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• 1 media/CGEHairDryer_MagazineAd.jpg 2025-03-17T20:47:39-04:00 Magazine Advertisements 21 plain 2025-04-04T19:53:39-04:00

  Beyond television commercials, GE also commonly promoted their electric appliances in print magazines with advertisements that portrayed women using their hair dryers while performing various activities and household tasks.
  
  In one advertisement, a woman is depicted using her hair dryer while multitasking, showcasing six activities that could be done “while your hair dries”. With captions that read, “You can move around the room, do your sewing, or tend to baby while your hair dries,” and “Yes…even work! You’re free to move around and get dinner, do dishes,” this imagery and messaging reinforced the notion that beauty maintenance should never interfere with a woman’s domestic responsibilities; the time spent drying one’s hair should not be wasted sitting down and relaxing, but rather taken as an opportunity to stay productive, tending to her home and children.
  
  In another print advertisement, a woman is portrayed talking on the phone while drying her hair, seemingly promoting the product’s convenience and seamless integration into everyday life. A notable feature of this advertisement is that this product is showcased adjacent to other home appliances by General Electric including a toaster and an iron. When observing this detail in relation to other GE advertisements, such as the advertisement below for their earlier models of washers and ironers that feature illustrations of a woman using these household products, it can be assumed that this choice to advertise the beauty device alongside home appliances was an intentional and strategic effort to appeal to their long-time assumed audience of women and housewives, further reinforcing an association between domesticity and womanhood. 
  
  It is, however, important to note the significant differences in the portrayal of women in the above 1940s washers and ironers advertisement versus many of GE's hair dryer advertisements. In the earlier produced ad, the illustrated woman is depicted solely as a housewife with little to no emphasis on individual identity beyond her domestic responsibilities. Her face is only partially visible, focused solely on using the appliance. In contrast, the hair dryer advertisements shown from the 1960s presented its women subjects as more dynamic individuals and consumers who balanced beauty, work, and home life, reflecting a bold shift towards a more modern feminine identity.
  
  Moreover, despite this evolution in representation, the advertisements of this product continued to reinforce traditional gender expectations in more subtle ways. The marketing of the hair dryer not only promoted the product itself, but also perpetuated broader cultural narratives that equated femininity and gender identity with domestic labour and external beauty. The consistent portrayal of elegant, well-groomed women in these advertisements can be interpreted as subtly playing on women consumers' insecurities and perpetuating the societal expectations for women to conform to rigid beauty standards.