Jezebel
Today's Daily Mail runs excerpts from a new book, You Mean A Woman Can Open It?: The Woman's Place In The Classic Age Of Advertising which features those oldies but goodies we're oh-so fond of. It's hard to imagine a world in which advertisers actually got away with this stuff: A car ad with a ditzy-looking broad claims an automobile is "for simple driving"; a coffee ad features a wife about to be spanked by her husband for "taking chances on getting flat, stale coffee." And, most disturbing of all, a postage meter ad from 1953 has the headline "Is it always illegal to KILL a woman?" (The copy reads "Husband furious because you've missed the post? The Pitney-Bowes Postage Meter prints the stamp and seals the envelope all in one go.") (These ads may seem outrageous, but have you seen the billboard a concrete company ran recently?)
The following questions come to mind when looking at these ads: Did men really think this way? Did these ads work, meaning did the men and women they were meant for actually buy the message, and the product? Did women viewing these ads feel the sting of embarrassment and anger they prompt from us now? Have we come very far at all, considering the strippers, airheads and disembodied skirts we've got today?
The Outrageously Politically Incorrect Adverts From The Time Equality Forgot [Daily Mail]
Related: Killing Your Wife is the Best Gift You Can Give Yourself This Holiday Season [Shakesville]
Earlier: Aussie Chicken: Finger Strippin' Good
In Australia, The Perfect Woman Is Cold-Hearted & Knows How To Clean
Speechless.
Comments
Holy clenched teeth! I give them 2 years before she shoves his face right into that mixer blade.
The Husband does everything but cause orgasms. Thats what vibrators are for.
Did women viewing these ads feel the sting of embarrassment and anger they prompt from us now?
Nope. Sadly there's tons of women I know that would laugh at this. They're just trying to be funny, y'all!
I can take a little Kenwood sexism, because after all; I'm a woman, not a wife, but oh, fuck me; that concrete ad. In modern times!! I wanna know, when can WE erect billboards threatening the life of misogynist capitalist pigs. And have it be taken as a joke?
Just a tip, ladies. Don't read the comments on the linked article. They made my head hurt.
I dunno.. perhaps for those of you 'older and wiser' (I feel bad for saying that, like I'm putting you down and giving you a compliment all at the same time)- this might have been the general thinking. However, I've grown up in the Feminist age where women don't take no shit from nobody. So all of these ads feel a little bit rude and uncouth to me, but to my father? Maybe not so much.
Misogyny, thy name is advertising.
it's the comments on the daily mail page that piss me off. bunch of assholes agreeing wholeheartedly.
"You mean a woman can open it?".
What, your skull?
It all just reminds me of the joke -- How many men does it take to change a lightbulb in the kitchen?
@HannahBethD: All I could see were three from people named Nat, John and Peter; 'nuff said.
@RosemaryF: How many?
@katastic: ha ha!
Oh my GOD that concrete ad! GRRRR.
Ahem, idea:
Image of Gun set against Holiday Backdrop.
"Husband Likes Holes?"
Now, look, sometimes a spanking is a good thing. But, I digress. Those ads make me feel a little man-hatey.
This brings me back to my earliest moments of identifying solidly as a feminist. There have been a few monumental moments. The first was when I was about 9 and my grandfather asked my younger brother to play bacci with him, and, when I said I wanted to he said, in a sad voice "You're a girl, sweetie"; the second was in church (shock me shock me) when I was about 11 and there was some bullshit "men protect women, women submit to men" sermon (I actually never went to church again, fortunately, mom was supportive of this); and the third was in a high school psych class and the teacher played a montage of ads from the 1950s-80s that were degrading to women. I would LOVE this book.
@SinisterRouge: heh, that's always the #1 justification for hateful shit isn't it? It's just a joke get over it.
No, I don't think women in general were angered or embarrassed by these ads. It was a different time, this was a dominant assumption. We've come a long way, baby.
@JessiRamsey: Well put. What's with the chef cap the woman is wearing? Is she acting out a bizarre fantasy for her husband?
Also: nice nails, bitch.
its kinda funny, cos its not original.
@Xylo: None. Let the bitch cook in the dark.
(I should have mentioned that the ads made me angry and reminded me of the joke in a bad way.)
Anyone seen Mad Men? It's set in a 1960 Madison Ave. advertising agency. Sometimes I watch it with clenched teeth, but I love the show for the spot on mid-century clothes and decor. It features rampant sexism and displays the demeaning ways the men come up with ads directed at women of the day.
Has anyone else here *seen* Mad Men? It was a big boys club, and they weren't really advertising to the women- they were advertising to the husbands.
