Hoover Junior vacuum cleaner, model 119

Hoover Junior vacuum cleaner, model 119, serial no. KG 139170, made by Hoover Limited 1949-1957.

The first upright handheld vacuum cleaner was designed by the Hoover Company in Ohio, USA. They built a British factory in London in the early 1930s, producing devices aimed at richer households who were short of domestic staff in the early twentieth century. Indeed, the high costs of early domestic vacuums meant that many married women, who were expected to complete most of the domestic duties within the home, still cleaned their floors with brushes and dustpans. In the 1950s, the company shifted to produce less expensive products alongside a new marketing campaign promising women ‘you’ll be happier with a Hoover’. The Junior 119 model was released in 1949 and produced until 1957. It was the first vacuum cleaner to have a Veriflex flexible plastic hose, which made it retain suction for much longer, and was designed as a smaller model to be more easily carried around the home.

Hoovers like the Junior 119 became a symbol of the 1950s housewife, with new technology making housework more efficient, yet also representing the limited societal expectations for married women of the era. This symbolism is playfully referenced in the music video for Queen's 'I Want to Break Free'. Released in 1984, the video parodies the popular British soap opera Coronation Street. Frontman Freddie Mercury appears in full drag, dressed in a black wig, sleeveless pink top, black leather miniskirt and high heels. His persona, inspired by Coronation Street's barmaid Bet Lynch, manoeuvres a Hoover Junior 119 while winking into the camera. This could be seen as Queen's attempt to highlight the social constraints still facing women, thirty years after the Junior 119 was made. Freddie Mercury's ambiguous sexuality gives the video another layer of meaning, with LGBTQ+ individuals identifying with the song's themes of liberation and self-expression.