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The “kept-woman mentality” is a term used by Leonard Lauder in a lunch meeting with Gloria Steinem to describe what Estée Lauder is selling (Steinem, 229). According to Lauder, his company does not market make-up, at least not as much as it promotes an image. Modern magazines and advertisers have created the Kept Woman as the aspiration of young girls. The Cosmo Girl, the archetypal Kept Woman, wears the latest fashions and uses beauty products and recipes promoted by advertisers. She is 18 to 34 years old. She is independent, sexually provocative, driven, and subversive to the role her mother played in her household. She is no longer expected to settle in marriage and become a housewife (or at least, not right away). In return for following the latest trends, using the advertised products, and becoming the identity created by fashion magazines, she believes she can attract a man who can raise her class status. Her ultimate goal is upward class mobility (Ouellette, 117).

A young girl is raised aspiring to become a Kept Woman; a young boy is raised believing the Kept Woman is ideal and appealing. The invention of the Kept Woman may have liberated women, but the hidden benefits belong to the men that created and are attracted to the image. The corporations promoting the Kept Woman are predominately headed by upper class white men. Hegemony exists to allow the dominant class to gain and retain power. New economic and sexual roles helped construct a new social identity for women, but the heads of the advertising industry would not create a new feminine image that only empowered women. The concealed consequence masked by the mainstream media is that women have become a commodity that can be bought, sold, and used to sell other commodities.

While a woman named Helen Gurley Brown is credited with popularizing the Cosmo Girl, it is important to note that men ran the publishing company that released her first book, Sex and the Single Girl. When Brown eventually became editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, she acted under close monitoring by William Randolph Hearst, the magazine’s affluent white male owner and publisher (Ouellette, 118). Men should in no way be given credit for Brown’s creativity or advice to women, but it should be questioned why the dominant class would allow such revolutionary material to enter the mainstream culture. The answer: men benefit from a cultural ideology that teaches that capitalistic consumption and sexual deviance bring women prosperity.

The male-dominated capitalist culture benefited by promoting women to become consumers. Women found independence in their new economic role, for they were finding new glorified pink-collar jobs, paying their own rent, and making fiscal budget decisions. But, this independent lifestyle was encouraged by the male-dominated media as a way to increase profit. Kept Women were convinced they needed certain material products to be “beautiful” and to attract a higher-class man. It is congruous that the class of men perceived as the best catch is the same class of men who profit with each sale of the material product. The women pursuing rich men are making the men richer in their pursuit. As the women spend more and more money to appeal to the higher class, they are also economically benefiting the corporations generally controlled by the higher-class men. The women use their new products to become more attractive to these men. They purchase items that make them appear more sexual and more tempting. They invest money to make their value as a commodity increase.

The modern man benefits from the Cosmo Girl’s acceptance of sexual deviance and pre-marital sexual relations. Cosmopolitan emphasized female sexuality with features on “female orgasm, birth control, masturbation, casual sex, and sexual experimentation” (Ouellette, 123). While women have become sexually liberated, men reap many of the sexual benefits. Prior to this sexual revolution, a typical relationship would not consummate in sexual activity until after the couple was married. Public ideology expected a man to commit to marriage to receive sexual pleasure. The new liberation lowered the cost. “The moral shame surrounding [sex was subverted] and the sexual code [was reframed] as an individual ethic and commodity exchange” (Ouellette, 124). Women now conveniently found power and liberty through sexual actions. The same material luxuries (gifts, dinners, vacations, etc.) that were used to court women for marriage were now able to entice sexual favors without long-term commitment. Women could now be bought at a much cheaper price.

In the February 2006 edition of Maxim magazine, an ad for Vermont Teddy Bear in the Buyers Edge, a labeled advertisement section, features no images of women, yet it uses sex to sell. The advertisement is created for men and appears in a men’s magazine that claims to be “the best thing to happen to men since women.” Instead of highlighting sexual images as other ads on the page do, Vermont Teddy Bear shows a picture of one of their bears with the bolded heading, “Give Bear/ Get Bare!” The ad insinuates that by giving the gift, you will receive sexual favors in return. By checking the website listed in the ad, the price for the pictured ‘15” Loverboy Bear’ was listed at $79.95, a relatively cheap price for sex when compared to having to marry the girl.

An extremely sexualized version of the Kept Woman is often used to sell all sorts of commodities. A young, typically white, 18 to 34 year old woman is featured in the majority of ads geared towards both men and women, advertising anything from alcohol, to hygiene products, to electronics, to television shows. The women are featured in very sexual and revealing poses. Fashion photography in particular use “blatantly sexual poses from pornographic publications that include sexual cues such as closed eyes, open mouth, legs spread to reveal the genital area, and nudity and semi-nudity” (Crane, 316). Some looked drugged and/or helpless. “Many ads feature girls and young women in very passive poses, limp, [and] doll-like” (Kilbourne, 264). The images project that women are “childish and cannot be taken seriously” (265). The only explanation why a grown woman needs a teddy bear is to comfort her. Since a woman is infantile, a nice teddy bear will reassure her. “She’ll love it!” exclaims the Vermont Teddy Bear advertisement from Maxim.

