W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2005 Marketing to the 'liberated' woman: Feminism, social change, and beauty culture, 1960--2000 Elizabeth A. Kreydatus College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the Marketing Commons, United States History Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Kreydatus, Elizabeth A., "Marketing to the 'liberated' woman: Feminism, social change, and beauty culture, 1960--2000" (2005). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623483. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-hfej-p605 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NOTE TO USERS This reproduction is the best copy available. ® UMI Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. Furtherowner. reproduction Further reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. MARKETING TO THE ‘LIBERATED’ WOMAN Feminism, Social Change, and Beauty Culture, 1960—2000 A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Elizabeth A. Kreydatus 2005 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPROVAL SHEET This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Elizabeth A. Kreydatus Approved by the Committee, November 2005 taureen Fitzgefald,/Co-Chair Leisa Meyer, Co-Chair Laurie Jvoloski Charles McGovern Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements iv List of Illustrations v Abstract vi Introduction 2 Chapter I. “Burnt” Bras and Unstraightened Hair: Feminist Critiques of Beauty Culture, 1960s—1980s 27 Chapter II. Perfume for the “Liberated” Woman 74 Chapter III. “Enriching Women’s Lives”: The Mary Kay Approach to Beauty, Business, and Feminism 143 Chapter IV. “I’m Doing It For Me”: Beauty Advice For a Feminist Audience 189 Chapter V. Nineties Feminists Respond to Beauty Culture 247 Conclusion 274 Bibliography 281 Vita 297 iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Leisa Meyer and Maureen Fitzgerald for their thoughtful comments and advice on this project. Their enthusiasm and guidance helped make the experience of writing a dissertation a real pleasure. Thanks also to Charles McGovern and Laurie Koloski for their insightful comments. My family, especially my parents, my sister Millie, my brother Steven, and my best friend Cally Shrader, have all provided more emotional support than I ever deserved. They never complained when I would ramble about the number of drafts I had left to write or when I’d make them carry around stacks of books about dieting and cosmetic surgery for me. I also appreciate all the wonderful support and advice from my friends in Williamsburg. Jeni Oast, Sarah Trembanis, and Scott Ebhardt have encouraged me at every turn, and have made Williamsburg a real home for me. Members of my dissertation group, and especially my classmate Melissa Ooten, read several chapters of the dissertation and offered expert commentary. By sharing all of these experiences, Melissa made graduate school and life in general much more fun. My favorite editor, Rebecca Wrenn, read the dissertation thoroughly, even the footnotes! Becky offered exceptionally helpful and encouraging commentary on this project and she provided deeply appreciated emotional support. I am so fortunate to have such fantastic friends. 1 couldn’t have done this without them. Finally, my husband Matthew continues to make every day brighter. He has encouraged and supported me in my academic pursuits for nearly a decade now. I appreciate his love and kindness more than anything. IV Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Illustration Page 1. Prophecy advertisement (1963) 79 2. KiKU advertisement (1969) 83 3. Tabu advertisement (1968) 90 4. Tabu advertisement (1973) 93 5. Charlie advertisement (1974) 107 6. Tigress advertisement (1975) 112 7. Jontue advertisement (1977) 116 8. Obsession advertisement (1987) 121 9. Obsession advertisement (1993) 130 10. CK One advertisement (1994) 137 v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT This dissertation is a study of the influence of the women’s movement on the marketing of beauty products between 1960 and 2000. The first and last chapters study feminist critiques of normative beauty standards and explore the challenges feminists faced when they tried to effect cultural change. While the dissertation is framed by analysis of feminist engagement with beauty culture, the bulk of the dissertation examines beauty industries, focusing on the ways that these industries reflect debates over woman’s identity and status. Chapter two traces the marketing of perfume between 1960 and 2000 by chronicling changing advertising campaigns as marketers adapted to and participated in social change. The third chapter explores the direct sales strategies of Mary Kay Cosmetics, a company dependent on independent consultants, typically women, to market its products. Finally, chapter four details the genre of beauty advice books and articles, focusing on how the tone and content of this advice has been shaped by the social world of the advisor. By looking specifically at these beauty industries, these chapters demonstrate the ways that ordinary Americans engaged with feminism in their professional lives. These case studies illuminate late-twentieth-century debates over womanhood, sexuality, and femininity that took place within the business world and the culture at large. Ultimately, this dissertation offers a clearer picture of the interconnections between beauty marketing and feminism, highlighting the ways in which social movements affect the industries they critique. vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. MARKETING TO THE ‘LIBERATED’ WOMAN Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION “Let us have fashion plates in our popular magazines o f active, healthy, sensibly dressed women, in place o f the waxen-faced, wasp-like beflounced and befurbelowed caricatures o f women which now appear there to mislead the weak and disgust the sensible. Amelia Bloomer, The Lily, 1854 In the early 1850s, Amelia Bloomer, the editor of a temperance and women’s rights journal, promoted a “reform” style of dress. Along with several prominent women’s rights advocates, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone, Bloomer rejected fashionable corsets and heavy, trailing skirts in favor of loose pants worn under a mid-calf length skirt.2 The “dress reformers” sought to change fashions that were uncomfortable, unhealthy, and—especially—part of a cultural system that measured a woman’s worth based on her appearance. These activists quickly discovered that their reform costumes were controversial tactics through which to argue for women’s rights. In the face of public ridicule for the “bloomer costume,” most women’s rights advocates abandoned the dress reform effort by the mid-1850s, despairing of changing aesthetic norms or their roles in women’s lives. A little over a century later, American feminists renewed the dress reformers’ critique of beauty norms. Like the dress reformers of the 1850s, late-twentieth-century 1 Amelia Bloomer, “Paris Fashions,”The Lily 7 (August 1, 1854): 109. 2 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, 2d ed., vol. 1 (Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1889), 844. 2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 feminists agreed that beauty culture—or the commodification and idealization of the female body—underpinned, or at least reflected, a sexist system that defined women by their appearances. An array of activists challenged sexist, racist, and heterosexist practices that appeared in beauty cultural venues, such as beauty product advertisements, women’s fashion magazines, and beauty pageants. This project investigates the most influential late-twentieth-century critiques of beauty culture, beginning with the Black Nationalists and the radical and liberal feminists of the 1960s, tracing their activism across four decades, and concluding with a discussion of “third-wave” feminists of the 1990s. Black Nationalists and radical, liberal, and third-wave feminists all shared in a struggle to empower American women. Black Nationalism is an ideology that celebrates a separate black American heritage and culture. While Black Nationalist ideology had been articulated by Marcus Garvey as early as the 1910s,