Reform women used the emergence of visual culture in film, newspapers, and popular amusements to make a particular appeal to working-class audiences. Suffragists in particular, developed a campaign that presented suffrage as approachable and moderate. The movement presented itself, not as a revolution of traditional gender relations, but rather as the way to preserve the gender balance in a distinctly modern world. Additionally, suffragists needed a campaign that played on the need for working-class Americans to act as consumers. The middle-class reformers required the sheer number of supporters both male and female that the working-class offered. Suffragists needed a model that would not threaten men, whose votes they needed, or women, whose support they desired.

            As suffragists became prominent in the mainstream media, they became more personable. Suffragists were no longer man-hating, child-abandoning spinsters, but rather youthful, energetic women with beauty and wit. Suffragists were in the public mind because of their keen ability to navigate mass media. They produced their own newspapers, films, postcards, and public demonstrations to keep society thinking about their cause.