How Does Your Kitchen Rate? 1957 Ad

America in the 1950’s underwent an economic boom and saw a rise in the middle class after the end of World War II known as the Golden Age. The post war baby boom had families moving out from urban cities to the suburbs. This movement gave rise to the popularity of suburban Levittown’s and with it brought a new spotlight on the family, home, and the American kitchen. It was also during this time that services like electricity became something accessible to middle class families especially in their own homes. As the middle class enjoyed more stable and larger wages they were able to spend more money freely and consumerism became a key feature of the postwar era. Electric utility and manufacturing companies worked together to promote the consumption of electricity and electric utilities especially pertaining to the home kitchen. In 1956, more than 480 electric companies in America banded together to promote a national campaign called the Live Better Electrically. In one of the Live Better Electrically ad campaigns, which was published in 1957, used new associations of freedom, modernity, and leisure with electric kitchen products as a way to promote consumption.

In the Live Better Electrically campaign ad uses both text and images to portray freedom women may, or in some cases may not feel with the use of new kitchen appliances. The ad asks women to tally up the number of electric appliances they own in their kitchen from a list provided. As women tally up the number they can then see how their kitchen rates. There are four different ratings, with “Just Wonderful” being the highest in appliances and “Roughing It” being the lowest. In the second to lowest ranking “Bearable” it displays a woman looking a little displeased as her apron is caught in a kitchen drawer. It then describes the ranking as “You’re still tied to those kitchen apron strings; but with more electrical aids, living is so much easier!” This description describes the lack of electric kitchen appliances as being chained up to the kitchen. The use of the word “tied to” alludes to the lack of freedom women may feel as they have to slave away in the kitchen due to lack of time saving kitchen appliances. The image additionally supports the idea of freed or lack thereof due to the woman’s unhappiness as she finds herself “tied” down to the kitchen. However, the ad offers a very simple solution to the woman in the photo: just buy more electric kitchen appliances and she too can be free like the woman in the “Just Wonderful” ranking who is seen in no context of the kitchen.

The Live better electrically campaign additionally encourages consumption of electricity and electric kitchen products through questioning how modern the reading women’s kitchen is. It challenges the reader by saying “Is your kitchen really up-to date?” The question eggs, readers on and tries to create doubt and uncertainty in whether they are partaking in modernity which was equated with consumption at the time. This specific ad equates the owning of more than 19 electric kitchen appliances with not only having a modern kitchen, but being a modern woman who does not need to spend all her time in the kitchen or use out of date tools. Thus any women who had less in her kitchen could not be considered modern. As electric kitchen appliances were only beginning to take off during the 1950’s it could be assumed that many homes did not yet have that many appliances. Thus, upon reading this ad women who did not meet the modernity mark were then persuaded to go out and buy more electric appliances in order to be modern.

The Live Better Electrically ad also used ideas of leisure that became increasingly associated with new kitchen appliances as a way to promote consumption of such products. In the lowest ranked kitchen, as described earlier, has a very unhappy looking woman. However, as the ranking increases the women becomes increasingly happier looking. The depictions of their happiness are related to the idea that the ad describes as: “your kitchen works instead of you.” The ad persuades readers that having more electric kitchen appliances will save women more time. In the “Just Wonderful” kitchen the woman is seen smiling in nice dress clothes with her husband nowhere near a kitchen. This illustrates how the assumed time women will save with their new kitchen appliances will allow them to have leisure time to go on dates with their husband or as noted in the ad give them more energy to spend on themselves and with their family. And a way to achieve happiness and leisure just like the woman depicted in the “Just Wonderful” kitchen, women only need to buy more electrical kitchen appliances.

The Live Better Electrically campaign, aimed at promoting the use of electricity and electric appliances used ideas of modernity, freedom and leisure as a way to encourage women to purchase more electrical kitchen appliances as a way to achieve them and be happy.