Iconic Messages: Wonder Woman vs. Betty Crocker

Well behaved women rarely make history – at least in the broader sense. The women who rocked the boat, stood out, and spoke up – a few of them got mention. Women like Maya Angelou – poet, educator, and historian. Marie Curie – Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry- and Suan B Anthony – civil rights leader. She said

“It was we, the people,not we the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizen, but we, the whole people, who formed the Union...Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.”

It was these types of women that speak to us, and demand us to think hard about how we think about ourselves and what we do in society...It was at the beginings of WW2 – in an era when women had begun leaving their traditional roles in the home – to support the War effort in factories – that a new hero hit the covers of All Star Comics. Wonder Woman created by William Martson was armed with bulletproof bracelets, magic lasso and Amazonian training. She was beautiful, intelligent, strong, yet still possessed a soft side. Marston said, “Wonder Woman is psychological propoganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world. Although Glorian Steinem placed Wonder Woman on the first standalone cover of Ms. In 1973. Marston writing in an earlier time, designed Wonder Woman to represent a particular form of female empowerment. Feminism argues that women are equal to men,and should be treated as such. Marston's representative of femininity is a 6-foot-tall Amazon wileding a golden lasso that forces adversaries to tell the truth. In Marston's mind, women not only held the potential to be as good as men, they could be superior to men.
Now compare this messenger of the early forties to Betty Crocker. Betty Corcker, an invented persona and mascot, is a brand name and trademark of American food company General Mills. In 1924, Betty Crocker acquired a voice with the radio debut of the nation’s first cooking show, which featured thirteen different actresses working from radio stations across the country. Later it became a national broadcast, The Betty Crocker School of the Air, which ran for twenty-four years.Finally, in 1936 Betty Crocker got a face. Artist Neysa McMein brought together all the women in the company’s Home Service Department and “blended their features into an official likeness.” The widely circulated portrait reinforced the popular belief that Betty Crocker was a real woman. One public opinion poll rated her as the second most famous woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt.

Over the last seventy-five years, her face has changed seven times: she became younger in 1955; she became a “professional” woman in 1980; and in 1996 she became multicultural, acquiring a slightly darker and more “ethnic” look.
It is interesting to think of these iconic and heroic figures and the messages they send. Is it okay for a woman to be strong and powerful, as long as she can do it in high heels, balance a family life, and make a mean apple pie? What sort of messages do Teen Magazine and Young Ms. send? Makeup, tiny waists, and the right clothes seem to be at least the unwritten message in the ads. I hope that going forward our iconic images can evolve with the times, when women are viewed as equal and powerful in their own right. I would like to see more images like Dora the Explorer even, she is brave and kind, she goes on adventures and uses her mind. That is the sort of message I'd like my sons to receive about girls, not overmade perfect prosperity ads.