think that's a very interesting cycle. You know,
you talk about today, um, maybe negative images and advertising
sort of normalizing certain body types for instance. UM, So
apply that pattern and knowledge to uh, the ideas around
these nostrums that Okay, well we're gonna run these ads.
(16:12):
We make a lot of money, so we're gonna run more.
We're gonna make even more money, and on and on
and on and so people are going out and buying
in huge droves these really ineffective quote unquote medicines that
were honestly mostly alcohol. And because women were in charge
of advertising, so many of these products, and so many
(16:33):
of these products were advertised to women. It was basically
like kind of a wink wink, nudge and nudge for
women to get wasted, Like it was definitely an early
way for women to be like, I'm just gonna drink
this to feel better. Leave mommy alone with her tincture.
And since women were buying these tinctures and uh, you
(16:54):
know a lot of the other cure alls and even
say maybe the first um underarm depilatory powders are being
sold to women to cure and quotes their pit hair
essentially um. In the eight nineties, this very young industry
starts to recognize how getting a woman's point of view,
(17:16):
so to speak, is really profitable, because this is when
they start to also realize how influential women were as
buyers because they influenced obviously not only household purchases, but
also things that men themselves bought. Yes, women swaying their
(17:37):
husband's opinions on things. And and you have, of course,
different industries orbiting this burgeoning ad industry. For example, in
the eighteen nineties and the early eighteen nineties, you get
Beatrice and Clara Tonison who started the first professional modeling agency.
So they're early lady entrepreneurs providing fresh face young women
(18:01):
for advertisements. And in a woman named Kate Grizzwold becomes
the publisher of the trade magazine Profitable Advertising, and it
was highly influential at the time. And Grizzwold becoming publisher
of this is you know, noted in advertising histories as
(18:22):
an example of the potential power that women did wield. Well, yeah,
you see a bunch of these trade magazines popping up
just a year later. Woman's World, Uh described how great
advertising was for women. And obviously they didn't mean the
ads themselves, they meant it as a profession. And they
were one of several of these trade magazines that talked
(18:46):
about what it took to be a good ad woman. Um. Basically,
an ad woman had a great understanding of human character
and human nature. They should have some literary skill and ideas. Uh,
they have to be able to put themselves in the
customers shoes. I mean, this is nothing new to anyone
today who's in advertising. You still need to have an
(19:07):
understanding of psychology and human nature and the way to
really market something to someone. Um. The article ended up
getting reprinted four years later in nineteen hundred because so
many women had started being attracted to the job. They
were curious about the job they were writing into these
trade magazines, and the magazine was like, jeez, well we
published a thing a couple of years ago. I guess
(19:28):
we'll reprint it. Um. But they were thought to be
most successful in the job women were when they were
capitalizing on gender norms rather than trying to act, dress
or right and pitch ideas like men. Of course, I mean,
this is the turn of the century. We don't want women,
(19:49):
you know, emulating masculine values. Um. And it's also around
that time in the turn of the century that the
advertising industry not only is attracting some women into you know,
it's workspace, but also it's marketing consumption as a lady thing.
This is how ladies Be Shopping came to be, because
(20:13):
I mean, the advertising industry really sold going out in
shopping as part of your feminine duty. While your man
is away earning the money, you, as a woman, spend
it to make your home, your kids, yourself of course,
look and feel good. So really, spending money is a
(20:36):
woman's job. And we still see that stereotype so much today. Yeah, well,
I mean you see the stereotype that you see plenty
of people still embracing that division. You know, I mean,
you still see plenty of people with the attitude of like, yeah,
women should just be shopping. Yeah. It reminds me of
a Real Housewives of New York binge that I've been
(20:58):
on lately, and and one of the couples is, um,
I don't know what the dude is. It doesn't even matter.
All the men or footnotes in that show anyway, UM,
but the the woman UM does not work. And they're
like at a dinner and she's the one commenting like, oh, yeah,
(21:18):
you make that money so I can spend it, just
cringing as I'm like buying the next episode on Amazon. Um.
