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Modernizing the Manileña: Technologies of conspicuous consumption for the well-to-do woman, circa 1880s–1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

RAQUEL A. G. REYES*
Affiliation:
Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG; and the Royal Netherlands Institute for the Study of Southeast Asia and the Caribbean (KITLV), Reuvensplaats 2, 2311 BE Leiden. Email: rr14@soas.ac.uk

Abstract

From the late nineteenth century onwards, a new range of European and American technologies, powered by electricity and gas, and intended for use on the body and in the home—especially appliances for the domestic kitchen—began to appear in Manila. Electro-mechanical vibratory devices and steam-powered massagers for the body; hair waving and curling machines; and a multitude of technologies for the domestic kitchen, from stoves and water heaters to a gamut of electric and gas gadgetry that included percolators, boilers, electric waffle-irons, grills, and refrigerators (or ice-boxes, their precursor) were targeted largely at the affluent female consumer with promises to improve her physical appearance and health or make her daily life more comfortable. Their introduction and impact in the Philippines can tell a number of compelling stories—the desirability of European or American bourgeois culture, how the trappings of Western lifestyles were imagined, the extent to which the use and purchase of certain technologies aimed at replicating or emulating those lifestyles, or, as this paper explores, the gendered technological infrastructure of the ‘good life’. In this story, modern technologies designed for domestic settings and for use on women's bodies made manifest a myriad of desires and aspirations—prestige, status, cosmopolitanism, modernity, and urbanity. They also articulated a particular sensuousness and pleasure. Electro-vibratory devices, hair styling machines, and kitchen appliances could be experienced by all the senses and thus exerted a visceral appeal; their use proclaimed an enthusiasm for modern technology which, for the first time, emphasized the relevance of modern technology to women's everyday lives by the transformative effects they promised.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 Scholarship on the histories of advertising and global consumer culture is vast. See for instance Appadurai, Arjun, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Brewer, John and Porter, Roy (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar.

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3 This phrase emerged during the many stimulating discussions at the ‘Everyday Technology in Monsoon Asia, 1880–1960’ conference held on 19–20 March 2010, convened by David Arnold at the University of Warwick, and for which this paper was written. For their provocative comments, I thank David Arnold, Erich DeWald, Jean Gelman Taylor, Tim Harper, Suzanne Moon, and Sarah Teasley. An early version of this paper was written while I was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) where I benefited from conversations with Elizabeth Pilliod and Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann. Research for this paper was undertaken in Madrid's newspaper archive, La Hemeroteca Municipal. I am grateful to Maria Isabel García Rubio, archivist at La Hemeroteca, for her help in locating material. I greatly appreciated the company and support of Peter Boomgaard and Florentino Rodao in Madrid; and thank also the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW).

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37 Advertisement for ‘Establecimiento Terápico Funcional’, El Comercio, 28 February 1889.

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40 See advertisements for ‘Terápico Funcional’, El Comercio, 22 February 1889; 11 March 1889; and 18 March 1889.

41 Reyes, Love, Passion and Patriotism, p. 233.

42 Saturnina Hidalgo to José Rizal, Manila, 2 June 1890, in Letters between Rizal and Family Members.

43 Paciano Rizal to José Rizal, Calamba, 27 May 1890, Ibid.

44 The phenomenon of the ‘modern girl’ has been closely examined in different cultures, with the exception of Southeast Asia, by Alys Weinbaum, Eve et al. (eds), The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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55 Advertisements for ‘The Cameron Electro-Matonette and the Electro-Maton Razor, American Chamber of Commerce Journal, November 1931, p. 26.

56 Report of the Military Governor of the Philippine Islands on Civil Affairs, 1900 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1900), pp. 296–300.

57 The Far Eastern Review, December 1906, pp. 217–18.

58 Doeppers, ‘Lighting a Fire’, p. 434.

59 Advertisement for ‘Back to the Oil Lamp’, Manila Electric Railroad and Light Company, American Chamber of Commerce Journal, February 1927, p. 1; advertisement for ‘Light your Home with Electricity’, The Westinghouse Home Light Plant, American Chamber of Commerce Journal, March 1929, p. 20.

60 American Chamber of Commerce Journal, August 1925, p. 31; December 1926, p. 21; and March 1929, p. 20.

61 Ice was difficult to obtain and therefore a luxury. The sale of mechanical refrigerators was a particular problem in the Philippines. For a background on ice consumption and the American trade in ice overseas, see the excellent Freidberg, Susanne, Fresh: A Perishable History (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

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64 ‘US Advertising Shows Big Growth’, American Chamber of Commerce Journal, January 1921, p. 50.

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78 F. H. Herier, ‘Proved Advertising Methods in the Philippine Islands’, American Chamber of Commerce Journal, September 1921, p. 14.

79 Ibid.

80 Doeppers, ‘Lighting a Fire’, p. 434.

81 Celia Mariano Pomeroy, ‘Autobiographical Notes’, unpublished manuscript, circa 2003. Thanks are due to Jim Richardson for providing me with this source.

82 Sta. Maria, Governor-General's Kitchen, p. 274.

83 ‘Mayon Stoves for Domestic Science Instruction’, American Chamber of Commerce Journal, July 1930, and advertisement in Sta. Maria, Governor-General's Kitchen, p. 40.

84 The oven became known as the ‘Orosa Palayok Oven’. See del Rosario, Helen Orosa, Maria Y. Orosa: Her Life and Work (Manila: R. P. Garcia Publishing, 1970), p. 190Google Scholar. On addressing the problem of beriberi in monsoon Asia, see David Arnold, ‘Tropical Governance: Managing Health in Monsoon Asia, 1908–1938’, Asia Research Institute Working Paper, series no. 116, <http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/docs/wps/wps09_116.pdf>, [accessed 11 October 2011].

85 Ibid.

86 My thinking here is indebted to Cook, Harold J., Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 1416CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, personal conversation with Harold J. Cook, 26 August 2011.