The contrast between normalized and licentious female behavior is not only recognizable in Springs’ print advertisements, but in his association with women both in his local community and of national fame. The most significant of these acquaintances was Gypsy Rose Lee, the notorious strip tease artist. Springs met Lee in 1951 after hearing that she was a train enthusiast and, as owner of the Lancaster and Chester Railway, Springs invited her to be “vice-president of unveiling” for Springs Cotton Mills.49 Lee’s first duty was to attend the opening of the
Springmaid Station of the Lancaster and Chester Railway in Lancaster, South Carolina on June 2nd, 1951, where she “undraped, not her famous self, but a new railway station.”50 At the
ceremony, Lee wore a dress made from Springs’ Persian print pattern, turning her into a walking
48For more on advertising strategies targeted towards female consumers in the middle of the twentieth century, see Janet L. Wolff, What Makes Women Buy; a Guide to Understanding and Influencing the New Woman of Today, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958) and Ernest Dichter, Handbook of Consumer Motivations: The Psychology of the World of Objects, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).
49 Davis, War Bird : The Life and Times of Elliott White Springs, 197.
50 G. Paul Browne, "Gypsy Rose Lee Is Star at Undraping," The Springs Bulletin (Fort Mill, South Carolina), August 9, 1951. Vol. 7., No. 25. (See Figure 5.1)
advertisement for the company.51 Springs and Lee remained friends throughout the 1950s, and
Lee even posed for some of his later advertisements (See Figure 4.2).
Lee’s profession, which openly exhibited her female sexuality for male entertainment, directly contrasts with the characteristics of normalized female behavior emphasized at the middle of the twentieth century. However, Springs also connected his brand with spectacles that reinforced these more conservative gender norms. From 1946 to 1951, Springs held an annual beauty pageant, where members from the community could vie for the opportunity to become Miss Springmaid herself.52 Often, the competitors for this title were women who worked in the
mills, further solidifying a connection between the Springmaid brand and the company’s surrounding community.
Both the strip tease and the beauty pageant are spectacles that emphasize the physical qualities of the female body and reinforce ideologies about femininity and female sexuality, albeit on opposite ends of the spectrum. In Undressed for Success, Brenda Foley differentiates between socially constructed ideas of female “normalcy” or “deviance” that result from forms of female displays and performances, specifically contrasting the strip tease with beauty pageants to show two distinct forms of female performativity.53 The connection with both beauty pageants
and strip teases mirrors the contradictory element contained in many of Springs’ print
advertisements: they exhibit qualities that both reinforce and defy ideologies surrounding proper feminine behavior at the middle of the twentieth century.
51 For more on Springs’ Persian print pattern, see chapter five of this thesis.
52Karen Derksen, Between the Springmaid Sheets: Provocative 1940s and 50s Advertising by Colonel Elliott White Springs, Edited by Linda Starrett, (Rock Hill, South Carolina: Winthrop University Galleries. 2012), 17.
53Brenda Foley, Undressed for Success : Beauty Contestants and Exotic Dancers as Merchants of Morality, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 9.
Another celebrity that Springs enlisted to help promote his campaign was the tennis professional Gussie Moran, who made headlines in 1949 for her scandalous outfit at the
Wimbledon Championship. For the tournament, Moran wore a short mini skirt designed by Ted Tinling, which revealed her knickers every so often as she competed.54 Springs’ 1951
advertisement “I Dreamt I Went Shopping Without My Slip” features Moran in a parody of the testimonial advertisement, which was meant to encourage a customer’s confidence in a product through the endorsement of a well-known individual (Figure 3.10). Springs’ title is a play on Maidenform’s “I Dream…” campaign, which ran contemporaneously to Springs’ campaign and featured shirtless women in a variety of public scenarios, exposing their Maidenform brassieres (Figure 3.11). In a letter to Joe Gish at Farmer’s Home Companion dated September 4th, 1950 ,
Springs describes an ad similar to those in Maidenform’s campaign, and that he was going to combine that approach with another advertisement from the magazine’s August 1950 edition in order to please the editor’s taste.55 According to Springs, the other advertisement showed “five
pictures of a girl doing a ballet leap without a slip, blouse, skirt, or pants but barely covered by a rubber girdle,” a description that is similar to Playtex’s “Invisible Playtex Pink-Ice”
advertisement (Figure 3.12). Playtex’s Pink-Ice advertisement also included testimonials from prominent female individuals.
Springs burlesques the approach of these two contemporaneous campaigns by combining Playtex’s testimonials with Maidenform’s slogan, and eroticizing the partial nudity from both
54Matt Schudel, "Tennis Star's Outfits Stunned Spectators," The Washington Post, Jan 19, 2013. Accessed April 8th, 2019. http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-
com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/docview/1270844719?accountid=14244.
55 It is important to note that Farmer’s Home Companion was not an actual magazine, just as Joe Gish was Springs’ go-to name for when he wanted to disguise an individual’s identity (See Footnote 32). My suggestion is that Springs is using the title Farmer’s Home Companion as a disguise for the popular magazine Women’s Home Companion, whom Springs’ often had trouble getting to post his advertisements. See Springs, Clothes Make the Man, (1959), 190-191.
advertisements. In the original context, the depiction of the women’s bras and undergarments would be more acceptable, as they simply referenced the product for sale for the female consumer. However, Springs’ product, Springmaid sheets, does not require the depiction and eroticization of the female form. Thus, Gussie Moran without her slip tells the reader little about Springmaid sheets, but rather testifies to Springs’ inclination to weave elements of popular culture into his campaign, especially ones eroticize the female body.
CHAPTER 3. “HOW TO MAKE AN EXTRA BUCK:” RACE AND ETHNICITY IN SPRINGS’ CAMPAIGN
As demonstrated in the previous chapter, sexuality was, and would remain, a central theme throughout Springs’ campaign. However, the advertisements would not depict social othering through the eroticization of the female body, but several of Springs’ other
advertisements demonstrated how non-White, non-Western cultures were eroticized and exoticized as a result of Orientalist ideologies. In 1978, Edward Said applied Foucault’s ideologies regarding power structures to Western and non-Western relations in his ground- breaking book Orientalism, which had reverberating effects throughout many academic fields. Said defines Orientalism as the “style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and the ‘Occident’” created to reinforce power structures in sites of European conquest.56 For Said, Orientalism is a part of a discourse created and
maintained in the West that positions non-Western cultures as inferior to the West. As a result of Orientalism, non-Western cultures became feminized, exoticized and eroticized. This chapter analyzes the advertisements from Springs’ campaign that demonstrate the process of
sociocultural othering of different races and ethnicities in American popular culture. Through a comparison of other advertisements and instances that reinforce these stereotypes, this chapter shows how Springs’ advertisements are reflective of a broader sociocultural phenomenon that objectifies the non-Western other through commercial marketing.