The Feminine Mystique (27 page)

Further, the client was told that a phrase in his ad “and you make that cake the easiest, laziest way there is” evoked a “negative response” in American housewives—it hit too close to their “underlying guilt.” (“Since they never feel that they are really exerting sufficient effort, it is certainly wrong to tell them that baking with X Mix is the lazy way.”) Supposing, he suggested, that this devoted wife and mother behind the kitchen stove, anxiously preparing a cake or pie for her husband or children “is simply indulging her own hunger for sweets.” The very fact that baking is work for the housewife helps her dispel any doubts that she might have about her real motivations.

But there are even ways to manipulate the housewives' guilt, the report said:

It might be possible to suggest through advertising that not to take advantage of all 12 uses of X Mix is to limit your efforts to give pleasure to your family. A transfer of guilt might be achieved. Rather than feeling guilty about using X Mix for dessert food, the woman would be made to feel guilty if she doesn't take advantage of this opportunity to give her family 12 different and delicious treats. “Don't waste your skill; don't limit yourself.”

By the mid-fifties, the surveys reported with pleasure that the Career Woman (“the woman who clamored for equality—almost for identity in every sphere of life, the woman who reacted to ‘domestic slavery' with indignation and vehemence”) was gone, replaced by the “less worldly, less sophisticated” woman whose activity in PTA gives her “broad contacts with the world outside her home,” but who “finds in housework a medium of expression for her femininity and individuality.” She's not like the old-fashioned self-sacrificing housewife; she considers herself the equal of man. But she still feels “lazy, neglectful, haunted by guilt feelings” because she doesn't have enough work to do. The advertiser must manipulate her need for a “feeling of creativeness” into the buying of his product.

After an initial resistance, she now tends to accept instant coffee, frozen foods, precooked foods, and labor-saving items as part of her routine. But she needs a justification and she finds it in the thought that “by using frozen foods I'm freeing myself to accomplish other important tasks as a modern mother and wife.”

Creativeness is the modern woman's dialectical answer to the problem of her changed position in the household. Thesis: I'm a housewife. Antithesis: I hate drudgery. Synthesis: I'm creative!

This means essentially that even though the housewife may buy canned food, for instance, and thus save time and effort, she doesn't let it go at that. She has a great need for “doctoring up” the can and thus prove her personal participation and her concern with giving satisfaction to her family.

The feeling of creativeness also serves another purpose: it is an outlet for the liberated talents, the better taste, the freer imagination, the greater initiative of the modern woman. It permits her to use at home
all the faculties that she would display in an outside career
.

The yearning for creative opportunities and moments is a major aspect of buying motivations.

The only trouble, the surveys warned, is that she “tries to use her own mind and her own judgment. She is fast getting away from judging by collective or majority standards. She is developing independent standards.” (“Never mind the neighbors. I don't want to ‘live up' to them or compare myself to them at every turn.”) She can't always be reached now with “keep up with the Joneses”—the advertiser must appeal to her
own
need to live.

Appeal to this thirst. . . . Tell her that you are adding more zest, more enjoyment to her life, that it is within her reach now to taste new experiences and that she is entitled to taste these experiences. Even more positively, you should convey that you are giving her “lessons in living.”

“House cleaning should be fun,” the manufacturer of a certain cleaning device was advised. Even though his product was, perhaps, less efficient than the vacuum cleaner, it let the housewife use more of her own energy in the work. Further, it let the housewife have the illusion that she has become “a professional, an expert in determining which cleaning tools to use for specific jobs.”

This professionalization is a psychological defense of the housewife against being a general “cleaner-upper” and menial servant for her family in a day and age of general work emancipation.

The role of expert serves a two-fold emotional function: (1) it helps the housewife achieve status, and (2) she moves beyond the orbit of her home, into the world of modern science in her search for new and better ways of doing things.

As a result, there has never been a more favorable psychological climate for household appliances and products. The modern housewife . . . is actually aggressive in her efforts to find those household products which, in her expert opinion, really meet her need. This trend accounts for the popularity of different waxes and polishes for different materials in the home, for the growing use of floor polishers, and for the variety of mops and cleaning implements for floors and walls.

The difficulty is to give her the “sense of achievement” of “ego enhancement” she has been persuaded to seek in the housewife “profession,” when, in actuality, “her time-consuming task, housekeeping, is not only endless, it is a task for which society hires the lowliest, least-trained, most trod-upon individuals and groups. . . . Anyone with a strong enough back (and a small enough brain) can do these menial chores.” But even this difficulty can be manipulated to sell her more things:

One of the ways that the housewife raises her own prestige as a cleaner of her home is through the use of specialized products for specialized tasks. . . .

When she uses one product for washing clothes, a second for dishes, a third for walls, a fourth for floors, a fifth for venetian blinds, etc., rather than an all-purpose cleaner, she feels less like an unskilled laborer, more like an engineer, an expert.

A second way of raising her own stature is to “do things my way”—to establish an expert's role for herself by creating her own “tricks of the trade.” For example, she may “always put a bit of bleach in all my washing—even colored, to make them
really
clean!”

Help her to “justify her menial task by building up her role as the protector of her family—the killer of millions of microbes and germs,” this report advised. “Emphasize her kingpin role in the family . . . help her be an expert rather than a menial worker . . . make housework a matter of knowledge and skill, rather than a matter of brawn and dull, unremitting effort.” An effective way of doing this is to bring out a
new
product. For, it seems, there's a growing wave of housewives “who look forward to new products which not only decrease their daily work load, but actually engage their emotional and intellectual interest in the world of scientific development outside the home.”

