This article explores the historical context for a 1933 brochure advertising contraceptives. Using historical research, Michel Foucault’s theory of “subjugated knowledges,” and Roland Barthes’s method for semiological analysis, the article looks at both public discourse about contraception and the discreet, coded one often used by women. Analysis of the 1933 brochure illustrates a clumsy attempt to create a female consumer in a way that addresses public discourse and intuits the existence of private discourse as well. That consumer, the author argues, is with us today.
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