This paper compares magazine advertising of the 1920s and 1930s with magazine ads of the 1990s in the way each portrays contemporary views of race and gender in America. Advertising has always represented a mirror on society, sometimes reflecting the newest trends but more often showing the way that society sees itself at the time. During the 1920s, magazine advertising first became a major advertising tool, and its colorful pictures and even more colorful copy reflect the brash, loud confidence of a nation that had just won its first world war. The ads of the time reflect the growing independence women were experiencing, as they gained the right to vote and began to do in public what they had never before dared - smoking cigarettes, showing their legs, traveling on their own. The ads also reflect the continued subservience of blacks and other minorities; when they appeared at all, they were servants or cheerful cartoons, such as Aunt Jemima, holding a stack of pancakes. Ads appearing 70 years later reflect the dramatic social changes that have taken place, as the civil rights movement has at least made advertisers aware of a substantial part of the market that had once been invisible. Comparing the two eras shows how far America has come, as well as how little distance has actually been covered.
At the turn of the century, magazines were sedate publications, supported by subscription and newsstand sales and too dignified to solicit paid advertisers as a source of revenue. Indeed, advertising as a separate profession barely existed. Businesses seeking to expand beyond their abilities to reach customers through stores and traveling salesmen, relied on "three basic formats: handbills and circulars, outdoor signs . . . and (especially) newspapers" (Fox 28). A few magazines had begun to experiment with ads, but the high-brow magazines took pride in avoiding most paid advertising. With the advent of the new century, however,...