Student Exhibits

Zest-Fully Clean
Jennifer Graff

Soap is a product that every American has been acculturated to use. People in this society have a phobia of dirtiness and a high standard for cleanliness. Beginning in the late 19th century, manufactures began industrial productions of body soap. Since women were responsible for approximately 80-85% of all consumer purchases, they were considered to be the soap industry's prime target. Advertisements were created which expressed strong emotions about social, marital, and maternal failure and presented their soap product as a solution to "the problem." Marketing schemes such as these constructed a social dilemma with their product as a means to an end.

Specific marketing developed into sustained gender stereotypes. In order to increase consumption of their product, manufactures decided gendered products would be beneficial to their sales. The result of this can be seen in any supermarket, magazine ad, or television commercial. Women are supposed to require sweet or flowery fragranced soaps, while men desire powerful or masculine scents. Men want bold and enduring while women want soft and gentile. Even the shape of the container can be robust or slender to associate with a specific sex. When products are manufactured with gender in mind, they reinforce our already prevalent gender biases. These marketing strategies create an unintentional need for masculine or feminine products.

Emerging technologies do not have to be made for an individual gender, but they are. Soap manufactures have created a problem to which cleanliness is the only answer. This technology embodies gender ideology which continues our already prevalent prejudices. Having stereotypes built in, soap created an unnecessarily gendered artifact to which every American has been exposed.

Recommended Readings:

Herzing, Rebecca (2003). “Situated Technologies: Meanings.” Gender and Technology. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 72-97.

Leonard, Eileen (2003). Women, Technology, and the Myth of Progress.
Lerman, Nina E., Oldenziel, Ruth, & Mohun, Arwen (2003). Gender and Technology: A Reader.