“Bring Joy to Your Home with the Real Frigidaire”: Advertising the Refrigerator to Belgian Female Consumers, 1955–1965

Abstract

Advertisements provide a link between the symbolical, ideal, practical and informative notions of domesticity and technology and shed light on the material culture of the home and domesticity. In this article, I focus on the home as a material place where technological and consumerist trends develop, how these trends were linked to meanings of domesticity, and how they affected gendered identities, practices, labor, and ultimately tastes of home. I argue that in the normalization of the refrigerator, the promotion of a technology-based domestic life was not uniform in its meanings, entitlements, or strategies. First, the consumer was confronted not with uniformity but with a multitude of meanings, arguments and promises that came with the refrigerator. Second, gender roles and identities were less varied. Third, the hard sell–soft sell dichotomy did not prevail, and emotional or hedonistic appeals were often combined with directly spelled-out advantages. The refrigerator advertisements studied here appeared in a Belgian women's magazine between 1955 and 1965 and constructed family life and tastes of home around elevated standards of comfort, care, aesthetics, and choice, more so than around a scientific rationalization of household work and organization.

Notes

¹Bee Wilson, Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat (New York: Basic Books, 2012) 232.

²Quote from Thomas Maschio, “The Refrigerator and American Ideas of Home,” Anthropology News 43.5 (2002): 8; see also: Margaret B. Blackman, “Focus on the Fridge,” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 5.4 (2005): 32–37; Helen Watkins, “Beauty Queen, Bulletin Board and Browser: Rescripting the Refrigerator,” Gender, Place and Culture 13.2 (2006): 146.

³Jackie Clarke, “Work, Consumption and Subjectivity in Postwar France: Moulinex and the Meaning of Domestic Appliances 1950s–70s,” Journal of Contemporary History 47.4 (2012): 843; Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordening of French Culture (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1995) 98; Michael Wildt, “Changes in Consumption as Social Practice in West-Germany During the 1950s,” Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the 20th Century, Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 307.

⁴Producers did efforts to relieve refrigerators from its luxury image and present it as something necessary. Theo Horstmann and Regina Weber, eds. “Hier wirkt Elektrizität”: Werbung für Strom, 1890 bis 2010 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2010) 298.

⁵Elizabeth Shove and Dale Southerton, “Defrosting the Freezer: From Novelty to Convenience, A Narrative of Normalization,” Journal of Material Culture 5.3 (2000): 313.

⁶See Bonnie J. Fox, “Selling the Mechanized Household: 70 Years of Ads in Ladies Home Journal,” Gender and Society 4.1 (1990): 25–40; Sandy Isenstadt, “Visions of Plenty, Refrigerators in America around 1950,” Journal of Design History 11.4 (1998): 311–21; Amanda McLeod, “The Lady Means Business: Marketing to the Electric Appliance Consumer in the 1950s and 1960s,” Melbourne Historical Journal 31 (2003): 54–73; S. J. Wiesen, “Miracles for Sale: Consumer Displays in Advertising in Postwar West-Germany,” Consuming Germany in the Cold War, D. F. Crew, ed. (Oxford: Berg, 2003) 151–78.

⁷Het Rijk der Vrouw, April 24, 1958, 53.

⁸Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies, 5.

⁹Erica Carter, How German Is She? (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997); Rebecca J. Pulju, “Changing Homes, Changing Lives: Material Conditions, Women's Demands, and Consumer Society in Post-World War France,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 23 (2003): 290–307; For Belgium, see Els De Vos, Hoe zouden we graag wonen? Woonvertogen in Vlaanderen tijdens de jaren zestig en zeventig (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2012).

¹⁰Shelley Mallett, “Understanding Home: a Critical Review of the Literature,” The Sociological Review 52.1 (2004): 63; Suzanne Reimer and Deborah Leslie, “Identity, Consumption and the Home,” Home Cultures 1.2 (2004): 192; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugen Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Objects and the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Joanne Hollows, Domestic Cultures (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2008) 74.

¹¹Helen Watkins 145

¹²Bee Wilson, Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat (New York: Basic Books, 2012) 244.

¹³Elizabeth B. Silva, “The Cook, the Cooker and the Gendering of the Kitchen,” The Sociological Review 48.4 (2000): 612–28; Timo Myllyntaus, “The Entry of Males and Machines in the Kitchen: A Social History of the Microwave Oven in Finland,” ICON 16 (2010): 226–245; Martin Hand and Elizabeth Shove, “Condensing Practices: Ways of Living with a Fridge,” Journal of Consumer Culture 7.79 (2007): 79–103.

