Abstract
This chapter traces the reframing of laundry work as gendered house-work and homemaking via the figure of the housewife and the house-wife mom in ads and commercials for laundry products beginning during the emergence of modern advertising in the late 1800s. Early soap ads and the first detergent marketing depicted housewives eagerly embracing these products as a way to reduce the hard work of doing laundry but also as an aid to good homemaking and care for the family. Advertising from the 1890s through the 1950s emphasized not only the almost magical ability of a soap product to thoroughly clean clothes and linens with ease, but also its ability to help wives and mothers keep their families safe and healthy. Agency documents indicate that although a variety of marketing strategies shaped laundry advertising, ad makers returned again and again to images and copy linking laundry soaps with good homemaking.
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Notes
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Andi Zeiser, Feminism and Pop Culture (Berkeley: Seal Press, 2008), 58–59.
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As cited in Barbara Stern, “Literary Analysis of an Advertisement: The Commercial as ‘Soap Opera,’” Advances in Consumer Research 18 (1991): 167.
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On the impact of social media on advertising, see Teressa Iezzi, The Idea Writers: Copywriting in a New Media and Marketing Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Thanks to John Neuhaus for this reference. On social media and marketing to moms, see, for example, Christine Birkner, “Mom’s the Word,” Marketing News, May 15, 2011, 8.
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Robert Berner, “Detergents Can Be So Much More,” Business Week, May 1, 2006, 66. Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts argued that in the twenty-first century, the worn-out concept of “branding” needed to be replaced by strategies to inspire consumer “loyalty beyond reason” rooted in a deeply personal and satisfying love for certain specific consumer products—“lovemarks.” See Kevin Roberts, Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands (New York, NY: Powerhouse Books, 2004), 66.
Gabrille Sandor, “Attention Advertisers: Real Men Do Laundry,” American Demographics, March 1994, 13–14.
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Lenore Skenazy, “That Supermom in Your Ad? Real Moms Can’t Stand Her,” Advertising Age, October 29, 2007, 20.
Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Has Undermined Women (New York: Free Pess, 2004), 110–139.
See also Susan J. Douglas, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done (New York: Henry Holt, 2010), 259–261.
Joyce Cohen, “Washday Blues Really Are a Thing of the Past,” USA Today, August 8, 2003, 5D.
Denise DiFulco, “Luxe Laundry Rooms are Putting a New Spin on Old Chore,” Washington Post, November 10, 2005, H1.
Cohen, “Washday Blues Really Are a Thing of the Past”; and Patricia Gaylor, “Laundry List,” Kitchen & Bath Business, January 2009, 3.
Elaine Wong, “How P&G Fights the Tide of Private Label,” Adweek, June 7, 2010, 21–22.
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© 2011 Jessamyn Neuhaus
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Neuhaus, J. (2011). The Laundry Room. In: Housework and Housewives in Modern American Advertising. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337978_2
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