Statement on the Perky Housewife Series - This ongoing series is meant to reflect the absurdity of post-WWII advertising, and its insidious effect on American culture. Advertisers' goal during the 50s and early 60s was to glorify the role of homemaker, and to make her feel as if she had every luxury as she opened her cans and combined her ready-made mixes. The manipulative nature of food manufacturers' pamphlets and cookbooks was certainly not lost on the homemakers of the times, but two generations later, we are left with the Stepford-like images of blissed out housewives holding the abominable creations of advertising teams. A stressed out homemaker of today may ask, if only in her mind, "what did she have that I don't have?" Valium, perhaps?
