h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Before the 1950s, women in ads were apt to be wearing aprons when they ear cleaning the home. In the 1950s, there seems to have been a new approach: exmphasize that a woman can be look glamorous and relaxed.

Heres an example (the first ad listed) from 1949, with a womani n an apron in the laundry room:

http://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/home-appliance-vintage-ads/


Further down the page you have a beautiful woman in a red dress showing an appliance. This ad was more typical of the 1950s.

The box of Oxydol in the picture was a tip-off. Its heyday would probably have been the fifties and sixties. The woman in the display is wearing a white dress. Does she have curlers in her hair? One can't tell because she has her hair covered up. I'm guessing that the display evokes the early fifties. Some of the ads at the bottom show womeni n aprons Some show them in dresses.

This seems to evoke an era when product manufacturers wanted to sell their wares to women, and they wanted to strike some sort of balance. If the women in the ads looks like a working-class woman, upper-income women may be put off from buying the products. This may have been okay in the 1940s when these appliances were basic models anyway, not too expensive, so large numbers of women could afford them.

I'm guessing that the tide turned in the 1950s and 1960s. The more expensive items had a higher profit margin, so the manufacturers aimed them at more well-to-do women. The message: You can buy a self-cleaning oven and sip your champagne while watching it do its thing.

This was an era when I as alive. I remember people making jokes about women cleaning their ovens while wearing evening gowns.