Food Is Love: Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America

by Katherine J. Parkin

Winner of the 2006 Emily Toth Award of the Popular Culture/American Culture Association. Looking at food ads from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, describes how adveristing plays a role in defining gender roles.

Genres: Food History, Nonfiction, Gender, Food and Drink, History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 8, 2006

Reviews

[Anne]

Usually I rate my reading more on the basis of entertainment quotient but this time around I'm going more on content because it's a very well-done scholarly work. Essentially, the author analyzed over 100 years of food advertising in women's magazine and reports that depressingly little changed over that century. Apparently it was an entire century of food advertising aimed at reinforcing traditional gender role stereotypes - only women shop for and cook for their families. Well, the "good" ones, anyway. The author does include discussions of minorities and men as they were portrayed in ads, as well.

While not exactly an entertaining read, it was by no means a dry reguritation of facts. Rather it was an interesting in-depth analysis of a very specific section of the advertising industry. I would have given it five stars, but it did get a little repetitive. Also, I would have liked to have seen more of the ads themselves in the book.

[Courtney]

The organization of the work was a little bothersome. Every chapter starts at 1900 n goes up to the late 1990s, Parkin sorts her information by theme. Not much context but the ads are undeniably interesting. Some of them are frightening in how they managed to convince anyone to buy the product---OR YOUR HUSBAND WILL LEAVE YOU! OR YOUR BABY WILL DIE! OR YOU WON'T BE ATTRACTIVE! Gasp! Unfortunately the milder techniques are still used in contemporary advertising despite most Americans not living the experience the ad men are selling.

[Sara]

This book is a comprehensive look at food advertising during the late 19th century into the 21st. While a little repetitive at times, this work is well-detailed, using ad agency files and magazines/newspaper advertising to show the gender roles companies were trying to maintain. A must read for students of American history, gender/women's studies and mass communications.

[Kerry Murtagh Ramsay]

Interesting but nothing new.

It’s a nice, if somewhat disjointed review of the history of how women are portrayed in advertising but it never approaches the question of why? What is the correlation with sales? Does the tone of the add change with the political tenor of the country? Does print advertising differ from other types of advertising? There’s so much more to be explored.

[Caroline]

Though the author brings up interesting points about the history of food advertising, the book quickly becomes repetitive. I read this for a class.

[Michelle]

Despite being published in 2007, history seems to stop in the 90s. I would have liked to see Parkin go past the millennium, but everything prior was interesting, well nuanced, and thought provoking.

[Anita Smith]

Interesting, but nothing I didn't already know. Also very dense.