¹⁴For the history of the refrigerator, see among others: Tara Garnett and Tim Jackson, “Frost Bitten: An Exploration of Refrigeration Dependence in the UK Food Chain and its Implications for Climate Policy,” paper presented to the 11th European Round Table on Consumption and Production, Basel, 2007; Ullrich Hellman, Künstliche Kälte: die Geschichte der Kühlung im Haushalt (Gieβen: Anabas Verlag, 1990); Marjatta Hietala and Vuokko Lepistö-Kirsilä, “Arctic Finland and the New Technology of Food Preservation and Refrigeration, 1850-1990,” Food and Material Culture: Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium of the International Commission for Research into European Food History, Martin R. Schärer and Alexander Fenton, eds. (East Linton, Tuckwell Press, 1998) 310–29; Jonathan Rees, Refrigeration Nation: A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2013); Willem Scheire, “Geschiedschrijving van het evidente. Het verhaal van de koelkast,” Volkskunde 113.2 (2012): 129–51.

¹⁵Orvar Löfgren, “Consuming Interests,” Consumption and Identity, Jonathan Friedman, ed. (London: Routledge, 1994) 60; Susan Strasser, “The Alien Past: Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective,” The Advertising and Consumer Culture Reader, John Turow and Mathew P. McAlister, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2009) 25; Kristin Ross, op. cit. 98. Ruth Oldenziel and Michael Hard, Consumers, Tinkerers, Rebels. The People Who Shaped Europe (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) 199; Jonathan Rees, op. cit. 166.

¹⁶Roland Marchand, Marketing Modernity. Advertising the American Dream (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) 270.

¹⁷Sandy Isenstadt 311–21.

¹⁸Peter R. Grahame, “Objects, Texts and Practices: The Refrigerator in Consumer Discourses between the Wars,” The Socialness of Things. Essays on the Socio-Semiotics of Objects, Approaches to Semiotics, H. S. Riggins, ed. (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer, 1994) 288.

¹⁹Mika Pantzar, “Tools or Toys: Inventing the Needs for Domestic Appliances in Postwar and Postmodern Finland,” Journal of Advertising 1.32 (2003): 85.

²⁰Anneke Geyzen, “Food Preservation in Flemish Women's Magazines, 1945–1960,” The Food Industries of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Derek J. Oddy and Alain Drouard, eds. (Fanham, UK: Ashgate, 2013) 199–213.

²¹Inés Perez, “Comfort for the People and Liberation for the Housewife: Gender, Consumption and Refrigerators in Argentina (1930–60),” Journal of Consumer Culture 12.156 (2012): 163–64.

²²Adam Arvidsson, Marketing Modernity. Italian Advertising from Fascism to Postmodernity. (London: Routledge, 2003); Sue Bowden en Avner Offer, “The Technical Revolution that Never Was. Gender, Class, and the Diffusion of Household Durables in Interwar England,” The Sex of Things, Victoria De Grazia and Ellen Furlough, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) 270–73; Ellen Lupton, Mechanical Brides. Women and Machines from Home to Office (New York: Cooper-Hewitt American Museum of Design, 1993); Theo Horstmann and Regina Weber, eds. “Hier wirkt Elektrizität.” Werbung für Strom, 1890 bis 2010 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2010).

²³Robert Atwan, Donald McQuade, and John W. Wright, Edsels, Luckies and Frigidaires. Advertising the American Way (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1979) 4; Emma Halliwell and Helga Dittmar, “Does Size Matter? The Impact of Ultra-Thin Media Models on Women's Body Image and on Advertising Effectiveness,” Consumer Culture, Identity and Well-Being: The Search for the “Good Life” and the “Body Perfect”, Helga Dittmar, ed. (Hove: Psychology Press, 2008) 121–46; Fox, 25–26, 28, 35; Laura Scott Holliday, “Kitchen Technologies: Promises and Alibis, 1944–1966,” Camera Obscura 16.2 (2001): 131; Katherine J. Parkin, Food is Love: Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Craig J. Thompson, “Caring Consumers: Gendered Consumption Meanings and the Juggling Lifestyle,” Consumption. Vol III, Appropriation, Craig Warde, ed. (Los Angeles: Sage, 2010) 300.