But that was that was such a I mean, it
makes sense that consumption was gendered, but I guess I
didn't realize before reading about this how explicit and strategic
(21:39):
it does me too. I didn't either, I didn't realize
that it was basically like a mandate. But the thing is,
I mean, it was a mandate to a certain class
of white women because in terms of working class women
women of color, the advertising industry had no interest in
reflecting them them in their images. Why would they want
(22:02):
to sell to them? They aren't ideal, Which is the
same the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I mean, if if you look at money as votes
or you know, money is the key to participation in representation,
advertisers are of course going to pitch to um that
(22:23):
those uh, advertisers are of course going to pitch to
that more desirable demographic of like young, wealthy or middle
class consumers. Yeah. I mean, also you've got the fact
of disposable income. But really, as we're going to see
with theme number two, it's all about creating this myth
of idealized white femininity. UM. Because when we get into
(22:47):
the next stage of the industry around World War One, before, during,
and after this is when we really see the monetization
of that female viewpoint. Because leading up to World War One,
advertisers are seeing women as really worthwhile to their business
(23:08):
for three main reasons. Uh, they'd already figured out how
influential they were on men's consumption, So I mean, what
a bargain. Um. They're also cheap, you know, the gender
wage gap existed way back when. Um, And they bring
the feminine point of view. Yeah. Well it's funny that
(23:31):
you you put it like that, because one of the
first badass ladies in advertising was definitely not a shrinking violet. Uh.
In nineteen eleven, the j. Walter Thompson Agency JWT hired
its first female copywriter and frankly rab feminist lady Helen
Landsdown Resort, who ended up staffing an entire department with
(23:53):
female copywriters. So she's actually responsible. It turns out this
is another tidbit I learned for the original UH like
sex cells concept. She showed a man embracing a woman
in an ad for Woodberry soap, accompanied by the headline
A skin you love to touch? Was it the same
(24:15):
ad or was it a different one that featured a
naked lady for soap? There was like a really scandalous
early ad for soap that also featured like a nakedly
kind of hunched over and facing away from the camera
kind of looks like are you are you cold? You
probably really cold. I don't know if that was also
or they caught her off guard? Yeah, who let you
(24:36):
in my house to sketch me for the past two hours? What? Um?
And so. By nineteen just a couple of years later,
JWT's women's department, helmed by Reasor, attracted more than half
of the agency's billings, and I don't have the exact
number of accounts in front of me, but that meant
(24:58):
that the staff of women in like the women's editorial department,
was doing far and away a bulk of the creative
work in the agency. But we're being paid less than
the men who had far fewer accounts that they were managing.
But again, like you said, the more things change, the
(25:20):
more they say the same. And by the time Resort
makes it to the JWT boards, she's incredibly successful. You see,
you know, her star rising, But by that point most
women in the agency were secretaries. So you have some
breakout stars like a Resort, but it's not a universal
(25:40):
story by any means. One woman's success at the top
of corporate America does not translate to general women's equality,
which is something that, of course we talk about today
with anything in terms of women making to the c suite.
But if you look at how you know, women in
advertising were being reported on in you know, the teens,
(26:03):
it's so strikingly different than the kind of headlines that
we see today. So in nineteen twelve, first of all,
you have the founding of Advertising Women of New York,
which still exists, and is still a highly influential group.
Um and the New York Evening Telegram reported women advertising
(26:24):
managers now entrusted with the spending of twenty million dollars
a year. So you would probably think, if you were
a reader at that time, that, hey, this new advertising
business is really welcoming to women. Women are really you know,
busting down some doors, making making some cash. Well, I
mean yeah, but the whole reason behind Awnie's founding is
(26:48):
that women weren't allowed in the all male advertising league. Yeah,
and and again, I mean there, that's that's sort of
the um, the the temptation of romantis sizing this early
history of advertising when especially in the you know, turn
of the century era, when it was relatively un gendered.
