Soft Soap, Hard Sell: American Hygiene in an Age of Advertisement

by Vincent Vinikas

Advertising was the mechanism responsible for Americans' sudden embrace of new standards of hygiene and grooming. By tracking the influence of advertising on changing habits of everyday life, Vincent Vinikas also traces the emergence of advertising as an agency of socialization in modern America. In Soft Soap, Hard Sell, Vinikas shows how advertising functions as a social institution, telling people who they are and how they fit in. He does this by how advertisers like Lambert Pharmacal created new consumer needs, convincing the public overnight to gargle with a product that previously had been used only to disinfect homes and hospitals; how a barrage of advertising for cosmetics led to a new look for women as Americans grappled with the emancipation of the New Woman of the 1920s; how managing consumer demand through public relations resulted in the birth of the modern beauty parlor; how soap manufacturers united to form the Cleanliness Institute to teach Americans the importance of using soap lavishly; and how popular magazines became the vehicle of both national advertising and national culture in the early twentieth century.
Soft Soap, Hard Sell is for the reader interested in the history of social trends and American popular culture. It is a valuable supplementary study for courses in American social and business history, women's studies, and modern mass culture.

168 pages, Hardcover

First published January 30, 1992

Reviews

[Phoebe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fuck yeah this book is an awesome account of the advertising industry's big secret: you don't really NEED any of the shit they're selling. Word.