Modernizing the Manileña: Technologies of conspicuous consumption for the well-to-do woman,circa1880s–1930s

Abstract

AbstractFrom 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.