Women in Advertising

A part of the reading that stuck out to me this week Cohen's section in Chapter 6 titled "Feminizing Public Space" beginning on page 278. This section discusses the development of shopping centers moving from downtown shopping. Cohen talks about how women did most of the shopping at this time and developments were being made to better accomodate women and make them feel comfortable. Cohen then moves on to discuss how, "Shopping centers responded to suburban couples' growing tendency to shop together with stores and programming specifically designed to further encourage families to turn shopping chores into leisure time spent at the mall," (281). However, being an advertising and MCA student this got me thinking about what advertisers were focusing on during this decade. While Cohen does discuss this some, I wanted to learn more about it. I found a book titled "The 1950's" by William H. Young and Nancy K. Young. SInce it is a google book, I am not able to copy and paste the text I read in this post, but I will provide the link. The section begins on page 47 and is titled "Advertising and Women."

http://books.google.com/books?id=pt-o5xnJXvkC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=women+shoppers+in+the+50s&source=bl&ots=brvz_rjgex&sig=qa7Wbcgp8LbpuA2dSSikNI9mwS0&hl=en&ei=lqR1TaSQBfGD0QG74_jmBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CEcQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q&f=false

It discusses the woman as the household decision maker, mom creating the quintessential "happy home" and how marketers began to target not only household items, but also "Automatic transmissions in cars, wrinkle-free clothing, self-pasting wallpapers, and quick-drying paints could be counted among the many products aimed at the busy woman," (page 48). I found it interesting how it tied in with and sometimes contrasted with Cohen's ideas of women shoppers and feminizing public spaces.