Branded Women in U.S. Television : When People Become Corporations

This book examines product placement and brand integration in U.S. television. Using examples from 1950s television sponsorship to The Real Housewives, Bjelskou illustrates how the commercialization of TV programing affects both formats and narratives and how these genres are in conversation with contemporary political and social environments.

Branded Women in U.S. Television examines how The Real Housewives of New York City, Martha Stewart, and other female entrepreneurs create branded televised versions of the iconic U.S. housewife. Using their television presence to establish and promote their own product lines, including jewelry, cookware, clothing, and skincare, they become the primary physical representations of these brands. While their businesses are serious and seriously lucrative, especially reality television enables a certain representational flexibility that allows participants to create campy and sometimes tongue-in-cheek personas. Peter Bjelskou explores their innovative branding strategies, specifically the complex relationships between their entrepreneurial endeavors and their physical bodies, attires, tastes, and personal histories. Generally these branded women speak volumes about their contemporaneous political environments, and this book illustrates how they, and many other women in U.S. television history, are indicative of larger societal trends and structures.