In all of the 1950’s, ads were a very crucial and important
element in selling a product. Unlike current ways to display ads through such
as TV and the internet, companies in the fifties had one main way of showing
off their product, on paper (and maybe a SHORT television commercial). I have
chosen a few paper ads on different types of vacuum cleaners by a very famous
vacuum cleaner company at the time called Hoover. In Hoover’s ads, they tried
to appeal to the current society, and how Hoover treated women through their
ads were horrifically sexist. In this essay I will explain how vacuum cleaner
ads displayed sexism against women and tied stereotypes to them.
In the 1950’s, the people who cleaned were women. Women have
always had stereotypes glued to them, such as their responsibility to clean, to
take care of the children, and to look beautiful and feminine and be their
husband’s crowned jewels. Hoover vacuum cleaner ads displays this very well
with their targets being women and men.
Our first ad shows 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 flowy dress and a
polka-dot apron. She’s obviously having a tremendous time with her elegant
smile as she pushes around the blue Hoover Lark vacuum. But why is she having a
good time cleaning? Is it because of what society says? That it’s her job to
clean and be a housewife? Or because she’s pushing around this particular
vacuum? I would say all of the above. When creating 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
chores. When men view this ad, they want this woman as their wife or their
“trophy wife” and the husbands think that if they get their wives this vacuum, they
can be the trophy wives they want. But men aren’t the only target audience for
this, so are women. Doing the usual “house wife” chores can be very exhausting,
and any small helpful adjustment is 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, making all the housewives want it. But
there was also the stereotypical view that women were fragile beings that
shouldn’t be doing heavy and strong work, that women couldn’t handle it, even
though they could.
Our next ad incorporates one of the busiest and most special
times of the year, Christmas. This Christmas ad by Hoover Vacuums reads
“Christmas morning (and forever after) she’ll be happier with a Hoover” and
shows a lady wearing a Christmas dress laying down admiring the small card that
came with her new Hoover Vacuum, she’s most definitely excited. 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.
Like before, Hoover is sticking with the stereotype that all women should be
housewives who clean and cook, and if they want their wife to be like the one
in the ad, they need to get her this vacuum. One interesting aspect about this
ad is all of the presents. She pays no attention to the other presents, 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 the husbands, that the only
thing you would need to get your wife this Christmas would be this vacuum, and
she would be happy. It would be a win-win for the buyer so they could spend
less, and for Hoover Vacuum cleaners so they would get the money. Another part
to consider about the ad is her physical position, she’s laying on the ground,
like a child would be on Christmas morning, making her seem very childish.
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, and in this case,
the husband might be the “parental figure”. The ad tells the husbands that
their wives are too childish, and not mature enough to make certain decisions,
especially when it comes to this vacuum. Instead of getting something else that
his wife wanted for Christmas, the ad tells the husband that he should go with
his urge and purchase this vacuum for her. Hoover subliminally chooses whether
or not the buyer should purchase this vacuum or not for them.
My final ad mostly focuses on the
vacuum cleaner itself without focusing specifically on women and their role in
society that seems to be a common theme in this analysis… Or does it? The ad
talks about Hoover taking pride in what they do, while incorporating where the
company is based in, and the motto. But something also comes to mind when
reading, 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 people to do it?
The woman in
this ad isn’t displayed quiet as much as the other ads, but still says the same
thing. She is a pretty housewife that is happily following her role in society
as the only type of person 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 though she was a maid, they’re not
even hiding the fact of that. 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 Vacuum Cleaners might be saying that every woman is
meant to be a maid, and that they can’t amount to anymore as a gender.
Obviously there were female people in high places the time, but the majority,
which was a VERY big majority, were being told this, that they couldn’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 than cooking
and cleaning, they needed to step in and try to remind them what roles they
play in society.
In
conclusion, the ads really showed how they tried to appeal to the current
society, and how big of an impact of women. The ads showed bounds of
stereotypes about women, and included high expectations of them with how they
should act, look, and think. Compared to our society now and how we strive to
empower women, this is embarrassing and sad, and I guarantee that hoover Vacuum
Cleaner ads would never include the same sexism as they did. So whenever you
look at an ad, think about what it is showing and telling you, and to try not
have you opinions and motives changed or affected by it.
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