²⁴Linda Scott, “Images in Advertising: the Need for a Theory of Visual Rhetoric,” Journal of Consumer Research 21 (1994): 265.

²⁵Steven M. Kates and Glenda Shaw-Garlock, “The Ever Entangling Web: A Study of Ideologies and Discourses in Advertising to Women,” Journal of Advertising 28.2 (1999): 38; Anne M. Cronin, “Regimes of Mediation: Advertising Practicioners as Cultural Intermediaries,” Consumption, Markets and Culture 7.4 (2004): 353–54, 357–58.

²⁶Michael Schudson, “Advertising as Capitalist Realism,” The Advertising and Consumer Culture Reader, Joseph Turow and Matthew McAlister, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2009) 244.

²⁷Libelle, December 9, 1957, 63.

²⁸Translation of: “Het is de vrouw die beslist over de aankopen van de familie. Haar moet u dus trachten te interesseren voor u producten. Ingelast in Libelle, het weekblad voor de vrouw bij uitstek, zal uw advertentie dubbel nuttig zijn.” Libelle, January 7, 1950, 51.

²⁹Bulletin officiel de l’OFADI (Organe periodique de l’office d’analyse de la diffusion publicitaire), April–October, 1955, 9.

³⁰Only for the number of issues is the difference between the French and Flemish magazine mentioned: 75,327 versus 102,678. Officieel Bulletin van D.E.V.E.A. (Periodiek orgaan van de dienst voor publicitaire verpsreidingsanalyse), April, 1966, 9.

³¹Els Flour, Catherine Jacques, et al., Bronnen voor de vrouwengeschiedenis in België, Deel II: Repertorium van de feministische en vrouwenpers, 1830-1994 (Brussels: Federaal Ministerie voor Tewerkstelling en Arbeid, 1994) 149–150.

³²Some volumes of Libelle were incomplete but with no more than a few issues missing.

³³Anneke Geyzen, op. cit. 8, 13.

³⁴Statistisch jaarboek van België (Brussels: Nationaal Instituut voor de Statistiek, 1970) 696–697.

³⁵Patrizio Bianchi and Luigi Forlai, “The European Domestic Appliance Industry, 1945–1987,” The Structure of European Industry, Henk Wouter De Jong, ed. (London: Kluwer, 1988) 277–80. For Italian refrigerator production see: The Electrical Engineering Industry in Some European Countries (Investment Research Group of the Amsterdam-Rotterdam Bank, Banque de la Société General de Belgique, Deutsche Bank, Midland Bank, 1965) 22.

³⁷Nele Desimpelaere, “De koelkasten en wasmachines van Philips,” Tijdschrift voor Industriële Cultuur 26.3 (2008): 40–47.

³⁸Belgische economische en sociale statistieken, 50-60, deel II (Brussels: Nationale Bank van België, 1960) 127. Belgische economische en sociale statistieken 60-70, deel II (Brussels: Nationale Bank van België, 1970) 160.

³⁹Statistische en econometrische studiën (Brussels: Nationaal Instituut voor de Statistiek, 1966) 72.

⁴⁰Christian Depuits, Les variations de la demande de biens électro-ménagers en Belgique—1953 à 1970 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain, 1972) 51.

⁴¹Isabelle Cassiers and Peter Scholliers, “Le pacte social belge de 1944, les salaires et la croissance économique en perspective internationale,” Het sociaal pakt van 1944, Dirk Luyten and Guy Vanthemsche, eds. (Brussels: VUB Press, 1995) 161–90.

⁴²Translation of “De talrijke Martin fabrieken in Europa hebben hun krachtige nijverheidpotentieel samengebundeld met het doel: sneller, beter, goedkoper te produceren.” Libelle, May 18, 1959, 49.

⁴³Anke Van Caudenberg and Hilde Heynen, “The Rational Kitchen in the Interwar Period in Belgium: Discourses and Realitues,” Home Cultures 1.1 (2004): 23–50

⁴⁴CEG, Statistisch Bulletin—Bulletin Statistique (1967) 44.

⁴⁵CEG, Statistisch Bulletin—Bulletin Statistique (1972 bis), 43; Weekberichten der kredietbank 26.43 (1971): 455.

⁴⁶Anneke Geyzen 199–213.

⁴⁷Tara Garnett and Tim Jackson 8–14; Adri Albert de La Bruhèze and Anneke Van Otterloo, “The Milky Way: Infrastructures and the Shaping of Milk Chains,” History and Technology 20.3 (2007): 263.