(27:10):
Although it feels like that lasted like a weekend and
then the guys came back and were like, wait, a
tick coiled on. We just want your feminine viewpoint here
is less than what you deserve to earn, UM, but
romanticize it because you do have, you know, these standout
women who were nonetheless climbing the ranks here and there.
(27:31):
So in the nineteen twenties, for instance, Jane Martin was
a stenographer turned ad whiz, whom Julian Savolka in that
Ad Women book describes as an outspoken feminist. She was
single and loving it, and I mean it seems like
she's just got a bulldozed her way through. Yeah, she's
(27:53):
known as the ad woman who made ad Women famous.
So she worked her way up through. Sheer also nous
and you know, hard work, from advertising for a single
manufacturer all the way up to agency work. And she
did it all explicitly for economic independence. Because this is
a lady who never married. Keep in mind, at this time,
typically if you were a lady person in the workforce,
(28:18):
you were expected or in some cases forced to retire
or resign once you get married. Well, and this reminds
me of our two parter on librarians because female librarianship
was also shooting through the roof at this time as well.
And there was that line because kind of that crossroads
if you're a woman in the workplace where you either
(28:41):
get married and quit or work very very little, or
you have to stay single in order to move up.
I mean you can get in a Boston marriage. Yeah, yeah,
Boston marriage being you know, living with a lady friend.
Wink wink, nudge, nudge. Yeah, could just be a lady friend,
or it could be a lady friend with benefits. Yes. Indeed.
(29:02):
By nine though, when Martin did have to retire because
of illness, she was earning eight times the average woman's salaries.
So a survey, for instance, showed that female buyers of
ad space were paid five grand a year, while their
male counterparts were earning about seventy. Martin, at the end
(29:22):
of her career, was earning ten thousand books. Yeah. I
have a feeling that Jane Martin was not one to
take less than she knew she was worth. And that's wonderful.
I wish more people would demand what they're worth. Yeah,
I mean, but I'm saying like that talk about a
radical act. Probably in nineteen five, it still feels like
(29:45):
a radical act, does it does? And around the same time,
in nineteen six, Nedda McGrath becomes the first female art
director in the industry. And this is major because women
were welcome is copywriters, space buyers, and researchers, but art
(30:06):
and creative direction and account management was for the boys.
And this is going to be a major topic for
our second episode. Oh yeah, that's right, because shall we
say it a third time, the more things change, the
more things stay the same. And another issue that we're
going to revisit when we're talking about the lay of
the land today. It's something that harkens back to the
(30:27):
nineteen thirties because you've got a lot of women at
the time working in many sectors of mass marketing. Um,
they just weren't at perhaps as top ranks of art
directors and creative directors. Yeah, and so to give an
idea of the diversity of jobs that were available and
that women were doing, you know, you do have things
(30:47):
like copyrighting, whether for agencies or department stores or mail
order companies. Um, they oversaw publicity campaigns, they were merchandizing consultants.
You have commercial artists, product designers, and photographers. But again,
like there's that gatekeeping issue when it comes to where
(31:09):
the bulk of the money is um up at the
top and with that account management that is I mean really,
I mean just kind of reserved for the guys. So
while there were a good amount of women in the industry,
in fact, by nineteen fifty, women made up a third
of ad industry employees, the glass ceiling was very much
(31:34):
in place. I mean and and you can hear how
hopeful a lot of these women were with this industry
that maybe they thought they could, you know, continue making
in roads in such as Christine Frederick, who was a
consumer advocate and home economists and also one of the
founders of the Advertising Women of New York who in
(31:56):
eight said, nothing is more proof that women are important
and advertise then the plane fact that they've been in
advertising in one capacity or another almost from the very
beginning of the profession. So that was like just a given.
