Advertising exploited women’s insecurities about inadequacy to sell products

Evidence

Ultimately despite the role that many of the “Lady Persuaders” also played in the women’s rights movement, their work at J. Walter Thompson tended mainly to reinforce the condescending biases and stereotypes they had once been at pains as activists to undo. Frances Maule, once in advertising, opined that whether they knew it or not, women usually suffered from a sense of “unimportance, insignificance, [and] inadequacy.” Successful advertisements for soap or cold cream worked by promising a remedy for such emotions, so that by buying the product a woman might achieve that ” ‘grand and glorious feeling’ which we are seeking all the time.” The president of the advertising trade association described the effect more cynically: “It is an illusion, of course…still it is a means to that end and its proper use [is] a very desirable practice.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 226

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for an essay: how early female advertisers recycled feminist-era insights about women’s psychological insecurities into sales tactics — activism’s playbook repurposed against its cause.
• XREF: Connects to the commodification-of-insecurity theme in attention economics, and to how activist knowledge gets co-opted by marketing. — connects to: Advertising research deliberately cultivated female discontent to expand women’s consumption — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 530; Advertisers weaponized social shame and judgment to sell products to women in the 1920s — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 217; Advertising manipulates consumers into wanting what they are made to want. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 258 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Advertisers weaponized social shame and judgment to sell products to women in the 1920s #corroborates (0.90) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 217
• Advertising manipulates consumers into wanting what they are made to want. #corroborates (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 258
• Modern advertising manipulates desires through images largely unconnected to the product. #expands (0.78) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1819
• Early 1920s ad textbooks sold crude stereotypes about women’s suggestibility #exemplifies (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 210
• Advertising shifted from promising cures to selling consumers a better version of themselves #qualifies (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 213