Hoover / Retronaut

[noluck-boston.livejournal.com]

Retronaut is running a bunch of ads about Giving her a Hoover for Christmas. See how that works out Gents.



Link
http://www.retronaut.com/2012/12/give-her-a-hoover-and-you-give-her-the-best/

Comments

[mellzie-1963.livejournal.com]

Surprising somebody with a new Hoover is probably not such a good idea. But may I just say--it is perfectly acceptable to give somebody a vacuum cleaner for a gift, if they ask for one.

Or any other appliance, really. If somebody truly wants that, why not make them happy?

[laurel-hardy.livejournal.com]

I submit that anyone is foolish enough to give a wife items intended for household maintenance, such as a Hoover, for a Christmas present might well have to resort to said Hoover for wifely companionship well into the New Year.

[mellzie-1963.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the psychology here isn't that back then, it went without saying that the wife was going to be doing this work--whether it was easy or hard, it was her role. With that understanding, the gift was not to say "get your bum to work doing my cleaning", it was to say "I care enough about you to want your unquestionable lot in life to at least be a little easier.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot wives felt quite offended, but personally? I would think that luxury gifts such as perfume or jewelry would be even more demeaning and objectifying.

Hard for me to say what the sensibilities of the time were...while my mom is the right age to have been the object here, she was no housewifely example. She was an anomaly back then--a married woman with children who always had a career, paycheck, and life of her own. (she was a master printer and a newspaper circulation manager when I was growing up.)

[laurel-hardy.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it all depends, but I would think your reasoning would hold up best for the early days of household industrialization. I'd be 'delighted' to get what we think of as a washing machine instead of supplying all power for the process manually, either turning the crank or beating clothes on a rock. They never had ads for women to get hubby a lawn mower for Christmas because that was just part of maintenance. You might get a guy some sort of tool for Christmas, but in that case it's understood that's appropriate when the guy actually likes working with his hands, not because the roof is leaking.

[caerfrli.livejournal.com]

A friend of my parents gave his wife a vacuum cleaner for Christmas back in the 1950s. Even I, a child, knew he was in trouble for that.

[mellzie-1963.livejournal.com]

Still gotta say--having spent more years than I care to remember wrestling with a vacuum that sucked in every way but the one that counted, I would have just about swooned with joy at a new vaccum under the tree, about 1992 or so.