And yet that quote unquote plane fact has been largely
(32:19):
erased over time, and we are only now rediscovering that
that was the case. So what happened because nifty uh,
you know, a third of ad industry employees sisters are
doing it for themselves, some of them. Yeah, well, we
still have to get to theme number three, and we're
(32:40):
going to do that when we come right back from
a quick break. And that third theme is something that
we've kind of been hinting at this whole time, which
is basically that the pigeonholing of women and gendered market
(33:06):
segmentation ultimately proved to be this double edged sword for women,
that whole valuing of women for their female or feminine
point of view um and using women as tools to
market two fellow women. I mean, it's great if if
it helps you get a job and it helps you
get a paycheck. It's not so great if it just
further and further pigeonholes women in the industry. And here's
(33:29):
the thing. A lot of these women in advertising, specifically
a Christine Frederick, who was you know, both in advertising
and was also a home economist, they really thought that
they were improving women's lives through the types of ads
that they were making because they were selling these conveniences.
(33:50):
They were, you know, potentially like freeing women from the
drudgery of chores that they had to do without the
aid of all of these new gizmos and such. Not
to mention that there were enough success stories like a
Jane Martin that ambitious women considered advertising a place that
(34:12):
they could go where they would not just get stuck
in the secretarial pool. They could potentially, with their college education,
climb their way out of the stent a pool. But
what got women in the door was their perspective, that
female point of view on gendered domesticity. And some women
(34:33):
like Helen Lansdowne Razor were able to climb the ladder
above copywriter of course. Um, I mean you also have
Jeane Wade rind Laub, who started as a consumer department
copywriter at B B d oh, and she slayed at
lady brands. Like when she started out, she was writing
(34:53):
for Duff's Gingerbread, Marvelous Makeup, Energetic Shoes. Oh, Energetic, I
just got it. It took you saying it for me
to get it. So listeners, Energetic is E N N
A as in like as if it's someone's first name.
And then getic, G J E T T I C K,
(35:15):
clever um. And then she graduated though two more established
brands like General Mills, the United Fruit Company, UM and
Campbell's Soup, And like Helen Landsdown Razor, you see ran
Loum kind of noticing like, okay, this female point of view,
like selling these women's products, that is something that we,
(35:36):
you know, we as women have a corner on in
this industry. So I'm going to capitalize this for all
it's worth. So she saviely created women's research groups to
get women's product impressions and branding input, and you see
a lot of that, like recreated um on Mad Men Um.
She also voiced Betty Crocker, which I did. Did I
(35:58):
know that Betty Crocker had a voice. Betty Crocker began
as a radio personality, uh okay, and as part of that,
she started the industry's first test kitchen. I mean, this
woman was quite the innovator, and as evidence of that,
she became the first woman elected vice president of b
(36:19):
B d Oh. So there again you have these instances
of women here and there breaking through. But there's the catch, right,
the catch being you've got these go getters, but they're
selling domesticity aproned baking. Not that there's anything wrong with
(36:39):
that hashtag, not all baking, but it was selling the
very gendered identity of a woman being in her sphere
at home, supporting the man while he went out and worked,
which is ironic for someone like a Christine Frederick, who
is one of the co founders of Annie. She was here.
(37:01):
She was this go getter, a woman who wanted to
pursue career success um. But she also knew that advertising
to women and wives out there to get them to
be consumers, it meant selling to a more conservative general
public who were more comfortable with the idea of women
(37:21):
staying at home, which led Frederick to focusing on home economics. Basically, yeah,
it seems like Frederick really wanted to compensate for what
she knew was her violation of like feminine gender norms
by being this progressive professional woman, which was like those
were politics that she didn't want to push. I mean,
(37:42):
she was a relatively conservative woman, and it seems like
her whole home economics spin on things, which was really
hot at the time, UM, was sort of compensating for that.
So her whole perspective on it was like women who
cares that, you know, the workplace is not so welcoming
(38:03):
of us because our homes can be treated like factories.
We can systematize things, you can be your own assembly line,
so you see, I mean there's so much UM literature
in advertisements these days of literally like teaching women how
to wash their dishes and fold their clothes, etcetera in
(38:24):
more efficient ways. So from that perspective, you have a
Christine Frederick and others being like, I'm not selling you know,
women up the river, like I'm making their lives better.
I'm teaching them how to you know, get spotless silverware
and have the time. You know, it's not like they.
