Book excerpt: The author focuses on the marketing perspective of the topic and illustrates how women's roles in society have shifted during the past century. Among the key issues explored is a peculiar dichotomy of American advertising that served as a conservative reflection of society and, at the same time, became an underlying force of progressive social change. The study shows how advertisers of housekeeping products perpetuated the Happy Homemaker stereytype while tobacco and cosmetics marketers dismantled women's stereotypes to create an entirely new type of consumer.