Regarding Betty...

No, she was never a real person, and in fact, her name preceded her face by about 15 years.  And in fact, the "Betty Crocker" who had been answering correspondence to the flour miller Washburn Crosby Co. (later known as General Mills) was a man.  But beginning in 1936, Betty was awarded full icon (and womanhood) status, beginning with the portrait you see above, an appearance that served her well for almost twenty years.  But fashion is a fickle thing, and along with Betty's numerous changes of clothing and hairstyles, the poor dear has actually had her features changed, to look younger, more contemporary, more Jackie Kennedy, more Mary Tyler Moore, more Ally Sheedy (depending on the era).  

I've never been particularly fond of the periodic updating, if only because, as Betty keeps getting younger and more stylish, she seems to get less and less credible as a baking icon.  Back when she looked like your grandma, or even your mom at age 50, Betty just naturally exuded baking authority; you took one look at her and you knew, this was a woman who spent more time in the kitchen than in any other room in the house; whose recipe box was stuffed with hand-written index cards and yellowed newspaper clippings; who made baked goods from scratch and maybe even milled the flour herself, too.

Somewhere along the way, baby boomers apparently wanted less of an authority figure (even one in an apron); maybe her pinched features made them feel guilty about the very short-cut they were purchasing).  Gradually, Betty became more of a peer, albeit a friend whose life was so "together," her effortless ability to juggle work and home life was a little annoying.  

I will say this in Betty 8.0's defense, though.  As I gazed upon on her melded features (reportedly a computer-morphed combination of 75 different women of all ages and ethnicities), what jumped out at me more than anything was a sense of that other multicultural everywoman kitchen icon, Rachel Ray.  Almost as if, back in 1996, the folks at General Mills could see her coming and got there first.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fly Me Again

Image
We referenced this ad campaign in an earlier post , but it really deserves its own entry. This memorable/notorious American Airlines campaign appeared back in 1971, at the behest of National Airlines'  Lewis Maytag  who sought to modernize the airline and the image of its stewardesses.  (Yes, they were still known as stewardesses back then.) At the time, airline advertising had frequently based their messages on the friendliness and attentiveness of their stewardesses, but previous efforts tended more toward the chauvinistic end of sexism spectrum, treating them more like Ladies Of The Air than ladies of the night: (Despite the caveman ethos of the headline and illustration, if you click on the ad to enlarge it and read the copy, you'll see it's actually about men being so beguiled by their stewardesses that they often took them for wives -- after first mistaking wives for servants, I suppose.) But now, with the sexual revolution and women's liberation in full swing (an...
Read more

"Beam...Jim Beam."

Image
A 1966 holiday ad for Jim Beam in anticipation of the upcoming James Bond film, "You Only Live Twice": Where to begin, where to begin? How about with the awkward pairing of couplets (Should I be buying a gift for Sean Connery? Did I draw him in the Secret Santa?).   It was, apparently, an ill-advised spinoff of a previous ad: That ad, at least has the virtue of simplicity and clarity of message.  But did it occur to anyone at Jim Beam that the adult beverage that James Bond is most associated with is the vodka martini?  In truth, according to t his web site , Bond does partake in whiskey more often in several books and some of the film versions, but it's Jack Daniels or Haig & Haig -- never Jim Beam.  Still, Jim Beam is fighting the tides of pop culture if they think Bond will ever be identified with any other drink.  Thanks to the conspicuousness of Smirnoff's vodka martini -- a relatively new, and thus, exotic, alternative to the gin martini -- in the first Bo...
Read more

Avis Analysis - part 5

Image
Concluding our look at the hits and misses during the seminal years of Avis' famous "We Try Harder" campaign. Throughout the initial "We Try Harder" campaign, Avis avoided any mention of who was #1 to their #2 status.  Everyone knew who #1 was, of course, and back then, it was almost unheard of for any company to name their competitors.  It may also have had something to do with knowing that, with its much larger ad budget, Hertz could squash Avis in any direct competition.   This ad, coming late in the campaign, was one of the more obvious, though still veiled, references to their larger rival: If you were watching TV back in the mid 1960s, you'd get the reference.  If not, here's a typical Hertz spot from that era.  Watch for the visual mnemonic at the end: "I feel all we have done is awakened a sleeping giant," Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto  is reputed to have said following the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Whether Hertz was sleepwalking th...
Read more