(38:44):
I mean, we also have to give these women, um,
a little bit of h I think some of the
past for not having like the full scope of history
to look at, you know, and maybe like a full
understanding of I don't know, like intersectional feminism to realize like,
wait a minute, you're kind of digging a grave for us. Well,
they're busy reading all of those trade magazines about understanding
(39:07):
human nature and putting themselves in consumers shoes. I mean,
but I mean women, women like Frederick or Rin lab
were frankly a rare site in the market or the
economy in general. I mean, women having the ability to
be these career focused individuals. Um. But you know, like
we've said, there still was that glass ceiling to contend
(39:27):
with in the industry itself, despite the fact that the
door was open to an extent. Because here's the thing,
the advertising industry was not and still is not, insulated
from its own messages that it's selling. So the same
kind of essentially like female subordination and narrow and quote
unquote acceptable gender roles that they are selling to women
(39:50):
is translated to the workplace so where all of these
guys are like, ladies, you are terrific at selling to women.
You know. This is also another like through line that
you see on Mad Men, where you know, Peggy of
course is a sign like pantios and stuff like that.
And she was like, really okay, um, because they're like, no, ladies,
this is what you're good at. You know, you stay
(40:12):
in your corner um, you know. So they were, I
don't know, it's like it gets kind of meta at
some point where it's like it almost feels like women
accidentally sold themselves out because in fact, it's still a
boys club at the top of the industry. Uh. The
Advertising League, for instance, was all men's. A lot of
(40:35):
these professional organizations were all men, hence the founding. Like
you said of the advertising women of New York, there
was a noticeable gender wage gap for men and women
who would be doing the same thing. You have male
executives reluctant to promote women beyond copyrighting for female products. Um,
(40:55):
you have women being denied access to um leadership in
the creative department, and even down to the gendered language
in job announcements in the newspaper. Looking for ad men
or salaried men. Rarely would you see advertisements from a
like a j W T asking for ad women. Yeah.
(41:18):
And and even back then, the women who did break
through and climb up the ranks, they were perceived as
being these geniuses of the industry as as total outliers
who were somehow different than the rest of the women
around them. And one thing in the background of all
of this is the fact that, yeah, I mean white
women were having a tough time of it, you know,
(41:40):
busting through that glass ceiling if they wanted to. There
were probably plenty of women who were cool with being
secretaries and then getting married. That was a perfectly acceptable
and desired path that a lot of women took back then. Um,
but in no way could have possibly been easier for
are not just women of color, but people of color,
(42:03):
I mean African American men were a rare site on
Madison Avenue because of just basic media segregation and racist
publishing policies. And this is something that Jason Chambers writes
about in the book Madison Avenue in the Color Line,
African Americans and the Advertising Industry. Yeah, and so you know,
(42:24):
we mentioned earlier all the trade magazines that we're telling
women how to be good ad women add people. Uh,
and and they advocated a lot of the ability to
put yourself in the consumer's shoes. But there was a
basic flat out assumption that, you know, because white and
male is the dominant, and white and female is also
(42:47):
something that happens in the ad industry, you can be
white and female in the office, uh, but still your
only sort of targeting other white women. So there was
this idea that like, how in the world world could
a black man at the office or a black woman
at the office write copy or design an ad or
a campaign that could possibly target the general population. Oh
(43:10):
and the idea of a black male copywriter writing to
appeal to white women, I mean that would simply be
inconceivable because of all of the racism and hyper sexualization
and like white dude fears around the relationship between you know,
the potential sexual threat. You know that black men might
(43:33):
pose too white women. So that translates even two jobs
in the advertising industry. That is how like how deeply
embedded this kind of racism is. And initially advertising was
small enough that it didn't attract a lot of pushback
from the black community. Um, but of course once you
start seeing black owned ad agencies developing. Because black businesses
(44:00):
could not buy advertising in white or quote unquote mainstream
publications a lot of times, um, their opportunities were were limited,
although in their own ways, they were also selling idealized
images of a middle class yeah, a middle class black
(44:23):
family in order to counteract so many of the prevailing
racist stereotypes out there of black families as across the
board being poor and unstable and missing a father, all
of that stuff, of showing the happy Norman Rockwell version
of family in the ad just black, Yeah, I mean,
because consumer rights are part of full citizenship. Um. But
(44:49):
then we get to double edged sword number two, because
black enterprise both flourished and was hampered at the turn
of the century because of seid gregation, where you have
white owned brands that could sell to black consumers but
not vice versa. So by though, the white ad industry
(45:10):
begins paying more attention to the black market with the
launch of Ebony. UM. This also relates back to your
episode on Black newspapers and Ethel Payne where we go
into more detail about that. UM. But Ebony really changed
a lot and advertisers. White advertisers saw it as like
(45:30):
oh wait, hold on, there's all this this money out there.
