Betty Crocker, Gender Roles and More

When Betty Crocker's cake mix came out in the 1920s, it was an insult to home makers. Domestic workers did not see the cake mix as a relief from the intensive labor and time commitment but a challenge to their gender role. Domestic workers were able to channel their work ethic through cake baking and rigorous cooking but now the element of hard work is taken out of cake.

In connecting cake to american capitalism, the transition from traditional cake baking to manufactured cakes represent the deskilling of domestic workers. The way industrialization and capitalism deskill workers by forcing them to do monotonous tasks under wage slavery, capitalism reached home life and deskilled homemakers. Cake baking used to take talent, time, effort and commitment for these women, but now that there is an easy route, skills are meant to disappear. american capitalism strikes again by popularizing cake - out - of - a - box and undermining the art of cake baking.