Connecting Tea Promotion Patterns and the Tea Room Contradiction

The first half of the 20th century contained tea advertisements and promotions that aligned to each of the decade’s histories, but still kept a trend of shaping the way women and gender roles were viewed by the United States. During the 20th century, nearly one-fifth of advertisements were attempting to sell food and drinks to consumers. Magazine advertising was one of the most popular forms of advertising and by the 1920s, nearly half of all magazine advertisements were a full page or larger (Pollay 28). With such a large market of advertising being presented to the public, there is no doubt that this promotional material was influencing the way that women think and feel about themselves, as well as how men treat women. Parkin argues that advertisers often try to sell more than just their product since most of the products on the market are almost identically the same. Katherine Parkin mentions the research from Pierre Martineau, who discusses advertisers creating a situation that is illogical for the product to accomplish, but will make the consumer fall in love and want to buy it. This is done through food advertising by convincing women to fulfill their role as a homemaker (Parkin 5). It does not matter if you look at a tea advertisement from the 1900s or the 1950s; there is still something that the woman is guaranteed to have by purchasing the tea. The top reason to purchase tea shifted from beauty for the homemaker herself to pleasing her husband and family through the means of iced tea. 

While advertisers tended to focus on tea being a domestic beverage for women, there were some parts of America that began to use tea as a way to fight against traditional gender roles. Tea rooms were part-home, part-business spaces during the 1920s and encouraged American women to work in the business world. Middle-class women would often work in tea rooms designed to look like domestic spaces in order to be more accepted by the society around them (Brandimarte 1). These tea rooms often were spaces that could develop into taverns and inns and made it more acceptable for women to go out, shop, and be seen in public (Brandimarte 3). They were a great alternative for people who wanted to be a businesswoman without the negative stigmas attached to it and it helped to provide a safe haven for other women (Brandimarte 8). The tea room movement heavily contrasts with tea advertisers' promotion of traditional gender roles, where it does not encourage the woman to work and instead wants them to continue to be the beautiful image of a homemaker. Yet, these advertisements still remained successful in selling their products or the image of tea, as companies like Lipton are still popular today and iced tea is still a common beverage for all genders. Advertisers have a way of manipulating consumers that makes consumers feel the pressure to buy it, or else their lives will fall apart. For women, that means the exchange of sexist ideals in order to make their families content and to fit the image that they are pushed to be in: happy wife, happy life.