⁴⁸Alan Warde, “Convenience Food: Space and Timing,” British Food Journal 101.7 (1999): 522.

⁴⁹Le Moniteur de l’Alimentation 61.625 (1967): 44–5.

⁵⁰Clarke 847.

⁵¹Hannelore Vandebroek en Leen Van Molle, “The Era of the Housewife? The Construction of ‘Work’ and the ‘Active’ Population in the Belgian Population Census (1947, 1961 & 1970),” Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis 40.1–2 (2010): 51, 59.

⁵²Els Flour 149

⁵³Victoria De Grazia, “Establishing the Modern Consumer Household. Introduction,” The Sex of Things. Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, Victoria De Grazia and Ellen Furlough, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) 158.

⁵⁴Libelle, May 24, 1965, 34.

⁵⁵Libelle, April 20, 1959, 15; Libelle, September 14, 1959, 37.

⁵⁶Libelle, March 29, 1965, 107; Libelle, May 3, 1965, 24.

⁵⁸Translation of “ ‘t is ongelooflijk! Al wat mama in haar Nestor Martin koelkast bergt!” Libelle, April 18, 1960, 97; Translation of “Wacht even! … Ja, die is het, die mama wilde”, Libelle, 1960, May 9, 29.

⁵⁹Translation of “Allen in bloeiende gezondheid sinds moeder haar Electrische Koelkast heeft”. Libelle, May 27, 1957, 111.

⁶⁰Watkins 145

⁶¹Libelle, May 27, 1957, 111; Libelle, May 9, 1960, 29; Libelle, May 3, 1965, 24.

⁶²On the gendering of the refrigerator, see Watkins 143–52.

⁶³Translation of “Zij heeft mijn keuken verfraaid. Zij heeft de verscheidenheid van mijn menus verhoogd en verschaft mij een rijke keus van koele gerechten en dranken. Libelle, April 29, 1957, 23.

⁶⁴Translation of “Ik ben fier op mijn keus. Ik berg méér in mijn koelkast Nestor Martin”. Libelle, May 18, 1959, 49.

⁶⁵Libelle, May 7, 1962, 65.

⁶⁶Translation of “Nestor Martin leveren betekent vreugde brengen. Zijn goede kennis der behoeften van de Belgische huisvrouw stelt NESTOR MARTIN in staat een gamma koelkasten met kompressor aan te bieden die werkelijk voor haar ontworpen zijn”. Libelle, June 24, 1963, 31.

⁶⁷Libelle, May 27, 1963, 31

⁶⁸Libelle, June 4, 1962, 75.

⁶⁹Libelle, May 7, 1962, 45; Libelle, June 3, 1963, 46.

⁷⁰Libelle, October 26, 1959, 45; Libelle, April 12, 1959, 45; Libelle, May 7, 1962, 65.

⁷¹Libelle, August 15, 1960, 63.

⁷²Libelle, April 29, 1957, 83; Libelle, April 29, 1957, 23 Libelle, May 7, 1962, 35; Libelle, June 11, 1962, 61.

⁷³Carter 65–8.

⁷⁴Translation of “Koud bewaard, is geld gespaard.” Libelle, April 23, 1962, p.16; Libelle, May 7, 1962, 45; Libelle, June 28, 1965, 79.

⁷⁵Translation of “De electrische koelkast bewaart en vrijwaart de voedingswaren gedurende één maand … voor de tegenwaarde van een pond tussenrib.” Libelle, November 28, 1955, 36.

⁷⁶Libelle, April 23, 1962, 16.

⁷⁷Libelle, July 19, 1965, 51.

⁷⁸Libelle, April 29, 1957, 23.

⁷⁹Libelle, April 29, 1957, 23; Libelle, July 20, 1959, 49; Libelle, August 15, 1960; Libelle, June 6, 1960, 29; Libelle, May 7, 1962, 65; Libelle, May 3, 1965, 24.

⁸⁰Hollows 85. See also Elizabeth Shove, “Comfort and Convenience: Temporality and Practice,” The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption, Part V, Frank Trentmann, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 289–307.

⁸¹Translations of “Ze wast zoals u wast, maar zonder u”, “U drukt op de knop en … hop!” en “Zijn rationele lagen werden ontworpen om u te behagen,” Libelle, March 1, 1965, 17.

