Shere Hite appeared in "Olivetti Girls" ads to help her pay college fees
while at Columbia University in 1971.
Now that Shere Hite, sex
educator and feminist and author of 1976’s The
Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, has passed away, it’s
time to bury the false story about the Olivetti typewriter advertisement which
allegedly propelled Hite toward the women’s movement.
The
story relates to Hite being one of the models who appeared in the “Olivetti Girls” series
of ads, which appeared in US newspapers from February 1972 and in magazines
such as LIFE and New York in March and April that year. The ads were part of Olivetti’s
drive to break into an office electric typewriter market dominated by IBM with the Olivetti Editor series and the Praxis 48.
(Ironically, Hite herself used an IBM.)
More
than 10 years later, in November-December 1982, a series of newspaper articles
about Hite claimed that the tagline in the 1972 Olivetti ads contained the
words, “The typewriter is so smart she [that is, the Olivetti Girl] doesn't
have to be.” This was simply untrue, as the ads said nothing of the sort. Yet
in obituaries which have appeared for Hite around the world this weekend, the
false claim has been repeated ad nauseam, unchecked and unsubstantiated. A few minutes’ research would have confirmed the truth. Surprisingly,
the supposed fact-checking New York Times
is among the many guilty parties.
What
the ads really said were words to the effect that the Olivetti Girl was someone
about whom “people [are] saying terribly nice things”, because she typed mistake-free copy as a
result of using a typewriter with a “brain” – a machine which could “actually
think for itself”. “She may be prettier
than other typists, but she’s not necessarily brainier.” She was “sharper,
looser, never uptight” and could have fun. The typewriter eliminated common
mistakes such as “flying caps”, improper spacing, “shading or ghosting” and “crowding
or piling”.
Now,
no matter which way one interprets these words, or thinks of them as seeming to
be condescending, they do NOT state that the typist did not have to be smart. Nor
is there any suggestion the models used in the ads are “leggy dumb blondes”, as
so many articles would have us believe. That is purely a personal interpretation, and not the stated view of the advertiser. The whole premise of Hite’s argument
for becoming a feminist fails. At best she has exaggerated what the Olivetti
ads said, or worst she lied. Just because Hite said the story was true doesn’t
make it true.
The
false story (some versions of which stray so far from the truth as to claim the
ads appeared in Playboy magazine), dates
back to at least 1977. In its May 9 issue of that year, German news magazine Der Spiegel said, “Just a few years ago,
Shere Hite from New York could be seen as a two-legged office machine in the
canyons of Manhattan. At that time, the young woman had to play the part
of a typist in a TV commercial: As ‘Olivetti Woman’ [sic] it was her job to ‘introduce
a typewriter that was so smart that the user could easily appear a bit stupid’.
The mimodrama
was the trigger for the sex world bestseller of the 70s and made the former
Columbia doctoral student a star guest on American talk shows. Because New
York feminists who protested the Olivetti commercial convinced Hite that their strip
was typical of the role played by many women in the United States - a silent
majority of sexual objects ‘whose feelings are suppressed and exploited’. Hite
began to be interested in the attitudes of her sex comrades on the subject of
sexuality and sent out the first questionnaires. Four years later (and $35,000
in debt) she submitted the Hite Report
- a work that summarises the statements of 3019 women on the subject of
sexuality and appeared on seller lists almost overnight.”
Hite
died from the rare neurological disorder corticobasal degeneration last
Wednesday in North London, England, aged 77. She was born Shirley Diana
Gregory in Saint Joseph, Missouri, on November 2, 1942.
7 comments:
Your extensive knowledge of the history of typewriter advertisements (and typewriters in general) never ceases to amaze me.
It's a shame that lesser reporters didn't check their facts. Well done.
That said, I can understand how Hite would misremember the exact words of the ad copy here, or would paraphrase it as she did. Some of these ads do come close to saying that the "girls" don't need brains because their typewriters have them—and finding the sexism here is like shooting fish in a barrel.
As the person above mentioned, there are phrases there that are very much “The typewriter is so smart she doesn't have to be,” just said with different words. Particularly this stands out: “Now, she may be prettier than other typists, but she's not necessarily any brainier. Then what makes an Olivetti girl such a phenomenal typist? Her brainy Olivetti Electric Typewriter, of course!”
But I also believe what’s missing from your analysis is what’s unwritten, too – the decades of history of sexism in the industry, the forced smiles of the women in the picture, the young age of all of them (indicating both objectification and the lack of upward mobility), five men invading the secretary’s personal space in the original advertisement, and the entire idea of validating the woman’s value in the workforce by her typing abilities and her typing abilities alone (“but can she type?”). If the exact words aren’t spoken, the ads are dripping with the *sentiment* – and their tone, one that can seem funny and cheeky to us, privileged white men, can be downright insulting to others. Given all this context it’s entirely possible to imagine the radicalizing effect the ads could have had on Shere Hite and other women (and, hopefully, some men).
I wonder how she interpreted other ads of the day as everything from cigarettes to cars to motorcycles, to all kinds of things featured young ladies to sell the products.
Even today many reporters do not do their research before publishing articles or books.
Thanks for this information, and the high res images. Reading the ad wording, it's entirely understandable how the strapline got paraphrased over time. It may as well have actually said what Hite and others have claimed. This doesn't excuse all those who should have checked when writing her obituaries. I was certainly fooled into thinking it was a direct quote (and repeating it) simply because it was in several newspapers! I assumed the ad in question had been somehow lost. Better late than never, as they say.
You're absolutely right. On one hand, perhaps it is commendable to point out fast and loose journalistic integrity. But on the other, this really smacks of "aKsHuLlY... tHe aD nEvEr sAiD tHaT!"
The inherent sexism of these ads is obvious. Even without that *specific* tagline, it's easy to envision Ms. Hite nonetheless being upset when she saw the words attached to her photo shoot. The rest of the story goes like this: there was a protest against the ad campaign, she showed up to join in, and was invited to the New York City chapter of NOW.
Again, calling out errors in pieces of journalism is fine. I hope this blogger (and I don't get that impression) doesn't mean to use this error to make the argument that the ad campaign was not sexist in itself.
I was the model who had that job with Olivetti before Shere Hite. The shot of the seated girl where you don’t see her left arm? That left arm is being placed on a round machine (I was proudly told it was from the circus and clowns used it to electrify their hair…scary and dangerous but we didn’t know that then) to make her hair electrify to show she’s afraid (of the machine.) The tagline was indeed exactly what Shere Hite said “this machine is so smart she doesn’t have to be” or something direct like that) because as a fledgling feminist, once I heard that tagline (from the proud writer standing off set) my hair never electrified again! My hair was more feminist than I was😂! I was fired (paid thankfully) and Shere, another model from my agency replaced me.)…
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