Who were food advertisements geared towards in the 1950's? What kind of consumers were expected to buy these food products? After looking through various food ads from the time period, one can clearly see who was expected to respond to them. These ads were geared towards women, presumably those who didn't work and had time for magazines, those who did the grocery shopping and cooking for their families. Food ads during the 1950's have the overwhelming theme of the beautiful housewife in heels and dresses, setting colorful feasts down on a table for a perfect nuclear family, usually never shown participating in the meals herself. Of course the women in these ads are delighted at the incredible wide ranging versatility of spam and jello, how it pleases their families and impresses their dinner guests.
These advertisements reinforce what it meant to be a perfect American housewife, belonging to nuclear families, always in suburban homes, and set up a situation in which the typical female consumer is expected to place herself within the ad, identifying with the happy obliging image of a wife, maintaining her place in society.
A critical aspect in the development of the food industry in the United States during the 1950’s was the creation of the indoor supermarket. Supermarkets originated as early as the 1930’s, yet did not begin to gain in popularity or grow into their modern form until the post-World War II era.
Several factors contributed to the rise of supermarkets in the 1950’s. The expansion of suburban living areas was one of the greatest contributions to their rise. Supermarkets needed large areas to build stores and the necessary open land could be found in open developing areas where land was cheap. They could also be surrounded by parking lots, attracting the new population of car drivers. Supermarkets were soon seen to turn quick profits as operating costs remained low due to the role of customers in picking out and packaging their own food, a difference from the open-air markets that preceded them. Supermarkets also were able to profit from the sheer volume of products provided at low prices. A significant aspect of the low cost of food was the increase in branded and packaged foods, a trend that will be examined in future posts.
All of these factors combined to create a booming expansion of the supermarket industry during the 1950’s. According to a New York Times article from January 3rd, 1950, Food Fair Stores began investing heavily in indoor supermarkets at the top of the decade. As the article states, the company’s new supermarket program “will involve the expenditure of more than $5 million during the next year or more, and possibly $12 million within the next three years.Most of this outlay will be for the construction of modern supermarkets” (New York Times, 1950). Overall, economic and social factors contributed to the rise of supermarkets during the 1950’s and set the stage for significant change in the food industry as the decade moved on.
The Automat may have represented the pinnacle of modern convenience in a pedestrian, urban setting, but the setting of the 1950s was increasingly neither pedestrian nor urban. In the 1950s, the popular imagination, popular culture depictions, and many real people began to move to the celebrated new hybrid of the city and the country: the suburbs.
In this new suburban environment, homes were all grouped together in massive residential developments, and places of commerce, work and recreation were elsewhere - often in the adjacent cities - and certainly not within walking distance. Therefore, suburbanites were increasingly dependent on the vehicle of the American Dream: the automobile.
Fast food had to accommodate this, and the 1950s saw the explosion of stand-alone burger joints, may of which employed drive-through or drive-in models. The drive-through, where cars pass by a window, receive food, and keep going would eventually become the dominant model, but what was very popular in the '50s was the drive-in: where cars would park outside the restaurant and food was brought to customers who would eat in their cars.
This process contrasted sharply with the Automat, where one dispensed the food oneself, and could loiter in a crowded and anonymous cafeteria space at any hour of the day or night. Like everything in the suburbs, the drive-in was promoted as more 'safe,' domestic, family-oriented (can you imagine Bill Burroughs going to cop at a drive-in?). The drive-in was a visible space, at once public (cars, often convertibles, lined up alongside each other) and also extremely individual (families or groups of kids confining themselves to their own cars): a perfect example of the trend of suburbanization.
While we're on the subject of corporations, advertising, and food, I found this interesting blogpost on the origin and evolution of some of our favorite corporate mascots, many of whom have significant ties to the 1950's decade.
More cookbooks—containing photos, detailed recipes, kitchen instruction, and corporate advertising—poured onto the market during the 1950’s than at any previous time in US history. These cookbooks often served as domestic advice manuals for women; authors would usually include specific directions and advice for women’s cooking and other duties. According to Leavitt, domestic advisors selling such prescriptive rhetoric to women have “always remained engaged in their culture and aware of important issues…they helped educate women about sanitation and design, patriotism, religion, and the family.” The most celebrated domestic advisor/mythical mother figure of the 1950s was the fictional Betty Crocker, who had a best-selling cookbook named after (and “written by”) her.
Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book "showed just how much home cooks wanted the simply phrased reassurance and reliable advice” they associated with Betty Crocker. Horner posits that the text within the famous cookbook reflects “the cultural preoccupation with women’s roles after the end of World War II.” Through both anecdotal writing and cutesy illustrations (of American folk tales and gender roles being played out), Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book linked domestic tasks with the restorative notion of returning to the United States’ humble origins during the postwar search for national renewal. Uniquely American foods and practices are emphasized amongst allusions to early American history—George Washington appears five separate times.
The book alludes to the prevalent themes of sacrifice, regeneration, and women’s responsibility to enact rituals of fertility and appeasement in the wake of the damages of the war and the reintegration of over 11 million U.S. servicemen into domestic life. It specifies the bodily practice of cooking as a traditionally feminine practice important for the maintenance of family life and thus the nation.
From the introduction to the Yeast Bread section:
The memory of a cozy kitchen filled with the warm fragrance of freshly baked bread still means home…today’s homemaker who wants to give her family the cozy comfort of freshly baked bread can make it much more easily and quickly than ever before.
Through the practice of baking bread and making a “cozy” home, the housewife does her part to usher in the rise of a renewed civilization after the war. The text admits that bakeries often offer better baked goods, however the labor, the physical engagement of the woman’s body, that goes into the preparation of the bread is as meaningful to the cozy atmosphere as the warm fragrance itself.
***
Images from the original Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book
Crocker, Betty, Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook. (John Wiley & Sons, 1998).
Sources:
Horner, Jennifer R., “Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook: A Gendered Ritual Response to Social Crises of the Postwar Era.”
Journal of Communication Inquiry, Vol. 24, No. 3, 2000.
Leavitt, Sarah Abigail, From Catharine Beecher to Martha Stewart. (UNC Press, 2002).
Neuhaus, Jessamyn. “The Way to a Man's Heart: Gender Roles, Domestic Ideology, and Cookbooks in the 1950s.” Journal of
Social History, Vol. 32, 1999
Shapiro, Laura, “"I Guarantee": Betty Crocker and the Woman in the Kitchen,” in From Betty Crocker to feminist food studies:
critical perspectives on women and food, (Liverpool University Press, 2005)
My first salad! Here is where I got the recipe.The Jell-O aisle at Big-Y is extensive. Just goes to show how much Jell-O is still in the American psyche.
Marshmallows, Peeps, Pez, Chewing Gum, Popsicles, Creamsicles, Fizzies etc. What do these things have in common? They were all invented/popularized in the 1950s. In supermarkets, ice cream parlours, ice cream trucks and candy stores, processed sweets/desserts were very cheap and could literally be found everywhere. I hope to cover the most popular and culturally significant sweets in subsequent blog posts.
My focus is on looking at food advertisements from the 1950's and understanding how food was marketed according to food trends, advertising techniques, etc. during the time.
In an article entitled, "Economic Aspects of Food Advertising and Promotion," Herrell DeGraff writes,
"More than most people know, and far more than most would acknowledge, we are molded by salesmanship. A majority pride themselves on their cynicism and their capacity to sort out and discount self-serving appeals to their attention and their pocketbooks. Yet we all fall for whomever piques our curiosity, stimulates our imagination, and ends by creating a want where no want existed."
This can be seen in all kinds of advertising, but is particularly unavoidable in the realm of food advertising, for food is something that everyone needs and therefore we were/are more easily convinced of how we need it (i.e. fruit suspended in jello or casseroles made with canned soups and topped with potato chips).
“No pots or pans, no serving dishes, a plate which you throw away when you are finished. This is a housewife’s dream.” Food: America’s Biggest Business, 1959
Recently I've been reading about food in the 50’s in Something from the Oven by Laura Shapiro, specifically TV dinners and frozen foods. I thought I’d just sum up some of the facts and marketing strategies geared towards housewives that I’ve found.
It was basically a race for companies to come up with the best strategies for quick meals after frozen food became more popular during the war. Orange Juice from concentrate and fish sticks were some of the first market winners. Variations on fish sticks such as ham and veal sticks were never quite as successful.
The ultimate landmark in the frozen food industry came in 1952, soon after the introduction of larger, suburban home freezers…the fully frozen meal. The compartmentalized dinners were introduced to the market around 52 and were met with success, but it was in 1954 when Swanson put out their first segmented dinner that they went from novel to staple. The success for Swanson’s had less to do with better taste or higher quality, and more to do with an already well established name, million dollar marketing budget and the introduction of the title TV dinner.
