Designing Homes that Made Life Better (and Worse) for Women

The history of American home architecture and interior design—as the history of many fields—is a domain that was initially dominated by men. As such, the design of homes was largely to men’s specifications, with men’s interests in mind. Women’s entry into the field initially emerged, as one might expect, through influence and suggestion before they were involved in actual home design.

Ruth Schwartz Cowan (1983) wrote a wonderful book, More Work for Mother, tracing the historical origins of Hochschild’s “second shift.” Cowan argued that the changes in the home with the advent of industrialization had the somewhat counterintuitive effect of creating more work for the household at precisely the same time as less people were understood as responsible for the work. The household was, as Cowan famously put it, “incompletely industrialized,” leaving more work for women. So, new appliances, like refrigerators and stoves brought with them more things to clean, and standards of cleanliness began to reach new heights.

In the U.S., it was women who were at the forefront of technological innovation in the home at the turn of the 20^th century. When domestic technology entered the American home, it entered–as Rybcyznski said–“through the kitchen door.” When women did begin designing homes, the homes they designed were decidedly different from those designed by men. The “masculine” interest in the architecture of the home at the time was primarily visual. Though the 20^th century brought with it a new appreciation for functionality and utility, men’s designs were concerned primarily with the beauty and aesthetics of the home (see Andrew J. Downing for example). Even some of the European designers who were more concerned with comfort (like Robert Kerr) were less concerned with convenience, considering it the business of servants and women once the house was already constructed. Men’s architectural books were written to men, but some of the early American women who wrote books on architectural design wrote their books to women. Women, they argued, were the primary “users” of the home, and as such, ought to play a leading role in its construction and design.

“What Sort of Man Reads Playboy?” Ads

Playboy’s peak year of circulation was 1972. In fact, the best-selling issues was November 1972, selling over 7,000,000 copies. The New Yorker reported than roughly 25% of college men were purchasing the magazine monthly. The 70’s started out so well for Playboy that Heffner decided to become the first gentlemen’s magazine to be printed in Braille. There’s been a great deal written about the magazine, the empire that it started, and whether and how that empire is in decline today. Founded in 1953, like all magazine Heffner needed to collect advertising revenue to stay afloat. Unlike other magazine of the time, however, Heffner needed to prove two things to would-be advertisers: (1) a critical mass of men is purchasing the magazine, and (2) they were looking at more than just the pictures in the magazine. As you might imagine, Playboy struggled with the latter more than the former.

To combat this issue, Playboy ran a series of advertisements in the 60’s that I came across in my research on bachelor pads. You might be familiar with them. These are the “What sort of man reads Playboy?” ads. Formally, these advertisements were ads for advertisers (a dizzying thought). But they also played a role in normalizing the use of pornography by framing its use as commonplace, public, and undertaken by white, wealthy, successful men. Looking back on these ads now, it seems likely that the ads said more about how Heffner and Playboy saw themselves than it did about the readership.

The Bachelor Pad: Myths and Reality

There is not actually a great deal of literature on “man caves,” “man dens,” and the like–save for some anthropological and archeological work using the term a bit differently.  There is, however, a substantial body of literature dealing with bachelor pads.  The “bachelor pad” is a term that emerged in the 1960s.  It was a style of masculinizing domestic spaces heavily influenced by “gentlemen’s” magazines like Esquire and Playboy.  Originally referred to as “bachelor apartments,” “bachelor pad” was coined in an article in the Chicago Tribune, and by 1964 it appeared in The New York Times and Playboy as well.

It’s somewhat ironic that the “bachelor pad” came into the American cultural consciousness at a time when the median age at first marriage was at a historic low (20.3 for women and 22.8 for men).  So, the term came into usage at a time when heterosexual marriage was in vogue.  Why then?  Another ironic twist is that while the term has only become more popular since it was introduced, “bachelorette pad” never took off–despite the interesting finding that women live alone in larger numbers than do men.  I think these two paradoxes substantiate a fundamental truth about the bachelor pad–it has always been more myth than reality (see here, here, here, here, and here).

Gender Segregation By Victorian Design

Homes have always illustrated a great deal about those who inhabit them.  And changes in architectural design reflect much more than simply new techniques and styles.  They also reflect changing relationships between groups of people.  Victorian architecture is famous for a number of things, but one of my favorites is the notion that rooms really ought to only have one purpose.*  One of my favorite ways that this is illustrated is by highlighting the lack of a bedside table in most bedrooms in the 1800s in England.  Reading (or anything else for that matter) was an activity that was best undertaken in a separate (and more appropriate) room of its own.

To accomplish this, larger houses had an extraordinary number of rooms.  Smaller houses were forced to shift furniture around depending on what was going on that particular day.  While one of the premises of modern architectural design involves breaking down walls and opening up space, the Victorians were much more concerned with erecting walls and closing spaces off.  There are all sorts of remnants of this time still present in homes today – though they are often put to separate use.  For instance, parlors are still present in many homes.  They’re typically small rooms near the front of the house where household guests would have congregated, and within which Victorian forms of courtship took place (see Bailey on courtship here).  But few of us use these spaces as they were originally intended.  They feel impractical by today’s standards.

Progress?

I think many people understand American society as on a steady march toward the end of gender inequality.  We might call this the “narrative of progress.”  Within the boundaries of this narrative is the ability to recognize that women are still subject to various disadvantages, but (and here’s the important part of this narrative) things are better now than they used to be.

This particular form of collective nostalgia might be seen as empowering as it could potentially help us continue to push gender boundaries in new arenas.  However, it also has more sinister consequences.  This narrative only acknowledges forward progress and fails to examine the ways that “progress” is often accompanied by new forms of inequality.  I’ll briefly discuss the narrative in relation to heterosexual families.

This narratives occurs in many ways, but three of the most pernicious ways are: (1) it’s not going to happen all at once, but we’ve always been moving in the right direction; (2) lots of heterosexual couples have achieved equality; and (3) even if men and women are responsible for different things around the house, what’s the big deal?