Bob Edwards: Welcome back to the Bob Edward show on X NPR, advertising agencies have never been known for their subtlety. Their messages are often blunt insistent, and in some cases just play no wrong. One suspect theme seems to have persisted through the years, according to Mammouth university, professor Katherine Parkins. She's the author of the new study. Food is love advertising and gender roles in modern America. Women are often portrayed as the loan cooks and grocery shoppers in every family, even as they entered the workforce in increasing numbers, advertising companies have spent billions to cement. The notion that women can best share their love for their families by buying certain food products. Take this radio spot from 1963. Ad: Why Did you seek for visitor pad cake Fans, a sample of ladies, one from each pan. Choose, Stop shoving. There's more in the oven. Hey Mom, put pad cake cookies on to shopping list. Host me of chocolate chip and choose or missed I'm variety on your market Shelf. Why they're so good. You're lucky I don't eat. 'em all the sale Pancake cookies, pancake cookies Bob Edwards: In her new book. Katherine Parkin examines advertising trends from the beginning of the 20th century, right up until today. And she finds repeated examples of women linked with food and food with love. Parkin became interested in the topic after one of her professors admitted that she never could have enjoyed a career in academia. If it weren't for the introduction of fast food. Katherine Parkin: She was telling me that as she, uh, started to work with young children, that it would became very difficult to fulfill both the working role and her home making role. And I got interested in how convenience foods have really made that possible for all people to be able to feed themselves and be able to work. So that was really the Genesis of the project. Um, and then I started looking at various, uh, convenience foods and how they were, um, sold and who they were trying to sell them to. Bob Edwards: Cause it wasn't very long ago, husbands make the money wives do the housework. Katherine Parkin: Well, that was certainly the ideal. Although women have always worked. And, uh, one of the early things that I discovered was that at the early part of the 20th century, uh, Campbell soup, for example, thought that only the wealthy could afford their soups. And if you look back to the early ads, they feature women and men in elegant settings, the soups are in tours and, and it is very lovely. And, uh, an early study discovered by looking through the trash in homes in Philadelphia, that in fact, the working class and, and the poor were also buying the soup because it allowed them to work that included women, uh, that if women are already working outside the home and women have always worked, um, then somebody had to cook and convenience foods made that possible. Bob Edwards: So even the definition of cooking changed, Katherine Parkin: The definition of cooking is another, uh, interesting thing that I discovered is that what cooking is, has always been fairly fluid, um, heating things up, toasting things, removing them from a package, um, all types of very vague definitions of cooking, making a salad, uh, cooking pasta. I mean, what the, the idea of cooking was quite amorphous and advertisers loved that because it meant that cooking meant just heating up their roles, Browning them in the oven, qualified as cooking a meal for your family. Bob Edwards: But guys can open cans. I mean, advertisers still appeal to women. Katherine Parkin: That was one of my, um, big questions. W men can open a can of soup. Men can, can cook anything. And in fact, the most famed chefs are men. So why was there this, um, separation between the everyday cooking and the cooking that some advertisers, um, revered we have these chefs making these foods for you? Um, what I discovered is that advertisers rarely portrayed men cooking. Usually they did it for laughs. Um, they did it, um, in exceptional cases, uh, Saturday morning breakfast or, um, cooking for company where they would get, you know, a claim for their, um, bravery and taking on this unusual thing. But they did generally did not target them as cooks and as shoppers. And what's really shocking is that they knew their research had shown them time. And again, that men shop for food that they cooked food, but they really didn't want them to. Bob Edwards: The grill was another matter though, out on the patio, it was guys, Katherine Parkin: Well, they certainly featured them barbecuing, but when companies like Weber looked at who was actually doing the barbecuing, increasingly women took over the grill. So we, we have it kind of romanticizes the male preserve, you know, meat and fire. Um, but really, uh, women do the vast majority of the work, buying all the food, inviting the guests, cooking and cleaning. Uh, so even something that seems like a male preserve is, is largely not Bob Edwards: That keeps us guarding the cooler Katherine Parkin: or drinking from the cooler Bob Edwards: You quote a historian who found that early advertisers held the tacit assumption that women's minds were VAs of Froy pink irrationality mm-hmm Katherine Parkin: . Um, the advertisers really had some fairly insulting attitudes towards women. Obviously they did towards men, as I suggested earlier, but their attitudes towards women were also, um, fairly offensive. Uh, as, as you suggested with LE's, uh, quote there, they really did not know what to make of women as consumers. They couldn't figure out who was buying their products and they certainly couldn't figure out why they were buying their products. And one of the things that they concluded is that women were just irrational. If they couldn't figure it out, it, there must be no reason behind it. And they came up with some fairly insulting attitudes and, and certainly advertisements towards these women, not really respecting them as homemakers. And, and this is something that took off in the 20th century, the idea that home economics, something that many people studied, um, when