She is a perfect homemaker. She never gains or loses weight and never ages. Her picture is on a thousand boxes of GM product in the supermarket and with a her famous red signature. But who is Betty Crocker really?

I first met Betty in my home economics class in high school where she taught me use to use Gold Medal flour for the rest of my life. When I married at end of the 50’s, my first book was a Betty Crocker Picture Cook-Book. During the next decade I would save all those coupons – those with red spoon – and when I saved the ample amount of them. I mailed away for my Betty Crocker’s Cookie Book which I still treasure today. I understand there many printings, mine was from the sixties. I never found another cookie recipe book quite this interesting.

Betty’s unrelenting influence had spread over three quarters of a century. She is the ageless icon for General Mills. Although Dorian Gray, the ageless model from the Oscar Wilde novel, stays young while his portrait ages, our picture of Betty seems to stay the same age but her face continues to change. From 1936 to 1986, seven different women were selected to represent this immortal General Mills homemaker.

Betty’s popularity has outlasted Martha Stewart’s without the vulnerability of greed, success and stock manipulating. Our Betty has none of those trappings to tarnish her lily white perfection. She is the ideal “Stepford Wife”. She is the missing housewife on Wisteria Lane. She is the image of good organization and impeccable domesticity. However: She lacks the experience of facing 5 o’clock traffic or a sick child with a 103 fever. She has a purely stress-free existence and has no idea how difficult it is to buy groceries on a budget.

So I say to you again, who is Betty Crocker, really?

Perhaps we should go back to 1921 and a bewildered staff at the General Mills. They were receiving many letters from customers seeking baking advice. Deciding if they put an actual name on these letters would appear more personal. But what and who?

They took the last name of retiring executive Crocker and decided Betty would make an ideal first name. Next they ran a contest among the female employee to find the perfect signature. For the next 75 years, this same signature has been the name
placed on General Mills products.

In 1924, The Betty Crocker School on the Air went on the radio, some 13 different actresses gave Betty her voice. Eventually it went nation wide and would go on for another 24 years. During the war years Betty Crocker and Eleanor Roosevelt were the two most famous women in the world. Being on the radio was enough proof for America to believe in her existence.

In 1936, General Mills gave our Betty a face, somewhat matronly and serious looking. It was drew on the features of several women to give her a universal appearance. This portrait led many women to believe our Betty was a real woman. Over
the next seventy years, Betty’s face changed seven times. After the second face appeared I think the ruse was probably discovered. Despite Betty’s changing appearance, as long as there is a General Mills, we are likely to see that red spoon and that unmistakable signature. Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus, but there has never been a living Betty Crocker.