“The flavor of Swanson’s dinners- entrancingly metallic, as if tray and turkey were one- clings to the palate memory of anyone who encountered those magic meals in childhood.” (Shapiro, 19)
For my future posts I’m going to do more write-ups on the food situation in the 50’s concerning marketing towards the housewife with a focus on Poppy Cannon who capitalized on creating recipes using primarily canned and frozen food.
P.S. How do you add pictures?
(edited by Summer to include the picture. You can add photos in one of two ways. I'll show you how at the discussion group tonight.)
So the intersection between food and culture in the 1950's interests me primarily because this decade was the birth of McDonald's, the modern pinnacle of fast food franchises. I am looking into the ways which this new phenomenon altered the daily lives and habits of Americans by freeing up time normally spent cooking and eating as a family and changing our notions of health and diets with "supersizing".
Fast Food may additionally be looked at as promoting the classic protestant work ethic by allowing meals to become almost an afterthought for the busy, rapidly expanding white-collar corporate employees that would work through the economic boom of the 1950's.
I am also interested in whether anything I uncover could set historical precedent for the soccer mom of the new millennium- fueled entirely on Starbucks frappachinos, feeding their kids burgers and fries from the drive-through in the family car (another 50's innovation) on the way to dance rehearsal/band practice/whatever.
This is a pretty broad range of issues to discuss, but hopefully my focus will become more clear once I dig into the material.
This month in Photo of the Day: Images From the National Geographic Archive
Patrons line up "like payday depositors" in a bank, waiting to drop a few nickels in a slot for favorites like baked beans and Salisbury steak, freshly made each day and kept in "post-officelike boxes." This New York City Automat, described in the March 1942 National Geographic, was part of an East Coast chain that sold 72,000 pieces of pie a day.
I first encountered the concept of the "Automat" through the New York junkie authors of the Beat Generation: Herbert Huncke and William Burroughs. Huncke talks about "becoming part of the crowd that hung around the cafeterias - Bickford's - Chase's - Hector's - the Automat - and many of the places of business which remained open all night" (The Evening Sun Turned Crimson 101).
Automats were cafeterias where food and drink was available on plates and in cups in the little glass windows of banks of machines. One put coins into a slot, opened the window, and took out the food.
They originated just after the turn of the century, and became a fixture of life in northeastern cities, Horn & Hardarts being the archetype, the 'McDonalds of automats.' They figured prominently in the New York drug culture & criminal underworld of the 1950s because they were extremely cheap, very busy, anonymous & impersonal... and stayed open all night, so one could meet a connection at 3 AM, or loiter there indefinitely. But they also figured prominently in the lives of average New Yorkers, and the inhabitants of other northeastern cities, being the urban fast food of the first half of the 20th century.
Though they were virtually the heyday of the automat, the 1950s also sowed the seeds of its demise. With the rise of the suburban automobile-dependent lifestyle in the '50s came a new fast-food model that would come to dominate: the drive-through burger joint.
So, for my final project I will be making some Jell-O based recipes for general consumption.
a brief jell-o history In 1845, Peter Cooper invented a gelatin-type dessert. He put a patent on the product, but never promoted it. The patent was sold to Frank Woodward. Jell-O brand gelatin was released in 1902 by the Genesee Pure Food Company. In 1904, the company mass distributed free Jell-O cookbooks, which brought it to mainstream popularity. This was they key to Jell-O's success--the company itself released things that it could be made into. Celebrity testimonials began coming out in the 1930s; actresses like Ethel Barrymore proclaimed that Jell-O was the perfect after-dinner treat. The first appearance of congealed Jell-O salads was in 1930; Jell-O released lime gelatin, a flavor that would supposedly combine well with the most popular things Americans were putting in these salads. In addition, during the 1950s, Jell-O released celery, Italian, mixed vegetable and tomato flavored gelatin. I'm planning on making a Velvet Salad
For my contributions to this blog, I will be looking at the corporatization and processing of food products during the 1950's. The post-war era brought about massive change in the food industry throughout the United States. Open air marketplaces were quickly being replaced with supermarkets, coinciding with the rise of the middle class and growth of suburban areas. New technologies such as pesticides and fertilizers also allowed for produce to be transported to more remote areas of the country in seasons that certain produce products weren't traditionally grown. Processed foods boomed in popularity, transforming the way food was packaged, sold, purchased, cooked, and presented. I intend to analyze the transformation in the food market through several short essay pieces on this blog in the following weeks. My focus will be on the rise of supermarkets throughout the country and the popularity of processed foods in the 1950's. I will look at SPAM as an example of the rise in popularity of processed foods. Stay tuned for future posts as I examine this fascinating aspect of 1950's food culture in the coming weeks. -Henry
A curious trend in advertising emerged after World War II. Spokeswomen were fabricated by food companies (General Mills, Carnation, Libby's, Dole, Pillsbury) all vying for the patronage of the American housewife. These ladies did more than provide a smiling, consumer-friendly human face to industrial food corporations, they were fictional characters with fleshed-out personalities and character traits that blurred the line between fact and fiction in advertising and "forged a crucial link between old habits and new foods" in an age of innovations in the kitchen.
