My Interview

The lovely woman on the right in the photo accompanying this entry would be my grandmother, Jean Streinz. A little background on her is that she was born in 1926 and went to Florida State College. She is a well-spoken and well-read woman. Jean was married in 1953 and had her son (my father) in 1955. By the time she had to buy washers and dryers to keep up with the laundry of an energetic little boy, it was the 1960’s and she was being exposed to advertisements much like the ones I am researching. As I stated in a previously posted blog, Jean also worked as a graphic artist and although I am a little bias, her free hand drawings are absolutely brilliant.

My interview with my grandmother gave me some great information to work off of, mostly because I got a feel for what it was really like in the 1960s, though I knew it would be different from the ads. I have taken some of my interview with her and transcribed it so that the interesting parts and useful parts can be read in her actual words, instead of me trying to summarize them. The interview provided some great family stories as well, and it was fun to hear her recollections of the times and bring up events that hadn’t even crossed my mind. Here are some of the best parts of the interview:

Grandma (G): Before we get started on this interview I would just like to state some of my thoughts on the changes in advertising. I think that the changes in advertising sort of reflect the changes that women have made and are making in the world. Advertisements were very different back then from what they are now. For example, the housewives in their nicest dresses and aprons in the kitchen with heels! That never happened.

Katie (K): So what did you wear in the kitchen then?

G: Well, sometimes pants. But I didn’t own many pants back then. I didn’t have any blue jeans. They weren’t common at all. They were for men but not for women. I might wear a dress but I would wear low heels or maybe no shoes at all. Sandals in the kitchen to cook and I wouldn’t wear good clothes, I certainly wouldn’t dress up with stockings and heels you know? (Laughs)

K: Yes (Laughs)

G: But then advertising is different it presents a more glamorous picture

K: So in the 1960’s or I guess when Dad was born [1955] too, that’s close enough, did you buy all the appliances or did you [and Grandpa] make joint decisions? Who handled the money in the household?

G: I paid the bills and Jimmy [her husband] brought home the money and I spent it, virtually. Usually for something that cost very much we usually would go together and look. Usually if we bought something like a stove or a refrigerator or anything that had a large outlay of money we would go together. For smaller things like a toaster or a bathroom heater I would just go myself and buy it.

I found that part of the interview to be interesting, because in a yearlong series of articles from Ladies’ Home Journal called “How America Spends Its Money” starting in January 1961, it was discovered that most American families had the males bringing home the money and the women making all the spending decisions, from appliances to school clothing. However, big items, such as cars, those decisions were more often than not a joint decision between husband and wife. I thought it was interesting that it so directly correlated with other American spending habits.

K: So you weren’t the typical housewife in the skirt and the apron that the ads portrayed then? But then again I guess nobody was?

G: No it was not typical, no. But I did stay at home and do all the cooking, and I was really quite happy. See I worked for about 6 years though before I got married so I kind of got that out of my system. And things weren’t all that great at that time with jobs for women. You were given clerical jobs, jobs with not potential. And even though I had a college degree it didn’t help me that much before I was married. So I was quite happy to be married and have a child. But a lot of women my age who did not have the same experience were unhappy. Have you ever read the Feminine Mystique?

K: No

G: You never have? Oh you should read that. Well, anyways Betty Friedan wrote this book which changed things a lot because it talked about how women felt because a lot of educated women at that time, after the war, because women had worked during the second World War, but see I was just slightly younger because I didn’t get out of college until the war was over and I didn’t work much during the war, nothing regular. But anyways women who had worked had learned the experience of earning money, good money, and doing something they liked to do, and doing something that was useful. The men came back from the war and the women all lost their jobs. The men came in and took the good jobs and then that’s when you had all the women that became housewives and the women were at home. And women weren’t as happy as the ads portrayed them. A lot of women were very unhappy because they had experienced the freedom and all of the interesting jobs during the war. Because all the men, you see during the second World War, were drafted. If they could walk, they were drafted. So there were lots of jobs available for women. So there seemed to be a movement, and probably the government was behind it to a certain degree of trying to make women happy back at the home by being the little housewife because there wasn’t any jobs for them any more. I wasn’t that generation though, I was just slightly younger. I went to work after I went to college and I could see how dead end most of my jobs were. I was happier being a housewife than a lot of women a little older than I.

K: Who were upset because they’d seen jobs?

G: Yes, right.

This part of the interview was extremely interesting to me because I hadn’t considered World War II, and the recollections of my grandmother add up to the history of it presented in Hill’s book, Advertising to the American Woman. Why didn’t the ads change then? It’s hard to say. I think that personally a large part of it is because of the glamour behind a housewife wearing heels and make-up. The homemaker image is much nicer to many women than some hurried working mother. Although starting in 1950, the ads did change a little bit to encompass components of the feminist movement. From there they kept changing and evolving into what they are today. As my grandmother stated, the changes in advertising reflect the changes women have made in the world. She's a very smart woman.