they were in school and, uh, could train to do do was not something that was really respected. And, and that's ultimately why women are left to do this unpaid work in the home because it's not something that's particularly valued. And that's why advertisers dressed it up in the guise of love that you have to do it to show your love for your family. Bob Edwards: You provided this with a few sample radio commercials. Let's hear the first one. This is for Campbell soup Campbell Soup Ad: Campbell thing. Come on like bunny in the bank. That's the truth. Campbell soup really helps me stretch a dollar one night a week. We have a soup and sandwich, supper sandwich, fixing milk and fruit served with good hot Campbell soup, a chicken noodle. The family loves it. See day, I keep plenty of Campbell's soup in the cupboard. Campbell's in the cupboard is like money in the bank. Bob Edwards: Campbell's in the cupboard is like money in the bank. Katherine Parkin: It certainly was for women. Uh, the ideal held that men were supposed to bring home the money and women's power to, to shape their family's identity really came from their ability to stretch that money, make it last, make it work for them. Um, and certainly class plays a very big part in the advertising trying to persuade consumers and particularly these women that if they buy these foods, they'll be able to feed their family, give them nutritious meals and, uh, present their family as middle and hopefully upper class with the products that they're trying to sell, Bob Edwards: Be efficient. Do your job in the kitchen. That's love. Katherine Parkin: Absolutely. Um, , that's, that's the goal. Sometimes men weigh in, in the ads telling women to do it like they do in business, and that this would be a good product to buy because it's, uh, it's efficient and that's a big word in, in advertisements, but it really comes down to women having this power to, to shape their family. Bob Edwards: But as you pointed out the makers of, uh, some convenience foods like Campbells and Sters actually targeted women working outside the home and on the surface, that seems very progressive. Katherine Parkin: It certainly does. They, they even take on things like, uh, suffrage and the women's movement, um, making it appear as though they were encouraging women to seek out some freedom, seek out independence, but underlying those ads is, uh, a sense that they should prioritize their homemaking. That, um, even while they're working, even while they're at the convention, voting on a candidate, they should be worrying about whether they've prepared the right foods purchased the right foods and what they're gonna make for dinner that night. Bob Edwards: Why is it that soups and, and baked goods, uh, the ad agencies for, for those products worked the hardest to tie their products to the concept that food was love. Katherine Parkin: They certainly did. They really, uh, keyed into the idea that these were foods that men really loved and that they should prioritize giving men these foods. I think in part, it, it has to do with their commonness that they're staples. Uh, if you think back to the earliest foods that people ate, they were a, a type of a soup and, and, and certainly, uh, some kind of, of carbohydrate like that. Um, and they have to dress it up. They have to make it something that will sell, um, one early advertiser. Uh, David Ogilvy said that there really wasn't very much difference between the products. Um, and they had to find a way to sell that bread's gonna taste fairly similar. Soups are gonna taste fairly similar. How do you sell them? And, and the advertisers really, uh, sold soup and bread as love items that I, I, I wonder perhaps if it has to do with the warmth of the items that they would fill you with love and, and warmth in that way Bob Edwards: Or love of country, here's, here's one ad you found from 1905. It says the product will soon be on every table at every meal, giving life health and strength to the American people, thus in very truth, becoming the backbone of the nation. That was an ad for a cracker, Katherine Parkin: Uh, from the national biscuit company, the they didn't, uh, they weren't too, uh, subtle in the naming their brand either. That would be the later in Nabisco. Um, they really wanted to make foods patriotic. Um, this again, ties into making, uh, your family's identity. Do you eat foods that, uh, identify you as American, or are you going to hearken back in 1905 to immigrant foods, foods that you brought with you from the old country? And so here was an opportunity and, and companies did this throughout the century coming up on the 4th of July. You'll undoubtedly see jello trotting out their red, white, and blue jello, so that you can spend hours in the kitchen, cutting it into a, a flag shaped mold. Bob Edwards: Here's one from 1943, the height of world war II. The homemaker two is making history, not just in overalls or a uniform, but even more in an apron. The American woman is serving her country as never before planning good meals is still a woman's biggest job. Our nation's families must all be strong and well nourished to build for victory. That product was chef boy R D. Katherine Parkin: They, uh, they loved to, to sell this idea of patriotism. That ad was, um, focused on women. Although most of the food ads in the, during, uh, world war II in particular focused on feeding men, uh, companies proudly touted that they were selling, uh, that they were, um, making foods for the soldiers overseas. Um, and that this connection between home and food and love and food, um, was, was really central to their product and to what they hope to sell about themselves Bob Edwards: And defeat the Nazis. Katherine Parkin: Absolutely. You can do it with your, with your ravOli . Bob Edwards: Yes. This chef Boyer D was not from VHI, France, free France, Ad: Don't worry. Mom, there is little time to drive. Don't worry. Mom. Everything's allright Bob Edwards: Katherine Park in is back after the break with a few more examples of outlandish advertising techniques. Ad: