Just as an online photograph today might show an attractive woman beaming behind a bowl of salad, an advertisement in the 1940s or ‘50s may have depicted a pretty, apron-clad woman smiling alongside a packet of soap powder. The apron-wearing female is imbued with nostalgic memories from childhood, and associated with feminine domesticity and household management skills. However, in addition to the individual histories each garment tells, the apron has played a symbolic role in the evolution of women’s rights. 

The glamorous, frilled and ‘fun’ aprons often seen in mid-twentieth century advertisements and films represent both the objectification and subjugation of women as housewives and mothers. As author Joyce Cheney points out in her book Aprons: Icons of the American Home, aprons are not simply something we wear to prevent our clothes from getting dirty. For some, aprons represent the American Dream: “a world of apple pies and white picket fences,” (2000, p.10), whilst for others, aprons are complex symbols of status, occupation and oppression.  The idealized vision of the 1950s housewife in the modern kitchen of her ‘ideal home’ masks the immanent boredom of a life spent performing tedious and repetitive household chores. 

Femininity: The Aproned Wife and Mother

Nineteenth century ideology “established the housewife and mother as universal models of womanhood,” states Davis (1983, p.229).  By the 1920s, single women were able to pursue a career, but married women were encouraged to give up work and become homemakers – a role that was considered to be a calling in its own right. Many employers imposed a ‘marriage bar,’ forcing women to resign from their jobs upon marriage. It was generally believed that, “a married woman had no right to work as she had a husband to provide for her,” notes Turner (2003, p.54).

The importance of housework and appropriate dress for domestic tasks was perpetuated through books on conduct and the first ladies magazines, including, in Britain, Mrs. Beaton’sEnglishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, The Lady’s Companion, Queen Magazine and The Lady. In America, Catherine Beecher published her definitive treatise on Domestic Economy in 1841. Domestic staff employed by the upper classes wore aprons applicable to their station, whereas lower and middle class housewives wore them as an essential part of their everyday ‘uniform.’

After the Second World War, (when women were briefly allowed to contribute to the ‘war effort’), housewifery and motherhood were vigorously promoted through advertising and propaganda. “Prettily dressed mothers played with happy children in spotless houses while proud, pipe-smoking fathers looked on indulgently,” states Turner (2003, p.100). The fashions of the day emphasized women’s femininity. Dior’s New Look with its Victorian-style pinched-in waist and full skirts was a far cry from the masculine overalls and uniforms of wartime. Aprons were an essential part of a lady’s dress and, “a proud symbol of her status as housewife,” according to Cheney (2000, p.16). As noted by Johnson Bruton (2001, p.25), and explored further in Barbara Burman’s (1999) ‘The Culture of Sewing, ’ apron making was also an art form practiced in the home, and every young woman became proficient in needlework as part of her domestic role. It was assumed that girls would eventually get married, so there was less emphasis on education for ‘the fairer sex.’ When secondary education became compulsory in Britain in 1944, a fifth of the timetable at Secondary Modern schools was taken up with needlework and domestic science, including basic cooking skills, how to set a table, clean a house, polish, and to wash and iron different fabrics. It was here that girls were taught to make and embroider their first apron. Daughters were encouraged from an early age to help their mothers in the home.

Women’s clothing reflected the rigid social hierarchy of the time and there was an unquestioning respect for male authority within the family, as well as strict formalism in dress codes and etiquette. Johnson and Lloyd (2004) refer to an article in the Daily Telegraph instructing women ‘how to look glamorous in the home.’ Signs of dirty, taxing cleaning work, such as aprons, “should be removed as soon as possible” in case luncheon visitors arrived early, or a husband came home unexpectedly (2004, p.71). Anne Fogarty, writing in 1959, on The Art of Being a Well Dressed Wife, had the following advice: “Negligees, bathrobes and terry towels do not belong with food, pots and pans. The kitchen is your natural setting as a woman and you should look beautiful, not bedraggled, in it… take advantage of the opportunity the kitchen offers for expressing your wifely qualities in what you wear.” She suggests, “Pinafores, organdies, aprons,” and “gay cotton wrap-arounds,” adding that, “An apron wardrobe should range from frilly half-styles to an enormous butcher’s apron that makes you beguilingly small by contrast,” (2011, p.33). 