Ever since the end of WW2, the nation's food became ever more processed. In ads and other promotional materials, such traditional kitchen chores as cleaning vegetables, chopping. ingredients, measuring, and mixing were dismissed as old-fashioned and unnecessarily labor-intensive. Modern electric appliances, TV dinners, instant mixes—the completely new idea of cooking being rigorously advertised to Americans created tension between the old and the new, traditional and modern, and the art and satisfaction of cooking versus instant gratification and “perfect,” formulaic results. Research among modern homemakers had shown them to feel 'uncertain--anxious--insecure' about their work "encouragement and appreciation...appreciation and recognition...family appreciation' were the solution to feeling satisfied with domesticity "nobody in Betty Croker's vicinity was in danger of being identified as 'just a housewife'"
Companies attempted to account for these discrepancies by using the familiar “standard cookbook format” in advertisements showcasing recipes as a link to the past. They also designed model spokeswomen to “project specific, carefully researched characteristics to women shopping for their households.” A business publication from 1957 listed the ideal corporate character: a woman, between the ages of 32 and 40, attractive, but not competitively so, mature but youthful-looking, competent yet warm, understanding but not sentimental, interested in the consumer but not involved with her
Betty Crocker offers a recipe, advise, and a reccomendation for a cake mix all in one advertisement from 1952.
The elusive and surreal qualities of these “live trademarks” blurred fiction and reality by being unattainable yet marketed as “just like you,” being completely fictional and yet supposedly trading recipes with one another and being portrayed by actresses on radio and TV spots. They connected with the public by teaching women how to use new electric appliances, how to cook frozen food, how to use boxed mixes, and creative ways to employ food coloring and canned foods. They did this in magazine advice columns, in advertisements, and on television and radio programs. Through all of these popular media, they infiltrated the world of the wife whose main contribution to the family unit was, supposedly, the upkeep of the household, in which the family meal was a key component.
The Creation and Impact of Betty Crocker
The most successful of these women was Betty Crocker, still a household name today. She was created in 1921 by what is now General Mills when the employees of their magazine noticed a definitive trend in the questions being asked in letters sent by customers: everyone wanted to know how to make the perfect cake. Employees signed each response letter with the name “Betty Crocker,” which eventually became the trademarked face of the company and, perhaps, modern domesticity in the United States. Betty – “homey” Crocker – name of a longtime company executive. The name itself is a blending of traditional (comfortable, old-fashioned, respectable) and modern (company loyalty, connection to the corporation).
During the immediate postwar era, Betty Crocker provided a steady, confident, guiding voice for homemakers through “a time of tension and change in the kitchen.” Millions of Americans listened to her on the radio, read her column in the newspaper, and watched her on TV. In the early 1950’s, General Mills surveys showed that 99% of American housewives were familiar with Betty Crocker's name and more than 66% correctly identified her with the company. "And here she is, America's first lady of food--your Betty Crocker" 'underscoring the fact that BC could be whatever her public wished or believed' radio shows "conveyed a remarkably fluid version of reality. They seemed to emanate from a world without boundaries, where real people conversed easiy with made-up colleagues, and genuine discussions melted into commercial fantasies"
The many faces of "Betty Crocker" over the years
The brand of domesticity that Betty Crocker promoted is subtley indicative of our modern perceptions of misogynistic 1950s housewifery. Although she often made a point of “praising the housewife’s importance,” emphasizing that good cooking was an achievement which should be taken with pride, and being composed with confidence, it was all undermined by the fact that her entire existence was scripted and crafted by a company attempting to sell certain ideas, not to mention products, in the mass media. While she, perhaps, inspired confidence in housewives and addressed their uncertainty and anxiety, her number one priority was to sell cake mixes, recipe books, and, of course, trust in the company. She built false trust by being an unrealistic conglomeration of everything the American consumer would look for in a domestic advisor. She was a composite of a real woman built from market research, further pushing unattainable ideals for the American woman to compare herself to and ultimately never live up to—thus, prone to become reliant on the advice and products of “experts” like Betty Crocker to make up for her “failings.”
