Advertising Through the Years in the Popular

¶ … advertising through the years in the popular magazine, The Ladies Home Journal. The writer uses examples of ads as well as a discussion about advertising changes to explore the way history dictates advertising. There were six sources used to complete this paper.

From the beginning of the advertising industry, ads have been historical records of the history of the nation. Whether it is a cleaning product, a service, or other advertising need, the tone and look of the ad is dictated and driven by society. The Ladies Home Journal has been a mainstay in America when it comes to print ads. It presents a classic roadmap of historic changes in societal attitudes through the advertisements that it has printed. Through the 1930's 1940's and 1950's the ads in the magazine portray the changing attitudes regarding women and their place in society.

The ads in the Ladies Home Journal magazine through the years have been reflective of society and its beliefs. Ladies Home Journal is a classic example of the changes that have taken place in society, in part because it is a "women's" magazine therefore provides picture evidence of society's changing attitudes about women (The Industrial Role of Women http://home.utm.utoronto.ca/~eo_m/saras-home.html).

In the 1930's the nation was working on recovering from the depression. Ads in the magazine were geared toward encouraging women to stay home and let men have the jobs to support the families. Ads in the magazine worked to reinforce that a woman's place was in the home and a man's place was in the workforce.

(A Library Advertising's Portrayal of Women in the Workplace from the 1930s to the 1950s ) (The Industrial Role of Women http://home.utm.utoronto.ca/~eo_m/saras-home.html).

During the 1930's advertisements in the magazine were geared toward the housewife. At the time women were in the home and the advertisements worked to showcase the importance of their role in the home. Advertisements were hand drawn or painted copies more often than photographs and the advertisers who took out space in the magazine sold goods or products to make the housewife's job easier (Peggy Preston http://www.loyno.edu/history/journal/1988-9/preston.htm).

By the 1940's the ads in the LHJ changed to include the females as the heroine of the assembly line. The ads portrayed images of Rosie the Riveter types who not only handled the fires on the home front, but went off to work each day to take the place of her man who was most likely overseas in the war.

During the Great Depression magazine concentrated their advertising on encouraging women to stay home and leave the jobs for men who needed them to support their families. This only changed when women were needed in the workforce during the war to hold the jobs open until the men could come home.

At this point the advertisements in the magazine were geared toward recruiting women into the fields that had been emptied by enlisted men (Peggy Preston http://www.loyno.edu/history/journal/1988-9/preston.htm).

When the idea of contraceptives and female hygiene began to hit the advertisements the magazine allowed its readership to become manipulated by letting advertisements hawk goods with little concern as the accuracy of the ads.

"Printed ads and commissioned door-to-door sales representatives deliberately manipulated women's ignorance of . . . physiology . . . To hawk goods that were useless," writes Andrea Tone in the Journal of Social History. Even magazine publishers were complicit. Says Tone: "The numerous women's magazines that published feminine hygiene ads -- from McCall's to Screen Romances to the Ladies' Home Journal -- were conspicuously silent about the safety and efficacy of the products they endorsed (A Brief History of Modern Contraceptive Ads

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/webzine/artsculture/art-041231-advertisements.xml)."

Conclusion