Domesticity: Women and Aprons in the Media

The late 1940s and early ‘50s were the heyday of the apron. During the baby boom years, mothers married young and had more children than their parents and grandparents. By the 1950s, the typical presentation of women in magazines, films and advertisements was as occupational housewives - almost exclusively white and middle-class, who were prepared to have their identities defined for them through their husbands’ lives and work. “The image of the ‘happy housewife,’ who whisked through her chores with a smile and a feather duster, was intended to persuade women that a life spent at home was rewarding,” notes Turner, (2003, p.107). 

The burgeoning entertainment, media and advertising industries saw women as, “a prime area for consumer exploitation” ( Crow, 1978, p.13).  Girls were introduced to images of aprons early in childhood. As Rubenstein points out, the mother figure in children’s picture books is often depicted wearing an apron (1995, p.84). In the cartoon, Tom and Jerry, the maid, Mamma Two Shoes, is only ever visible from her apron down. Philips says that magazines for women have focused on either “women as homemakers,” or, “women who can catch a man and become homemakers” (1978 p.117).  From 1932, US based Family Circle, was a font of family and consumer advice, praising “the good wife and mother,” reinforcing traditional norms and moral values, (1978, p.124). British titles like Woman’s Realm and Woman Magazine, were filled with advice, recipes and advertisements for labour-saving devices and cleaning products. They often came with hidden warnings of what might happen if housewives failed to do their job properly – for instance, lose their husbands, or have their children bullied. Aprons also featured prominently in mail order catalogues from the 1930s to the 1950s. The 1942-3 Fall/Winter Montgomery Ward catalogue (p.1062) shows a woman in a bibbed apron varnishing a wooden floor.

Televisions first appeared in shops in the 1950s, and popular sitcoms featured apron-clad leading ladies. In America, June Cleaver from Leave It To Beaver, (1957 to 1963), typically wore a string of pearls and an immaculate apron over her dress to do the cleaning. The show exemplified the ideal American suburban family of the mid-twentieth century, with middle class values of what constitutes a ‘happy marriage’ at its core. Advertising during sitcoms also promoted the nuclear family surrounded by new products, from gas ovens and washing machines to bathroom fixtures and fittings, that “would ensure” its happiness, notes Cheney (2000, p.19).  1940s and ‘50s films featuring strong women often portrayed them as leaving traditional values behind, according to Johnson and Lloyd (2004, p.110). 

Design: The Apron as Design Icon

Cheney describes the apron as “a source of memories” and “a social fabric” (2000, p.10). It is her view that aprons not only remind us of our mothers and grandmothers, but also of our own past. In particular they “serve as symbols of home, motherhood, and housewifery” (2000, p.11).  Women wore basic aprons for practical purposes, and more ‘fancy’ versions for occasions - such as serving afternoon tea, or dinner. Some were reserved exclusively for festive occasions, such as Christmas or Thanksgiving. The 1950s even saw the introduction of “cocktail aprons.”

Cloth was scarce after the war. In the United States, aprons made from recycled cotton and grain sacks were common. However, decorative aprons came into their own from the late 1940s through to the mid-1960s. Aprons not only enabled women to develop sewing skills, but also to demonstrate their creativity and unique style, points out Cheney (2000, p.19).  Aprons were made from all manner of materials, including muslin, percale, batiste, lawn, broadcloth, gingham, organdy, dotted Swiss, tulee, taffeta, recycled cotton bags, cotton towels, huck towelling, decorator cloth, shirting, polished cotton and flocked cloth, as listed by Florence (2001, p.11). Some of the more popular were half-aprons made from handkerchiefs, patchwork aprons, and styles with crocheted borders and pockets. Organdie, tulle, netting or other sheer fabrics were often used for dressy hostess aprons worn over full 1950s skirts, whereas the “Grandma Apron,” a loose fitting full-length cotton garment with apron backs and bib, was usually worn for serious housework. Embroidery kits were popular, the most common being used to make a gingham apron, decorated with cross-stitch, rickrack and/or smocking, with large pockets for carrying clothes pegs. Ruffles and hand-stitched flowers were de rigueur. Hawaiian themed prints were popular in America after the war, as were holiday aprons, depicting scenes from a recent travel destination. From the 1950s, novelty aprons, featuring suggestive slogans relating to food and the kitchen, were produced. Machine made and plasticized aprons became more common from the latter 1950s onwards.

