Naeem's Portrayal Of Women In The Early 1900s

Advertising Advertisements for the phonograph marketed them specifically towards women. They were shown as a “fine piece of furniture” and “promoted it exclusively for house-proud women,” (Naeem 468). Naeem says women of the early 1900s wanted to emulate what the phonograph advertisements showed. They piled their hair up hair and wore corsets to cinch their waists even tighter than they already were. The women portrayed in the advertisements were the ideal at the time, and often there were children and husbands, described as “the bearded patriarch” in the images (Naeem 468). Floral images started to be associated with the phonograph in the advertisements and design. Naeem describes the horn of the phonograph to be “flower-shaped,” (Naeem

While it did end up being used much more for music, it was also used for its original purpose. Women were beginning to make up more of the work force during the late 1900s, and while they were not in high positions, they still did make use of the phonograph in their work environments. They would use a phonograph along with a typewriter and would record their boss’s recordings using the two. Women were used in lower positions because they could be paid much less than men. They were also willing to do lower-level work, such as recording notes with a phonograph and typewriter. Naeem describes the dynamics between the two problematic, as women were still in a listening position while the men were the ones talking. She also cites a historian, Sharon Hartman Strom, when she describes how men were happy to employ women in lower positions. “Male business executives coopted an array of strategies to keep women in clerical positions, arguing, for example, that women could not grasp the late nineteenth-century systematic management system of Frederick W. Taylor because of its inherent “scientific” nature,” (Naeem 470). (Naeem

As mentioned in the previous section, young women began to move to cities to get jobs in the late 1800s. With them, came a “social dance craze,” (Kenney 101). When young women moved into the city, they began to socialize together. They gathered in dance halls and saloons, attracting the attention of the public. Now, the young women of the 1910s and 1920s are known as flappers, but at the time, they were thought to be rebellious. The rebellious teenagers and twenty-somethings of this era purchased large amounts of dance records. A trade journal cited in Kenney’s article said that “if it were not for the flapper, the Victor people might as well go out of business,” (Kenney 103). While young flappers, especially those who did not work, did not have the money to buy their own phonographs, they did have the money to buy records with pocket change. They brought their mothers to the store with them having convinced them to buy a family phonograph. Younger girls still living at home were influenced by the images of flappers in the movies and pulp magazines. When the phonograph became popular among younger, working women, cheaper models were made. Young women drove the market for these inexpensive and portable phonographs. (Kenney