Final Draft Paper #2

Jacob Kirsch

11/3/15

English

Throughout the 1950’s, advertisements were an extremely crucial and important elements in selling a product. Unlike current methods of displaying ads such as through modern media such as TV and the internet, companies in the fifties had primary way of showing off their product, on paper (and maybe a SHORT television commercial). I have chosen a few paper ads on different models of vacuum cleaners made by a very famous vacuum cleaner company at that time called Hoover. In Hoover’s ads, they tried to appeal to the market at the time. Hoover’s treatment of women in their ads was horrifically sexist. In this analysis I will explain how vacuum cleaner ads displayed sexism against women and attached stereotypes to them.

In the 1950’s, women were the ones who cleaned the home. Women have always had stereotypes glued to them, it was their role to clean, to take care of the children, and to look beautiful, be feminine and be their husband’s crowned jewels. Hoover vacuum cleaner ads depicted this very well with their target audience being both women and men.

My first ad features off one of Hoover’s vacuum cleaners called the Hoover Lark. The ad shows off a beautiful lady with a blue necklace wearing a very big billowing dress and a frilly polka-dot apron. She’s obviously having a tremendous time with her elegant smile as she pushes around the blue bird blue Hoover Lark vacuum. But why is she having a good time cleaning? Is it because of what society says, that it’s her “calling” to clean and be a housewife or is it because she’s pushing around this particular vacuum? I would say it is both. When designing this ad, Hoover was carefully examining their target audience, married men and women. This woman is the dictionary definition of a housewife, beautiful and hard at work doing the household chores.

When men viewed this ad, they wanted their wife to be like this woman, a “trophy wife”. Hoover wanted husbands to believe that if they purchased their wives this vacuum, then they would become the trophy wives all men desired. But men weren’t the only target audience attracted to this ad, so were women. Doing the usual “house wife” chores could be very exhausting, and any small helpful adjustment was a blessing, so the sentence “Announcing the Lightest Upright of All…” is a huge eye catching factor. A light upright vacuum cleaner was a tool sent from heaven, appealing to all housewives. But there was also the stereotypical view that women were fragile beings that shouldn’t be doing heavy work, that women couldn’t handle it, even though of course they could.

My next ad incorporates one of the busiest and most special times of the year, Christmas. This Christmas advertisement by Hoover Vacuums reads “Christmas morning (and forever after) she’ll be happier with a Hoover” and shows a lady wearing a Christmas dress lying down admiring the small card that came with her new Hoover Vacuum. She’s most definitely pleased. This ad states their target audience in the description, “She’ll be happier”, which is directed towards the husbands, insinuating that the vacuum should be a gift for their wives. As before, Hoover is adhering with the stereotype that all women should be housewives destined clean and cook, and if a man want his wife to be like the one in this ad, it was imperative he get her buy her this vacuum.
       One interesting aspect about this ad is of all of the presents, she pays no attention to any of them but the Hoover. They are all unopened, and all of her attention is consumed by the vacuum. But what could this mean? The company is trying to tell husbands, that the only thing they need to get his wives for Christmas would be this vacuum, and she would be ecstatic. It would be a win-win situation, the buyer would spend less, and the Hoover Vacuum Cleaner Company would make money. Another aspect to consider about the ad is her physical position, she’s lying on the floor, as a child might on Christmas morning, making her seem somewhat immature. Children as a whole aren’t taken very seriously when it comes to decisions, and it is up to the parents to decide certain things for them. In this case, the husband might be the “parental figure”. The ad tells husbands that their wives are childish and not mature enough to make serious decisions, especially when it came to this vacuum. Instead of getting something that his wife really wanted for Christmas, the ad tells the husband that he should go with his wise urge and purchase this vacuum for her. Hoover subliminally chooses whether or not the husband should purchase this vacuum for their wives.

My final ad primarily directs its attention to the vacuum cleaner itself without focusing specifically on women and their role in society which seems to be a common theme in this analysis. In this ad, Hoover talks about taking pride in what the model can do, while incorporating their motto. Something else also comes to mind when studying this ad. The ad states “Hoover Limited takes pride in the fact that their products are saving millions of housewives from hard, wearisome drudgery”. When you’re comparing that to our current day society, it almost seems crazy. The company talks about cleaning like a man could never do it, and that is what society thought at that time, which is also confusing considering the ads emphasize cleaning as a hard, heavy, and extremely stressful job. Why wouldn’t men be the ones to do it?

            The woman in this ad isn’t displayed as prominently as the other ads, but it still portrays the same thing. She is a pretty housewife that is happily fulfilling her role in society as the only gender who should be cleaning. But this woman seems different than the others, her appearance seems to specifically show what she’s meant to do, clean. She looks exactly as if she were a maid, they’re not even hiding that fact. Since we’ve found out how much ads can influence the people who read them, what is the ad saying to the viewer about this image of her? I think Hoover might be saying that every woman is meant to be a maid, and that they can’t and shouldn’t amount to anything more as a gender. Obviously there were females positions of authority at the time, but the majority, which was a VERY large majority, were being told this, that they wouldn’t amount to anything but a cleaning and cooking machine, and men were being told that a women that wasn’t anything like this, was someone that you would not want to marry, and that if their wives tried to do anything that was more ambitious than cooking and cleaning, they needed to step in and remind them what role they bore in society. Because women were perceived as weak and childish, their husbands believed it was their role to provide for them.

            In conclusion, the ads demonstrate how companies tried to appeal to society at the time and how big of an impact they had on women with their multitude of stereotypes about them. This included high expectations, such as how women should look, act, and think.  Despite the fact that there was a lot sexism in ads in the 1950’s, compared to society today, we have come a long way to empower women. The ads are now an exact template of what not to do when trying to avoid sexism and discrimination in advertising.

Take stock of what you've written and learned by writing out answers to these questions: 

1.        How did you go about analyzing the text? What methods did you use—and which ones were most helpful? I went multiple ads, picked three that appealed to my topic, then wrote notes about each individual one that helped my topic.

2.       How did you go about drafting your essay? I elaborated on my notes

3.       How well did you organize your written analysis? What, if anything, could you do to make it easier to read? I wrote it in different sections based off of each ad. I could reword sentences to make it easier to understand

4.       Did you provide sufficient evidence to support your analysis? I think I did. I didn't really need a lot evidence, the ads were more than sufficient.

5.       What did you do especially well? Connect my ads with my main thesis statement.

6.       What could still be improved? Wording and sentence structure

7.       Did you use any visuals, and if so, what did they add? Could you have shown the same thing with words? I used the ads as my visuals, and they really helped considering this is what our analysis' we're about. I would not be able to describe anything without them.

8.       How did other readers' responses influence your writing? Other reader's responses influence my writing with its structure. When they read my paper, some aspects were a little confusing to them. So it was really good that they were honest, and it really helped my paper overall.

9.       What would you do differently next time? I would probably choose a different ad subject. It's cool to analyze ads.

10.   Are you pleased with your analysis? What did it teach you about the text you analyzed? Did it make you want to study more works by the same writer or artist? I am very pleased with my analysis. It gave me experience with writing future analyses. It taught me about how ads can subliminally direct people and put ideas into a person's head. It did make me want to analyze more ads.

11.   What are the transferable skills you can take from this into other writing situations? Other skills I can take from this type of writing could be being more focused on what I see, and maybe just to think about all meanings of text and art instead of what comes to mind first.