Apron colours were often themed to match an outfit, or even kitchen décor. “Home may be your husband’s castle, but you are the royal homemaker… who keeps it in running order. The colours, fabrics and lines of your furnishings reflect your taste and outlook on life as much as your personal wardrobe,” according to Fogarty (2011, p.70). In the 1950s, primary colours were prominent, as were the combinations of chartreuse and pink, and pink and black. The 1951 Festival of Britain made extensive use of primary colours on products with “upbeat… buzzwords, such as ‘colourful,’ ‘light’ and ‘gay,’ (Ferry, 2011, p.25). The 1960s heralded a new range of shades, popularized in modern interiors and their fixtures and fittings, including avocado green, harvest gold, turquoise, dark brown, pink and burnt orange, discloses Cheney (2000, p.20). 

Drudgery: Aprons and the Modern Kitchen

After the Second World War, local authorities built new homes away from city centres. Middle class families, and some of the better-off working classes were able to move into new suburban houses, which had hot running water and indoor lavatories, and were much easier to clean. The kitchen was seen to be the most important room in the home. The suburb and the home were viewed as mini-utopias, “the material realization of ideal happiness,” according to De Beauvoir (1997, p.534). However, women who might in the past have benefited from having a maid to help with the cleaning, often found they had to make do on their own, recounts Turner (2003, p.72). The ‘servant problem,’ was a euphemism for the fact that only the upper and upper-middle classes could now afford to employ cleaning staff.

In some cases, women’s load was lightened with the help of new, labour-saving devices, such the vacuum cleaner, electric iron and washing machine. Such appliances were also partly responsible for a shortage of cleaning staff, as many of the poorly paid domestics had gone to work on production lines manufacturing the very devices that were replacing their jobs. Sugg Ryan (2006, p.17) describes how, during the inter-war period, the kitchen became “a major site of experimentation and modernization, ruled over by the idealized figure of the housewife.” Various publications and design bodies, such as the Design and Industries Association, encouraged scientific management and efficiency in both the workplace and the home. Modern appliances were valued not just for their labour-saving potential, but also for the image they projected: They could even “invest a boring and tiresome task with glamour, “ (2006, p.14). The Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition, “educated women with displays of ‘suburban modernity’ and helped establish a new commercial culture of homemaking” according to Sugg Ryan (2011, p.11). Well placed gadgets in an up-to-date kitchen gave the right impression, “while the wife played her part by appearing in the sort of ‘hostess dress’ recommended by magazines, often complete with full skirts for the glamorous Doris Day look.” To serve dinner, her “work-a-day apron was replaced by a flimsier, frilled version, the very impracticality of which belied the true amount of effort required in preparing the meal,” says Ferry (2011, p.58).

In reality, modern gadgets weren’t nearly as widespread as portrayed through advertising, and far from providing women with free time, they often increased the workload, for instance, owning a washing machine meant that dirty clothes and linen were no longer sent to a commercial laundry, establishes Sugg Ryan (2006, p.12). Few, in fact, were even wealthy enough to own a washing machine, or a refrigerator. Washing usually involved “carrying water which was heated in a copper boiler, mangling washing between rinses and elaborate starching and ironing” ( Zweiniger-Bargielowska, 2001, p.160).

Housework was excruciatingly time-consuming. There were no duvets, easy care fabrics, or spray polishes. Many started the day early by cleaning out a fire grate and lighting the fire. Other daily jobs included making the beds, washing, ironing, shopping, cleaning, and polishing floors and furniture. Women also baked their own cakes and pies, preserved fruit, made pickles, jams and marmalade. In the evening, there were clothes to be mended, socks to be darned and knitting to be done, according to Turner (2003, pp.108-9).  Sandbrook, (2006, p.650), points out that the work of the housewife was organized around an unchanging weekly routine, whereby most women spent at least seventy-five hours a week working in their homes. The life of “domestic bliss” was not as it appeared in advertisements. The medical profession coined the term “suburban neurosis” for the “lack of stimulation… loneliness and… pressure to have the perfect home” (Turner, 2003, p.73). As appliance-assisted drudgery gave way to boredom, the antidote was to take up a new interest, like knitting or dressmaking, to join the local Townswomen’s Guild, or to have another baby. 

Disempowerment: Slavery, Objectification and the Myth of Happiness

Engels, writing in his 1884 work, Origin of the Family, had described the modern individual family as being: “founded on the open or concealed slavery of the wife…” Johnson and Lloyd (2004, p.68) point out that the discourse on the ‘fun’ and ‘glamour’ of housework was an attempt to “render the physical and material aspects of housework invisible,” perpetuating a male-orientated and bourgeois understanding of economy and society. Rubinstein claims that the apron, “has always been associated with physical labour… It identifies people in service occupations who lack authority” (2004, p.68).