⁸²Translations of “Het komfort General Electric overtreft uw stoutste dromen” and “Ja, die ongelofelijke som van verbeteringen is het komfort General Electric,” Libelle,” April 29, 1963, 63.

⁸³Grahame 290; Strasser 30.

⁸⁴Translation of “Wat is praktischer en goedkoper? Het huis te onderhouden met behulp van ouderwets gereedschap en met steeds moeilijker te verkrijgen dienstboden … .of electro-huishoudtoestellen te gebruiken, zo veilig en niet veeleisend?” Libelle, August 1, 1955, 22.

⁸⁵Perez 166.

⁸⁶Ivan Paris, “White Goods in Italy during a Golden Age (1948–1973),” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 44.1 (2013): 100.

⁸⁷Libelle, April 18, 1960, 97; Libelle, May 1, 1961, 38; Libelle, June 3, 1963, 46.

⁸⁸Libelle, June 3, 1963, 46.

⁸⁹Translation of “Recepties? Voorraad voor een week? Berg al uw aankopen in uw koelkast General Electric. ( … .) Alles, volstrekt alles wat U behoeft, kan in de koelkast van 245 l geborgen worden. En er blijft nog plaats over!” Libelle, April 29, 1963, 63.

⁹⁰Libelle, April 23, 1962, 16; Libelle, May 7, 1962, 45.

⁹¹Libelle, May 7, 1962, 35.

⁹²Susanne Freidberg, Fresh. A Perishable History (Cambridge: The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, 2009) 4.

⁹³Translation of “Spaarpot van Gezondheid,” Libelle, May 27, 1957, 111.

⁹⁴Translation of “U leeft gezonder door het koelcomfort van een Linde,” Libelle, May 3, 1965, 24.

⁹⁵Libelle, june 22, 1959, 17; Libelle, July 20, 1959, 49.

⁹⁶Libelle, May 27, 1963, 31; Libelle, May 22, 1961, 37.

⁹⁷Libelle, July 19, 1965, 76.

⁹⁸Libelle, April 29, 1957, 83; Libelle, April 9, 1960, 9; Libelle, 1961, April 10, 69.

⁹⁹Libelle, June 27, 1960, 59; Libelle, April 29, 1957, 83; Libelle, June 10, 1957, 79.

¹⁰⁰Libelle, April 29, 1957, 83.

¹⁰¹Libelle, April 29, 1957, 83.

¹⁰²Libelle, May 22, 1961, 37.

¹⁰³Libelle, June 16, 1958, 55.

¹⁰⁴Libelle, June 24, 1963, 31.

¹⁰⁵Libelle, April 10, 1961, 69.

¹⁰⁶Isenstadt 320.

¹⁰⁷Isenstadt 320.

¹⁰⁸Libelle, June 15, 1959, 39; Libelle, August 1, 1960, 69.

¹⁰⁹Libelle, May 24, 1965, 34.

¹¹⁰Libelle, May 11, 1959, 23.

¹¹¹Hellmann 258–59; Kirsi Saarikangas, “What's New? Women Pioneers and the Finnish State Meet the American Kitchen,” Cold War Kitchen. Americanization, Technology and European Users, Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann, eds. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009) 302–3; Pieter Stokvis, “Huisvrouwelijke arbeid, technologie en arbeidsbesparing sinds het interbellum,” Geschiedenis van het privéleven, bronnen en benaderingen, Pieter Stokvis, ed. (Amsterdam: SUN, 2007) 137.

¹¹²Libelle, June 10, 1957, 79; Libelle, May 11, 1959, 23; Libelle, June 15, 1959, 55; Libelle, June 6, 1960, 29.

¹¹³Libelle, April 29, 1957, 83.

¹¹⁴Sluijter calls it “Bereikbaar Gemak,” Babette Sluijter, Kijken is Grijpen. Zelfbedieningswinkels, technische dynamiek en boodschappen doen in Nederland na 1945 (Eindhoven: Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, 2007) 161.

¹¹⁵Translation of “De echte Frigidaire, nu binnen uw bereik” and “Breng vreugde in uw woning met een echte Frigidaire, nu binnen uw bereik.” Libelle, March 9, 1959, 29; Libelle, October 26, 1959, 45.

¹¹⁶Translation of “Laat nu uw BOSCH koelkast leveren.” Libelle, May 25, 1959, 46.

¹¹⁷Libelle, March 29, 1965, 107.