Myth, as Barthes asserts, is not constructed to deny things, but on the contrary, its function is “to talk about them” albeit in ways that turn reality inside out (1972, 142). Such concepts as the “sunny South,” and “southern hospitality” indeed talk about the South, but only by reorganizing the South into a nostalgic site of myth expunged of its troubling history. In the late-nineteenth century, as industrialization and urbanization became established across the northern states of the U. S, and the rise of mass consumerism and mass culture led to cultural anxieties about encroaching modernity, many Americans felt an antipathy towards the modern world and longed for a return to the pastoral ideal (Cox 2011, 1). While this seemed elusive in the context of rapid progress and development in the North, the dream of a simple life still seemed possible in the South (Cox 2011, 3). A renewed discourse about the South, one that “talked” about the South in a way that employed the “moonlight and magnolias” image, thus emerged as a sentimental pining for the past. Consequently, this backward-looking pastoralism was exploited within the rising marketplace of consumer goods, with advertisers linking their products – everything from Aunt Jemima's pancake flour to Avon fragrances inspired by the femininity of the southern belle – to idyllic images of the antebellum South (2011, 4; 54). As Karen Cox says, these icons of southern nostalgia,