Betty Crocker, the original chatbot
Turns out, she never existed outside our collective imagination.
In 1921, Samuel Gale was overwhelmed by the mail. Gale, a manager at a flour mill called the Washburn-Crosby Company, was dealing with the aftermath of an advertisement that ran in the Saturday Evening Post. In exchange for mailing in a completed puzzle, readers could receive a pincushion shaped like a bag of Gold Medal Flour.
The contest was simple enough, but Gale discovered that the 30,000 completed puzzles readers mailed in were a bit more complicated. Readers didn’t simply drop their puzzles in envelopes; instead, they wrote letters, often asking questions Gale and his male staff couldn’t answer. These readers wanted to level up their baking skills, and they needed help.
Instead of hiring a woman, which would have made too much sense, Gale did the next best thing: He asked women on Gold Medal’s Home Service team for their advice, and then invented a fictional woman who could reply to consumers.
That woman was Betty Crocker, and she was basically the original chatbot.
Of course, a true chatbot uses AI to automate responses, and a team of real people always wrote Betty’s carefully crafted responses. But like today’s chatbots — Microsoft’s problematic Tay and Zo, Casper’s spooky Insomnobot 3000, even Clippy — that labor was disguised behind the fictional, personified front of a character.
As you can see in the portraits above, Betty’s image shifted over time, channeling Jackie Kennedy, posh styles, or the look of a suburban homemaker. The 1920s featured a hodgepodge of portraits by different artists, until the company eventually commissioned an official portrait by Neysa McMein in 1936. McMein drew inspiration from the same Home Service department women who’d been answering consumers’ questions for all those years. In 1996, John Stuart Ingle attempted to create a racially ambiguous, olive-hued Betty (though the portraits all look pretty white to me).
If Betty had remained a pen pal to America’s home cooks, her fictional status might have made sense. After all, no single person could handle the volume of mail that reached Betty’s inbox. There were simply too many questions about pancakes and frosting and cooking from scratch.
But Betty quickly transcended letters and print advertisements to appear in live media. In 1924, Betty joined the wartime efforts to rally American spirits, teaching listeners of the Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air to stretch rations and prepare meatless meals. The radio show first aired on Minneapolis’ WCCO radio station, eventually appearing nationwide. In 1950, the Betty Crocker Cookbook hit shelves, eventually selling more than 60 million copies. A year later, actress Adelaide Hawley embodied Betty on TV. Fortune magazine proclaimed Betty the most popular woman in America, second only to Eleanor Roosevelt.
Despite, or maybe because of Betty’s success, I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if Gale had made a different decision all those years ago. What if Florence Lindeberg, the employee who crafted Betty’s signature, had been allowed to take the spotlight? Or home economist Marjorie Child Husted, who voiced Betty on the radio and wrote all the scripts? Or any of the women in the Home Service department?
Plus, it goes without saying that there’s no reason a fictional character has to be coded as straight and white. Betty’s appearance has shifted before, and perhaps it’s time for change once again.
There was never a shortage of talented women who were prepared to teach the world how to cook and bake. There was simply a lack of the right kind of imagination.
Something else
I’ve never recommended a YouTube channel here, but the day has finally come. I’m a big fan of my friend Jeff’s channel, Empathetic Wanderers. On it, Jeff answers all kinds of questions you might have about traveling (especially in Asia).
You’ll learn super helpful phrases in Chinese and Japanese, figure out how to navigate Airbnbs and restaurants, and pick up tips for things to do that would otherwise fly under the radar. You can even follow along on Jeff’s travels, like his recent hike through South Korea’s Seoraksan National Park. Most of the videos are pretty quick (10-15 minutes), but you’ll learn a lot.
And for fun, here’s us looking kinda dirty and tired in Tokyo :)
One more thing
A new episode of Primetime is out now! In case you missed last week’s newsletter, I contributed a bunch of research to a new podcast over on Vox. Last week’s episode was about the unsettling real-world impact of 24. You can listen online, or subscribe wherever you normally get your podcasts.