@SheCracked: whoa. that was a little creepy
Hubby once tried to give me a mixer as a legitimate birthday gift, and he almost died before the wrapping paper hit the floor.
I know someone with a spanking fetish who's sooooo getting that coffee ad for Christmas.
@MsKenney: I recommend Pink Think. [www.amazon.com]
"All seems perfectly reasonable to me, if it perchance offends the PC brigade they can always get stuffed.
- Peter, London"
What kind of state are we in with comments like these?
@RosemaryF: NOO! I thought it was gonna make fun of men!
@nocakebuttevah: That was always a standing rule in our household: No household implements masquerading as presents!!
@nocakebuttevah: HA! I once asked the fiance to get me a breadmaker for my b-day and he flatly refused. He said it was too domestic, and he didn't want my parents to think I was being groomed for housewifery.
Hello from the Jalopnik side of Gawker. Besides the title of this particular post, why is this on the Jalopnik? I understand why it's here, just having trouble figuring why it's there?
"Gosh Honey, you seem to thrive on cooking, cleaning and dusting-and I'm all tuckered out by closing time. Whats the answer?"
Kelloggs PEP Cereal?. NO it's the cocaine, silly.
@SheCracked: I especially liked the early episode wherein the secretary goes to a Dr. to get on the Pill. He tells her if he hears she's being the village bicycle he'll take it away.
@RosemaryF: I have that on my bookshelf right now. Borrowed from my boyfriend, actually, who has it for teaching of gender theory purposes.
"They are so funny, bring back the days when people could laugh at themselves and not take things too seriously"
- Nat, Brighton
@HannahBethD: welcome to the wonderful world of daily mail readers. bleh.
My parents have a huge collection of Life magazines, which are rife with this kind of ad. It's sort of amazing to think of how far we've come in just 50 years. I wish I could ask my dearly departed grandmother what she thought of these ads. She was a typical housewife in the 50s and 60s, but she didn't get married until she was like 35, didn't have my mom until she was 40. So she had a really cool, full life before all that. She was a musician and artist, got her bachelors degree, etc. I know my grandfather was also a really interesting, progressive man, so I wonder if they both rolled their eyes at this sort of ad, but just saw it as the conventional humor. Just like all the terrible, unfunny advertising we have now.
@vocalstylings: And by "themselves" he means women, of course. These dudes always define humor as, "...at someone else's expense."
Has any body seen the really nice Taschen advertising series coffee table book? Some misogyny, some irony, some nostalgia, lots of really nice images. There's one for almost all the decades of the 20th century but my favorite is All-American Ads of the 40s.
@SheCracked: @Kataroo_Kangaroo: Fabulous show. I've always been fascinated by art that portrays the bottom feeders.
These usually amuse me, but only because I think sexism is still as rampant in advertising now as it was then. They won't come right out and say women should be nothing but stupid, submissive, fertile, and decorative, but about eighty percent of ads imply it.
I had no idea Pitney-Bowes was shilling postage meters back in the fifties. I never heard of them before they offered that home digital postage scale/printer deal in the late nineties.
While I'm glad that this is no longer the norm in advertising, there's still so much shit going on in advertising today. American Apparel? No, women aren't too dumb to put on their own clothes, they're just disembodied asses.
@jenndavo: My husband won't get me anything that might be interpreted as domestic either. I think it's because he's afraid of me. He's smart.
We really haven't come a long way. Advertising may not be as overtly sexist, but it's still incredibly demeaning to women.
@nocakebuttevah: My grandparents gave my mother a mixer as a "graduation gift" when she got her Phd. ... in chemical engineering.
She said she had mixed feelings because on the one hand, it was totally inappropriate and insulting, but on the other hand, it was a very nice mixer...
@UDman: Its because women can't drive. I think its a documentary or whatever.
I remember my dad gave my mom something like a frying pan for xmas. She nearly beat him half to death with it.
Good times
@UDman: I think because it has a reference to an old car ad?
Also - once my ex-step-dad gave my mom a red vacuum cleaner to match her new red coupe - she was NOT AMUSED. And this maybe the sole reason he is my ex-step-dad!
Is this sort of advertising really any worse than the bullshit we have to look at these days? I think the only difference is that the actual phrases being used are shocking. Just because we don't have ads with the blazing question "Is it really illegal to kill your wife?" doesn't mean that the Axe ads and Midol commercials (btw, this one is my favorite: Woman: I really could use some chocolate. Her friends, looking at each other knowingly: YEAH, SHE'S MENSTRUAL!) are any less fucking annoying and rude.