El regreso de los espectros

the earliest known print forms. Images of pretty women as ornate accesso-ries have long enhanced magazine advertisements and posters to sell

prod-3. PERSPECTIVES OF THE EROTIC 41

ucts. In the 1850s, for instance, admakers used the heads of beautiful women, and after the Civil War the heads acquired bodies. Strangely enough, circus ads featured women clothed in tights that could be quite re-vealing, whereas patent medicine ads often emphasized low-cut bodices, a common practice during the reign of Napoleon (1804–1821). But in the 1880s, the fashionable shirtwaist took cloth right up to the chin, and floor-sweeping skirts covered everything but the tips of the shoes. “At last the advertisers had a target of titillation: a peek at the forbidden,” notes Charles Goodrum (Goodrum & Dalrymple, 1990, p. 71).

Until World War I, the artist’s wind gust could lift the hemline as high as the ankle, and readers could be brought to a full stop (Goodrum & Dalrym-ple, 1990, p. 71). Because the concealed is so exciting, the long skirts also provided an almost endless game of trying to glimpse at naked delights. Al-though the outer clothes reached to the ground, the hems could in some way be rumpled, or caught up, or lifted by a gust of wind, in the dance, or in a spill. In any event, the influence of burlesque then, and its discovery of calves and other carefully exposed parts of women’s bodies, is not to be un-derestimated in its effect on a fairly puritanical culture. As a result, the ex-ploitation of the female figure steadily increased, showing “spicy”

illustrations of legs, tights, and lingerie.

During the 1890s, the new ability to print high-quality illustrations fur-ther popularized “pretty girl” pictures as a new generation of magazines appeared as advertising vehicles. Their styles ranged from the Ladies’ Home Journal to the reformist McClure’s Magazine and the impassioned Munsey’s.

Although they varied in content, these magazines had one thing in com-mon: They depended on a new class of subscribers, the middle-class read-ers who were ready to buy consumer goods advertised in an appropriate fashion. Yet it was the women’s service magazines known as the Seven Sis-ters—The Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens, McCall’s, Woman’s Day, Redbook, and Family Circle—that reigned over the women’s market with articles on recipes, child-rearing, health, and home decoration, all aimed at married women with children. In this way, these new magazines created new opportunities for national advertisers.

In addition to new mass communication vehicles, the increase in sex in advertising was due in part to better methods of reproducing illustrations and to more numerous drawings and paintings available for commercial purposes. Admakers reproduced original oil paintings, delicate oil-and-water drawings, and sketches. The ads sought to combine style, de-sign, and tone to create “picture magic” (Miller, 1982). Placement of the all-important product name and identifying symbols, trademarks, and slo-gans also became an important part of the advertisement.

Another result of the new lifelike advertising was the expanded use of the printing medium to achieve convincing real images. Pictures of

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lesque actresses, dancers, and singers, dressed in tights or short pants or low-cut dresses, appeared on playing cards, postcards, cigarette cards, plug tobacco cards, calendars, magazines, and outdoor signs. Thus, the use of alluring women in advertising evolved as a concept from many different sources. Whether from prints, magazines, or other printed ephemera, the earliest “pretty girls” images were almost all tied to sex in advertising, pro-moting commercial products, stories, and professions. Unlike the pinup, the presentation of the body was not only for the visual delectation of the onlooker, but functioned in his or her own world to sell a product, service, or an idea. Be she on a poster on the wall of a bachelor’s apartment, on a girlie calendar in a barbershop displaying the sponsor’s name, or on the magazine pages read by a married adult bored with domestic humdrum, the pretty girl pictures allowed the reader to escape into a private and grati-fying world through vicarious eroticism, promiscuity, or other lifestyles.

But the essential erotic appeal, characteristic of modern advertising, did not suddenly appear. Rather, it slowly evolved from a subtle approach to more explicit presentations as psychological theorists began to develop new per-spectives on the underlying drives that established emotional ties with con-sumers and contributed to buying actions.

Academic psychology first became involved in advertising at the begin-ning of the 20th century. As early as 1908, Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) pub-lished his famous book, The Psychology of Advertising in Theory and in Practice. This book, which contained almost 300 pages, was respectfully dedicated to “That increasing number of AMERICAN BUSINESSMEN who successfully apply science where predecessors were confined to cus-toms” (Scott, 1908). After stressing the benefits of experimental research, Scott discussed a broad spectrum of psychological topics such as percep-tion, attenpercep-tion, memory, volipercep-tion, emopercep-tion, suggespercep-tion, and habits to assess the efficiency of advertisements to induce a sale. Thus, Scott challenged admakers to associate the advertised product with emotive suggestions to make an impression:

How many advertisers describe a piano so vividly that the reader can hear it?