There's look at look at this like premium publication targeted
to black people. Okay, we can have like blue chip
advertisers in this in this magazine. Yeah. And and the
thing is, when you get to the nineteen seventies, you've
got these ad agencies that again are mostly run by
(45:50):
white guys, and they're starting to realize that they should
hire more women and African American people. Uh, but that's
a lot due to affirmative action. That's not them being like, oh,
I should really get a diversity of viewpoints in my
staff so I can uh, you know, better serve my clients. Um.
And so basically that's where it stops. It's not like
(46:13):
there is some massive push from the actual higher ups
in these ad agencies to try to diversify. And in
the process of all of this, you see, you know,
some black agencies that are smaller and don't have as
big of budgets being shut out because white owned agencies
are coming in stealing business and stealing talent um. And
(46:37):
within all of this, though, there are a couple of
rowd ladies that way want to highlight who were making
their way through this career while facing double discrimination of
you know, not only being a woman, but being a
woman of color. So in nine three you have Caroline
Jones who is hired by j w T as its
(46:58):
first African American copywriter, and she later became the first
female African American vice president in a major agency. Still
at jw T, and early on in her career, Jones
was expected to focus on accounts that were geared toward
black consumers, just in the same way that we've been
(47:19):
talking about how women are expected to market to women. Well,
black people are expected to market to other black people.
But some of her campaigns for things like Campbell Soup
and KFC were actually taken national, although I believe the
imagery in those ads when they were taken national were
changed to white families instead of black families. Uh yeah, well,
(47:42):
and then um, maybe because of that. In six UM
she rolls solo. She had already I think opened a
couple of other agencies before UM, but in X she
opens up Caroline Jones Incorporated, and it's very six US
full through that. Ten years prior, you have Barbara Proctor
(48:05):
founding Proctor and Gardner Advertising, which was the second largest
black agency in the US, and Procter is the first
and only black woman helming an agency until the late eighties,
and she really had a social uplift mission with her work.
She really understood how ad images could influence people's perceptions
of the black community, and so she would not work
(48:27):
for cigarette or alcohol companies that targeted women and people
of color. And speaking to the l a times in,
Proctor said, I'm not nearly as successful as I would
be if I were a white male. If I were
a white male, I'd be among the fortune five hundred companies.
I had hoped to nurture this company into a Leo Burnett.
(48:49):
And for those of you outside the industry, Leo Burnett
is one of the biggest agencies. So I mean she's
calling it like it is right there. Um. But speaking
of Leo Burnett. In nine, the same year Barbara Proctor
found her advertising agency, Carol H. Williams becomes the first
black female creative director at a major agency at Leo Burnett.
(49:16):
And uh, this tagline that she came up with might
ring a bell to deodorant fans, doesn't make sense. She
came up with a whole strong enough for a man,
but made for a woman, which was secret deodorance campaign
for Forever. Yeah. Did I still use that? I don't
think so. It's kind of like that's how good some
(49:36):
of these taglines are that marketers and advertisers came up with,
because I literally still associate them with the brand, like
I still think of, uh, we love to fly on
it shows for Delta, which I love to say uh
to my mother because she is a Delta flight attendant
and it doesn't show I love you, Mom. But anyway,
(49:58):
according to add Women author Julianne Savolca, what these three
women that we just mentioned have in common is that
they knew when to pack up and head out, when
to leave the agencies that they were in and take
things entrepreneurial. Yeah. I mean it seems like they, you know,
(50:18):
recognize like, Okay, I've hit the ceiling or I'm about
to hit the ceiling. So I've just got to do
this for myself because all these white dudes at the
top have no interest in promoting me. You know, they
don't want me going to their all male clubs. Um.
