Abstract

“Reinventing the Body Politic: Women, Consumer Culture, and Civic Identity from Suffrage to the New Deal” argues that social feminists of the 1920s found in consumer culture a means through which to create a model of female political participation that was consistent both with their own ideals and pervasive images of modern womanhood accepted by most Americans. By adopting the images, and methods of consumer culture in their rhetoric, women’s political organizations attempted to wrap a new political identity for women in the familiar trappings of consumer culture. In so doing, they solidified the transformation of twentieth-century political culture from its roots in local political party machines to a modern form in which national public relations professionals and issue-based lobbies dominated.

My dissertation unites social feminism and consumer culture through the notion of the consumerist compromise. Striking an intermediate path using the tenets of consumer culture, social feminists argued that modern consumer conveniences granted women the free time to pursue interests outside the home, that women’s status as consumers made them vital to the national economy, and that the complexities of modern industrial life blurred the lines between domestic and public spheres making politics increasingly significant to the quality of women’s lives. Social feminist organizations accepted this image of modern American womanhood as a public relations strategy designed to increase female voter participation and, in turn, their leverage as lobbyists. The consumerist compromise helped social feminists’ usher in a modern American liberalism consistent with their progressive social reform agenda and in which they served as experts in labor relations, industrial health and safety, and child welfare. Their success during the New Deal was the culmination of these efforts and reflected both their lasting impact on American politics and the limits of their political power.