Page 55 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

NAMING THE PROBLEM 49

advertisers wield in shaping the hearts and minds of consumers. Where Packard
emphasizes the clinical efficiency of the ‘ultra-modern techniques’ of
‘Motivation Research’ (which turn out to be no more than crass Freudian
generalizations), so Friedan, as we have seen, lends a patina of scientific
credibility to her argument with the adoption of the language of brainwashing.
And just as Packard seems to believe every single claim about the efficacy of
advertising made by the ‘admen’ in their trade magazines, so too does Friedan
repeat as fact the comments that are made to her ‘in confidence’ by an
anonymous source in the advertising industry: both are in effect duped by the
industry’s own promotion of its influence.
Friedan emphasizes the gendered separation of agents and victims, with her
account, for example, of the systematic collaboration between the advertising
industry and the editors of women’s magazines. She is in no doubt as to the
effectiveness of the advertising agency/women’s magazine conspiracy to
brainwash women:

It all seems so ludicrous when you understand what they are up to. Perhaps
the housewife has no-one but herself to blame if she lets the manipulators
flatter or threaten her into buying things that neither fill her family’s needs
nor her own. But if the ads and commercials are a clear case of caveat
emptor, the same sexual sell disguised in the editorial content of a magazine
or a television programme is both less ridiculous and more insidious. Here
the housewife is often an unaware victim.
(1992:202)

Though tempted to blame women for (literally) buying into the feminine
mystique, Friedan is ultimately concerned to point out how the devious
advertising campaigns are targeted specifically against women. The crowning
moment of realization in The Feminine Mystique comes with the discovery that
during the postwar period of rapid suburban expansion women spent three-
quarters of the household budget. Friedan therefore asks pointedly, ‘why is it
never said that the really crucial function, the really important role that women
serve as housewives is to buy more things for the houset?’ (1992:181). The
Feminine Mystique works against the familiar alignment of mass culture with
femininity, with its argument that women are not so much in league with the
culture industry as the victims of its brainwashing campaigns.
Despite the insistence with which this case is made, Friedan repudiates the
logic of conspiracy in a fashion similar to the disavowals by Wolf and Faludi.
Halfway through the book, Friedan finally fits the last piece of the puzzle
together, realizing that ‘somehow, somewhere, someone must have figured out
that women will buy more things if they are kept in the underused, nameless-
yearning, energy-to-get-rid-of-state of being housewives’ (1992:181). Just in
case we might begin to expect a place, date and face to be fitted to that
anonymous ‘figuring out’, Friedan cautions us that ‘it was not an economic