I mean because they were also male clubs, you say,
(50:41):
because there were the I mean, and I want to
say that one still existed like quite recently, but they
are these like men's only clubs where advertisers would take
clients you know, to do their like schmoozing and wheeling
and dealing. Um, and like, yeah, that is that is
(51:01):
the world where we're in. So no surprise if you
are someone is talented as say like a Carol H. Williams,
yeah you might as well just like make your own paper, um,
and a lot of us really explains the hot mess
that the ad industry finds itself in today with a
lot of these same issues still persisting. Has it gotten better? Yes?
(51:26):
Are more women even more women in the advertising industry, yes,
and there are more women in leadership positions, but there
are still very familiar roadblocks for women, especially like you said, um,
in the creative department. And we're going to talk about
(51:48):
all of that in our next episode, part two. So
in the meantime, I know that we have a lot
of folks in the industry listening to this and I
would love to hear your thoughts about this. Um. Mom
Stuff at how stuffworks dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
(52:10):
messages on Facebook. And I realized that you know, we
just cited a limited list of these trailblazers in the
ad industries. So if there are rad women that we
did not mention that we should shout out, please also
let us know. And we've got a couple of letters
to share with you right now. Okay, Well, we've got
(52:35):
a set of letters here about our saggy boobs science episode.
This one's from Ashley. She says, Hi, ladies, just listen
to your podcast on boob sagging and it made me
so angry and a little self conscious, not at you,
but at the ridiculous standards we are held to. I'm
a thirty six h and according to the Tosa scale,
I've got some Grade two sagging going on. My boobs
(52:58):
have never been perky. They're so heavy that I have
large knots in my back that I have to constantly
get worked out by massage therapists and chiropractors. I've never
before expected them to defy gravity and not sag. In fact,
I'd be super surprised if they didn't sag. Despite this,
hearing about this scale made me feel abnormal, even though
you were pretty adamantly calling it out for its ridiculousness.
(53:20):
I wish people didn't find it necessary to quantify perceived
problems with women's bodies. Thanks for the great show, Keep
it up. I really look up to you as feminist
role models. Well thanks, Ashley, and I'm glad you're in
agreement about how silly the what do we call like
the Tosas Circus tight rope? Was the Tosas tight rope? Yeah,
that makes more sense alliteration. Okay, So I've got to
(53:41):
let her hear from Sharon also about our Tosas episode,
and she writes, First, I have two kids, and despite
returning to my pre pregnancy weight, my boobs are a
cup size bigger and let's just say, no longer self supporting.
But she says, the truth is my husband actually likes
sagging boom better than he did my perfect perky ones. Second,
(54:04):
you talked a lot about the ligaments. I felt a
lump in my breast and brought it to the attention
of my midwife. She scheduled a mammogram and an ultrasound,
and it turns out they said it was just that
I have firm ligaments. And I think she used the
word tough a few times, and it makes me feel
like a badass in some ways. Lastly, my series occasionally
(54:25):
comes on for no reason when listening to the podcast
and attempts to search for something. The host said it
tried to search a sentence that included boob science and
told me it couldn't find anything. Well, if that doesn't
sum up the lack of research, then I don't know
what does. Well. Thanks Sharon, and thanks to everybody who's
written into us mom stuff at how stuff works dot
(54:46):
com is our email address and for links to all
of our social media as well as all of our blogs,
videos and podcasts with our sources. So you can learn
more about the history of women in advertising, head on
over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com. Um
or more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
(55:06):
how stuff works dot com.
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