One gasps in admiration at the ingenuity of it all—the housewife can participate in science itself just by buying something new—or something old that has been given a brand new personality.

Besides increasing her professional status, a
new
cleaning appliance or product increases a woman's feeling of economic security and luxury, just as a new automobile does for a man. This was reported by 28 per cent of the respondents, who agreed with this particular sentiment: “I like to try out new things. I've just started to use a new liquid detergent—and somehow it makes me feel like a queen.”

The question of letting the woman use her mind and even participate in science through housework is, however, not without its drawbacks. Science should not relieve housewives of too much drudgery; it must concentrate instead on creating the
illusion
of that sense of achievement that housewives seem to need.

To prove this point, 250 housewives were given a depth test: they were asked to choose among four imaginary methods of cleaning. The first was a completely automatic dust- and dirt-removal system which operated continuously like a home-heating system. The second, the housewife had to press a button to start. The third was portable; she had to carry it around and point it at an area to remove the dirt. The fourth was a brand new, modern object with which she could sweep the dirt away herself. The housewives spoke up in favor of this last appliance. If it “appears new, modern” she would rather have the one that lets her work herself, this report said. “One compelling reason is her desire to be a participant, not just a button-pusher.” As one housewife remarked, “As for some magical push-button cleaning system, well, what would happen to my exercise, my feeling of accomplishment, and what would I do with my mornings?”

This fascinating study incidentally revealed that a certain electronic cleaning appliance—long considered one of our great laborsavers—actually made “housekeeping more difficult than it need be.” From the response of eighty per cent of those housewives, it seemed that once a woman got this appliance going, she “felt compelled to do cleaning that wasn't really necessary.” The electronic appliance actually dictated the extent and type of cleaning to be done.

Should the housewife then be encouraged to go back to that simple cheap sweeper that let her clean only as much as she felt necessary? No, said the report, of course not. Simply give that old-fashioned sweeper the “status” of the electronic appliance as a “labor-saving necessity” for the modern housewife “and then indicate that the modern homemaker would, naturally, own both.”

No one, not even the depth researchers, denied that housework was endless, and its boring repetition just did not give that much satisfaction, did not require that much vaunted expert knowledge. But the endlessness of it all was an advantage from the seller's point of view. The problem was to keep at bay the underlying realization which was lurking dangerously in “thousands of depth interviews which we have conducted for dozens of different kinds of house-cleaning products”—the realization that, as one housewife said, “It stinks! I have to do it, so I do it. It's a necessary evil, that's all.” What to do? For one thing, put out more and more products, make the directions more complicated, make it really necessary for the housewife to “be an expert.” (Washing clothes, the report advised, must become more than a matter of throwing clothes into a machine and pouring in soap. Garments must be carefully sorted, one load given treatment A, a second load treatment B, some washed by hand. The housewife can then “take great pride in knowing just which of the arsenal of products to use on each occasion.”)

Capitalize, the report continued, on housewives' “guilt over the hidden dirt” so she will rip her house to shreds in a “deep cleaning” operation, which will give her a “sense of completeness” for a few weeks. (“The times of thorough cleaning are the points at which she is most willing to try new products and ‘deep clean' advertising holds out the promise of completion.”)

The seller must also stress the joys of completing each separate task, remembering that “nearly all housekeepers, even those who thoroughly detest their job, paradoxically find escape from their endless fate by accepting it—by ‘throwing myself into it,' as she says.”

Losing herself in her work—surrounded by all the implements, creams, powders, soaps, she forgets for a time how soon she will have to redo the task. In other words, a housewife permits herself to forget for a moment how rapidly the sink will again fill with dishes, how quickly the floor will again be dirty, and she seizes the moment of completion of a task as a moment of pleasure as pure as if she had just finished a masterpiece of art which would stand as a monument to her credit forever.

This is the kind of creative experience the seller of things can give the housewife. In one housewife's own words:

I don't like housework at all. I'm a lousy houseworker. But once in a while I get pepped up and I'll really go to town . . . When I have some new kind of cleaning material—like when Glass Wax first came out or those silicone furniture polishes—I got a real kick out of it, and I went through the house shining everything. I like to see the things shine. I feel so good when I see the bathroom just glistening.

And so the manipulator advised:

Identify your product with the physical and spiritual rewards she derives from the almost religious feeling of basic security provided by her home. Talk about her “light, happy, peaceful feelings”; her “deep sense of achievement.” . . . But remember she doesn't really want praise for the sake of praise . . . also remember that her mood is not simply “gay.” She is tired and a bit solemn. Superficially cheerful adjectives or colors will not reflect her feelings. She will react much more favorably to simple, warm and sincere messages.

In the fifties came the revolutionary discovery of the teenage market. Teenagers and young marrieds began to figure prominently in the surveys. It was discovered that young wives, who had only been to high school and had never worked, were more “insecure,” less independent, easier to sell. These young people could be told that, by buying the right things, they could achieve middle-class status, without work or study. The keep-up-with-the-Joneses sell would work again; the individuality and independence which American women had been getting from education and work outside the home was not such a problem with the teenage brides. In fact, the surveys said, if the pattern of “happiness through things” could be established when these women were young enough, they could be safely encouraged to go out and get a part-time job to help their husbands pay for all the things they buy. The main point now was to convince the teenagers that “happiness through things” is no longer the prerogative of the rich or the talented; it can be enjoyed by all, if they learn “the right way,” the way the others do it, if they learn the embarrassment of being different.