By the 1940s, doubt surrounding the subservience of the housewife was aired more vociferously. De Beauvoir’s mammoth critique, The Second Sex, encapsulated everything that was wrong with housewives’ lives: Housework was, “monotonous and mechanical… laden with waiting: waiting for the water to boil, for the roast to be cooked just right, for the laundry to dry; even if the tasks are well organized there are long moments of passivity and emptiness,” most of the time they “are accomplished in boredom,” (1997, pp.546-547). De Beauvoir saw the relentless repetition of housework as a form of sadomasochism, allowing the wife no room for individual affirmation. A woman’s chores were much the same as they had been centuries ago, when she would have been “mistress of the house,” but there was no longer any honour attached to the tasks, (1997, p.549.), she was simply a slave to her husband, confined to a life of drudgery.

Johnson and Lloyd divulge that many women in the 1950s manifested psychiatric problems, like depression and drug addiction (2004, p.8). The myth of the happy housewife was just that, a myth. By the 1960s, “liberal newspapers like the Observer and the Guardian regularly printed stories about desperate housewives” according to Sandbrook (2006, p.653), and ‘conduct’ books of a new (and less conforming than the traditional) variety were authored by the likes of Betty Friedan, and later Germaine Greer.  By the end of the 1960s almost every home had a vacuum cleaner, and many also had a washing machine, so stay-at-home wives became even more bored, according to Turner (2003, p.125). Friedan spoke of the “problem that has no name,” where suburban housewives struggled with the loneliness of their domestic entrapment amidst the, “voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication,” reminding them, “they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity, (1963, p.15). By the time Ann Oakley’s The Housewife, was published in 1974, she not only argued for the abolition of the housewife - as housework is diametrically opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization, and “lacks any motivating factor” - but for the demise of the family unit itself, as well as an end to gender roles, (1974, pp.222-223).

Aprons also objectified women, reinforcing hegemonic masculinity. Cheney draws attention to aprons’ sexual connotation, which “both calls attention and provides modesty and protective cover… much of apron language and lore has to do with sexuality, fertility, and marital relations and testifies to the significance of the apron’s position on the body” (2000, p.88). Some decorative aprons seem to advertise a women’s sexuality in the manner of a seductive accessory, the French Maid’s costume, for example. Joan Crawford’s apron-clad leading lady in the 1945 film, Mildred Pierce, is told, “…a gingham apron is the very greatest provocation ever invented by women for the torture of men… the very best legs are found in kitchens, not in drawing rooms.” 

So, is the apron the ultimate feminine design icon, or a symbol of domestic drudgery and oppression? Could any woman be satisfied with a life spent cleaning dishes, vacuuming the floor and looking after children? “Was housework an expression of social status, familial love, and moral purity, or was it just plain hard work?” asks Cheney (2000, p.19).

The idea of the housewife’s work as ‘slavery’ is in marked contrast to that of the proud homemaker in her ‘ideal home.’ Peter Biskind notes that in 1950s films, like Giant and Pillow Talk, female characters shaped the space of the home, thereby controlling a man’s environment: “Interior decoration becomes a metaphor for women’s power to make over man’s world, his values, in her image,” (1983, p.290). However, the apron also identified its wearer as someone shackled to the kitchen, confined to the role of cleaner, cook and washer-upper. The only aprons associated with real power were those worn by men stoking barbecue coals, or taking command, as in an advertisement in Australian Women’s Weekly, July 1947: “When husbands insist on washing up, you can be sure it’s a Pyrex Household.”

The apron started life as an object of modesty and equality: Adam and Eve, having eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge “knew that they were naked” so they, “sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons,” (Genesis Chapter 3, Verse 7). However, by the 1950s, the apron had become an accessory of dubious glamour - a Veblenian pastiche of the trophy wife, kept at home to glorify the bread-winning male of the household. It was not until the 1970s, and only gradually then, that married women - hitherto demeaned and disempowered - were eventually able to exert some control over their chosen careers. Housewives could finally untie their apron strings: An era heralding new freedoms and more liberal attitudes towards women had begun. 

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This essay first appeared at www.margueritedeponty.com