How many food products are so described that the reader can taste the food?

How many advertisements describe a perfume so that the reader can smell it?

How many describe an undergarment so the reader can feel the pleasant con-tact with his body? (quoted in Presbrey, 1929, p. 442–443)

Still, the idea of studying people’s wants and buying behavior was just beginning to take root.

A successful ad works because it creates a connection between the prod-uct being advertised and some need or desire that the audience perceives.

These links, called appeals, generally fit into one of two categories: (a) logical

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or rational, and (b) emotional. The underlying content of logical or rational appeals focuses on the consumer’s practical, functional, or utilitarian need for the product or service. In contrast, emotional appeals base the selling ar-gument on emphasizing the satisfaction that comes from purchasing the product and then owning it or making a gift of it. An extremely strong emo-tive appeal tells the consumer: “This is the product that will meet your needs or fulfill your desires.” Although fundamental to advertising today, these concepts seemed novel and revolutionary in the early 20th century, especially the idea that the skillful use of emotional appeals could move products faster than any other approach.

At this point Helen J. Lansdowne Resor, a copywriter for J. Walter Thompson, added the essential emotional appeal to the logical or rational sales argument when her celebrated ad for Woodbury’s Facial Soap first ap-peared in 1911 (see Fig. 3.2). Moreover, the landmark campaign tapped into a basic human interest: sex. The ad featured a painting of an attractive cou-ple in an embrace and the provocative headline “A skin you love to touch.”

This line embodied a strong emotional appeal to women’s desire to be beautiful and charming, to have a smooth, clear, attractive skin. The ad copy featured a skin-care regimen and closed with an offer for a week’s sup-ply of soap, plus the art from the advertisement. Later ads in the series ap-peared with different illustrations but kept the same headline with its muted sexuality. The advertising initially appeared exclusively in the im-portant women’s magazines with large national circulation, such as The La-dies’ Home Journal, to reach a female, middle-class audience (J. Walter Thompson advertising collection, 1926; see also JWT collection, no date).

Certainly, the women’s viewpoint was apparent in the choice of media and copy appeals for the Woodbury’s campaign. What the Woodbury ad campaign undertook was to educate women about the nature and working of their skin, the cause of common skin problems, and the way in which these defects could be overcome by the right cleansing method with the ad-vertised product. But the words and visuals of the advertisement also em-braced women’s hopes, fears, desires, and dreams regardless of what they did in their daily lives. “I added the feminine point of view,” explained Helen Lansdowne Resor. “I watched the advertising to see that the idea, the wording, and the illustrating were effective for women” (quoted in Fox, 1983, p. 81). Thus, the campaign transformed an unpleasantly stinging soap into a wildly popular beauty aid by dramatizing the product itself, describ-ing it with so much feeldescrib-ing that it seemed attractive and desirable (Peiss, 1999, p. 122). In the next 5 years, sales of the Woodbury line skyrocketed, from $515,000 in 1915 to $2.58 million in 1920 (“The Story of Woodbury’s Facial Soap,” 1930). Indeed, sex could sell a lot of soap.

Previous ads had exploited sex and pretty women, but none with the ef-fectiveness and persistence of the Woodbury’s campaign. What made this

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campaign so successful? Edith Lewis, a Thompson agency copywriter, later explained that where a product faced great resistance, or where it had strong competition, the admaker sometimes draws on outside sources in order to reinforce the emotional quality. That is, one “has to invent a situa-tion or create an interest outside the product itself or its uses, in order to

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FIG. 3.2. Woodbury’s Facial Soap ad, first appearing in 1911.

awaken an emotional response.” In the case of the Woodbury campaign, Resor powerfully brought before the reader’s imagination not only the so-cial disadvantages of a bad complexion, but also the admaker presented the social incentives for a good one—you, too, could find romance or secure a personal relationship by using the advertised product. Nevertheless, the omnipresence of sex in selling had not reached the point where admakers were selling sex to get the reader’s attention. Although the Woodbury’s campaign used sex in the copy, it was barely hinted at in the artwork.