Sexualized images have become a staple in modern advertising of everyday commodities. “Sexuality provides a resource that can be used to get attention and communicate instantly” (Jhally, 253). In a market full of clutter, sexual images often and easily catch the audience’s attention. Sexual displays are so readily recognized that advertisers do not need to waste precious, expensive time or space to introduce the conventions to the viewer. Sexual clips are seen on television to promote all sorts of products including films, soft drinks, makeup, and, most notably, alcohol. The women in these sexualized ads are portrayed to come with these products, and they are advertised to both male and female viewers. Drink this diet soda and you can obtain the sensuous body of the model drinking in the commercial. Wear this makeup and you too can become an erotic cover girl. Drink this alcohol, and you will meet beautiful women that only otherwise exist in your fantasy world. A Family Guy episode titled “I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar!” from the show’s second season both critiques and recapitulates these stereotypes of women. The episode’s title is a play on the 1970’s anthem by Helen Reddy, “I am Woman (Hear Me Roar).” In the first scene of the episode following the opening credits, the Griffin family is sitting in their living room watching television. An advertisement is played that features two young very sexual women sunbathing near a pool. One of the girls is applying sun lotion to the other topless girl. The topless sunbather says, “Boy, that lotion sure feels good.” The girl applying the lotion says, “It sure is hot.” She proceeds to take her bikini top off while the first girl says “And it just got hotter. Here, now, let me do you.” She picks up the bottle of lotion and both girls giggle childishly. The camera then pans right to display a tray of three 40oz bottles of Pawtucket Patriot beer. An announcer is heard from off camera stating, “Pawtucket Patriot beer. If you buy it, hot women will have sex in your backyard.” The advertisement ends and the TV show’s featured family is shown in the living room. Lois grunts in disgust of the ad and says “Typical male fantasy; women drinking beer. I bet you a man made that commercial.” Peter then responds, “Of course a man made it. It’s a commercial, Lois, not a delicious thanksgiving dinner.”

The creator of the show, Seth MacFarlane, is appropriately critiquing the culture in which advertisements for nonsexual products are marketed using very sensual advertisements. He re-presents his view of these commercials by having an extremely sexualized commercial include two attractive young nude girls with lesbian tendencies. Lesbian encounters of two heterosexual women participating in sexually deviant activities are common among pornographic material and male fantasies. It is the inclusion of near-pornographic material, and not “women drinking beer,” that should cause discomfort from a viewer. MacFarlane also uses a slogan that would never be heard in a beer commercial but is often portrayed. His incredibly direct slogan is subtly implied in every sexualized beer advertisement, but it is never said that buying beer is buying women. Audiences find humor in this blunt mock advertisement, but comedy lacks in the real world that spends millions of dollars linking alcohol to sexual activity.

Peter’s final comment is not unlike many other insensitive one-liners that Peter gives throughout the series and particularly this episode. When agreeing that a man made the commercial, Peter could relate that male advertisers know what a man wants. Instead he not only recognizes that the advertising industry is generally dominated by the male gender, but men dominate most of the work world. Peter’s unenlightened view of the world still sees women as only housewives and homemakers. He views a woman’s place to be in the kitchen and he thinks its absurd that a woman can create something other than a meal.

While Peter’s perspective seems to recapitulate negative connotations against women, Family Guy should not be viewed as misogynistic. Peter’s character was created as a man with the most extreme lack of common decency and understanding of the world around him. He consistently makes dim-witted choices and says things that even a person of less-than-average intelligence would find obtuse. Later in this same episode Peter chooses to decline his dreamboat in exchange for a mystery prize exclaiming, “A boat’s a boat, but the mystery box could be anything. It could even be a boat. You know how much we’ve wanted one of those.”

Peter’s comments therefore must not be looked at as solely negative. Since Peter is so unintelligent, it must be made clear that the show’s creators believe that any member of the audience who agrees with Peter’s perspective must be as foolish as he is. This technique was often used by Mark Twain when referencing southerners’ views of African Americans in the 1800’s. On the surface, Mark Twain may appear as racist until you recognize that the characters recapitulating the stereotypes are considered extremely low class, unintelligent, and unworthy of respect. Therefore, the negative comments they make cannot be taken seriously. They re-present the world as Twain witnesses it, but not as he agrees to it. While Peter, the show’s main character, is worthy of certain attributes, astuteness and courtesy are far from his strengths. The writers assume that the audience is aware of this when creating Peter’s insensitive one-liners. Like Twain, who is referenced later in this episode, MacFarlane critiques the society by finding flaws in an audience who would find only humor in the situation. The audience who cannot realize that women should not be viewed as an unequal commodity is viewed negatively.

The Kept Woman image was marketed towards and accepted by the female community as means of liberation. Women “partipulated” in their own negotiation as the dominant class created a culture that women eagerly accepted without looking at the consequences. While they gained new economic and sexual roles that seemed to unshackle society’s restraints, women consented to and participated in their own manipulation. According to Lauder, the Kept Woman chooses to be kept (Steinem, 229). Women chose to become consumers who purchased items that benefited men. Through the focus of cosmetic products, men received the image they wanted from their women as well as a fiscal profit. Women allowed themselves to be objectified and sexualized. Under false pretenses, the media manipulated women to be bought and sold as a commodity in a society with an ideology that benefits the dominant male. While many feminists, such as Steinem, have produced their own media texts, the social control belongs to a male dominated media structure. “Hegemony fails when dominant ideology is weaker than social resistance” (Lull, 65). To counter the hegemonic tendencies, activists like Steinem must continue to educate society that a problem exists and that it can be solved. The solution, like the initial problem, requires consent for change to occur.

Works Cited Crane, Diana (1999). Gender and Hegemony in Fashion Magazines: Women’s Interpretations of Fashion Photographs. Jhally, Sut (1990). Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture. The World and I. Kilbourne, Jean (1999). “The More You Subtract, The More You Add”: Cutting Girls Down to Size. Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel. Lull, James (1995). Hegemony. Media, Communication, Culture: A Global Approach. Ouellette, Laurie (1999). Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams. Steinem, Gloria (1990). Sex, Lies and Advertising.

Maxim Magazine. Dennis Publishing, Inc. February 2006. Volume 10, Number 2. Family Guy. I am Peter, Hear Me Roar! Original Airdate: March 28, 2000. Season 2, Episode #15.