I choose to look through "The Saturday Evening Post" becasue it sounded more like a newspaper than an journal and I felt that it would cater more to the everyday person than to the literary critic. I was right. Looking through this newspaper I found advertisements selling typical household items such as food, clothing, razors, and furniture. In addition, just by scanning the story titles I feel that the stories themselves had to do with regular people; for instance, "Professional Farming," "Railroad Expenses and Earnings," "Who's Who--and Why?" The advertisment that jumped out the most for me was for Van Camp's Baked Beans. Firstly, because the advertisement had it's own page and secondly, because it had a lot of writing. I mentally compared this advertisement on the second page of the newspaper to those that I would find on the second page of the New York Times now-a-days, and I don't think that they are similar in any way.
When I first took a look at the advertisement I noticed the picture on the top right hand side of the page, where a man is pointing to something and a woman is sitting by a table preparing a meal. At first, I thought the man was ordering the woman to do something while the woman was preparing the mans supper - a fairly typical picture in my mind of the late 1800's and early 1900's. Then I read the sentence directly to the left of the picture - "Don't Bake Any Beans for Me" - and I inferred that the man was telling the woman this. The statement threw me off, since I was not expecting such a statement from a man during that time period. I decided to look into what was going on during the year before this magazine was published (this edition was published in early January 1911). My research showed me that there were some changes to the way women were doing their daily chores and how they were living their lives. For instance, in early August, Alva Fisher patented the electric washing machine, giving women more free time, giving women more free time during the day. Another interesting event that caught my eye, in early November, Washington State allowed to vote in their election. Also, the LAPD allowed a woman to join the police force, making her the first female police officer. Basically women started to hold a more important role in society.
Since there was a shift in the woman's world, it was easier for me to accept the advertisement in the Saturday Evening Post. Then the women were being looked as consumers, not inferiors. It's possible that other Journals have somewhat similar advertisements. Maybe not in the same layout or with the same content but definitely with a similar background, which considers women as consumers. Any thoughts?
