Desperate and Designer Housewives
The story of Betty Draper and the ideal of the American housewife is an interesting one. After the war ended, men went back to work. Because women were no longer needed in the factories, they had no where else to go but home. With the generation of the baby boomers and a new type of consumerism, the idea of the American Housewife was created (by men, of course) (Stern 2012). Throughout the first episodes, Betty is depicted as a "suburban Grace Kelly doll with a warm plate in the oven for her workday husband" (Stern p. 130). For Don, Betty completes his facade of the picture perfect family.
The book, Lucky Strike, suggests the idea of Betty as the image of the suburban consumer. The book mentions that in the first season, the image of the housewife as suburban consumer sells itself though Betty's bodily relationship to her appliances (p. 133). Throughout the season, we see Betty constantly using or repairing her appliances, which can allude to Betty trying to maintain her image as housewife. In one scene, we even see Betty quite literally get pleasure from her washing machine, as she positions herself against it and well, pleasures herself with the machines vibrations. The struggle of Betty finding pleasure in her life all while maintaining the image as housewife is put into perspective as we watch her during this moment.
As displayed in the picture above, and in some other photos featured in the gallery, we consistently see Betty positioned within the kitchen and other interiors of the Draper household. In the picture above, Betty is sitting at the kitchen table with no kids or husband in sight, with a look of frustration on her face. All while she looks very put together. Her hair is curled perfectly, and there's not a wrinkle to be seen in her attire. It's all for appearances. Here we have a very visual representation of how Betty is trapped within her own reality that was created for her. This also plays on the idea that even in her downtime, the housewife is participating in a type of labor. She's making sure she looks great, and everything around her looks great. This also maintains the appearance of happy family life and the household as a site os consumption (Stern 2012 p.135). Everything a housewife does is work, and she can't even relax completely because she constantly has to make sure that the image of a perfect family life is well-maintained for the sake of her husband and others.
To elaborate further on the idea of the housewife herself being an act of labor, we take a look at the different types of dress worn by them during this time. The type of dress worn by most house wives were "New Look" fashion dresses by Dior. As seen in the photo below, they highlighted the female form with a structured bodice, fitted waistline and a voluminous skirt (Goodlad 2013 p.167).
The point of this new type of dress was so that women could dress to please their husbands. Men could now look at their wives than more than just a woman, they could now look at her as an object whose attire was now a status symbol (Goodly 2012). The dress was used to construct an artificial, manufactured woman who had an exaggerated form that conformed to the preferred appearance of a woman during the 40s and 50s. With her curled hair, high heels, and pearl necklace, this type of fashion symbolized a return to normative gender roles (Goodlad p. 167). Interestingly enough, although Betty looked the part of housewife, she didn't always act the part. Because she had a nanny to help take care of the children and cook, she really had no functional value as much as she was arm candy for Don. Therefore, Betty's purpose for Don was to be used to show her off. There were multiple episodes where, in fact, Don tells Betty that he wants her to go with him to meet with a client or some other important person so he can do exactly that. This is also referred to as "wife dressing" which is the idea that a woman should be dressing in a way that pleases her husband and that helps him at his career (p. 168).
Another interesting thing to add about the housewife is how, especially in Betty's case, they like to gossip. When the new girl moved down the street from the Draper house, Helen Bishop, Betty and all of her "housewife friends" all stayed up one night talking about her. Helen is interesting, because she comes into Betty's seemingly perfect life, and makes it crumble. Helen is a divorced mom of two who works full time to support her family. To Betty and the other housewives, this is unusual. To further explain, Stern says that, "Betty and the women's judgement of Helen provides a way to discuss not just the expectation for housewives at the time, but the for how women who did not conform were subject to discrimination and exclusion" (2012). With Helen Bishop gradually getting emerged into the life of the Drapers, Betty becomes more and more uneasy because Helen is seen as almost a threat to their life, not because of her association with the family, but because she's not a cookie-cutter housewife, which is all Betty really knows. The picture below is a great example. In the image, Helen is wearing pants which is not something a housewife would rarely ever do, especially if she were going to an event. In this case, the Bishop's were attending a birthday party for one of the Draper children. Helen is welcoming herself into the environment of the Draper's picture-perfect family, so Betty's usual familiarity with her situation is now threatened, and the relationship between the two becomes tense.
With all these different examples, it is easy to say that Betty Draper is the "poster child" for all housewives in the United Staes in the sixties. She's a former model, actually meeting Don when she was at a modeling gig, and she's married to an ad man who knows how to make things look good for a camera. With Don as the ad man, and Betty as the model, the Draper family does indeed literally sell the idea of the perfect family portrait of the sixties. Because Betty to not even having to necessarily raise her kids alone because she has a nanny, she has minimal functional value, making her easy arm candy for Don to show off to all of his Madison avenue bigwigs. With Betty at his side, he has perfected this manufactured image that helps bring credibility to his own manufactured image as Don Draper.
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