Living Up to the Ads: Gender Fictions of the 1920s (New Americanists) - Softcover

"Davis offers a new and provocative perspective on a cultural shift that, even in the 1920s, was marked as much by its subtle presence in fiction as it was by its heavy-handed presence in print media. This book will contribute a great deal to interdisciplinary studies of commodity culture."-Jennifer Scanlon, author of Inarticulate Longings: "The Ladies' Home Journal," Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture "A very stimulating book. Davis explores the complexity of the relations between advertising and personal identity, and between advertising and literature, with a lively, sharp, idiosyncratic style."-Rachel Bowlby, author of Shopping with Freud "A strikingly thoughtful study of a crucible period in American cultural and literary history. Bristling with intelligence, highly engaged, and critically informed, Living Up to the Ads investigates the shifting nature of selfhood as commodity capitalism and public relations converge on the subject."-Jennifer Wicke, author of Advertising Fictions: Literature, Advertisement, and Social Reading

In Living Up to the Ads Simone Weil Davis examines commodity culture's impact on popular notions of gender and identity during the 1920s. Arguing that the newly ascendant advertising industry introduced three new metaphors for personhood-the ad man, the female consumer, and the often female advertising model or spokesperson-Davis traces the emergence of the pervasive gendering of American consumerism. Materials from advertising firms-including memos, manuals, meeting minutes, and newsletters-are considered alongside the fiction of Sinclair Lewis, Nella Larsen, Bruce Barton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Zelda Fitzgerald. Davis engages such books as Babbitt, Quicksand, and Save Me the Waltz in original and imaginative ways, asking each to participate in her discussion of commodity culture, gender, and identity. To illuminate the subjective, day-to-day experiences of 1920s consumerism in the United States, Davis juxtaposes print ads and industry manuals with works of fiction. Capturing the maverick voices of some of the decade's most influential advertisers and writers, Davis reveals the lines that were drawn between truths and lies, seduction and selling, white and black, and men and women. Davis's methodology challenges disciplinary borders by employing historical, sociological, and literary practices to discuss the enduring links between commodity culture, gender, and identity construction. Living Up to the Ads will appeal to students and scholars of advertising, American studies, women's studies, cultural studies, and early-twentieth-century American history.