some ‘worst slogan ever’ contenders in this lot:
*shudder* and is it just me or does this look an awful lot like Demi Moore Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver?
Srsly?!
OK, so that last one’s a ringer but the rest are all the real McCoy, unfortunate as that may be…
and today’s lesson is, yes, we needed feminism. egads.
I always liked that quote “People call me a feminist whenever I refuse to be a doormat.”
I also love when women use the disclaimer “I’m not a feminist, but I think women should have (fill in the blank.)”
I’ve never been ashamed to say that I’m a feminist. It does not mean that I hate men. It simply means that I refuse to be treated as second class because I’m not one.
*cough* Jodie Foster. That one is srsly, srsly creepy *shudder
But is it wrong I kinda liked the other two? They seem fun in a Tracey-Hepburn way. I’m sure he’s not really beating wifey because she hasn’t been performing full consumer tests (poss with blindfold tasting) when she goes to the market. I think they’re both having a good time there. If it were me, I’d prob make any old piss-coffee just fer the spankin’. But maybe that’s just me *blush*
I saw some old ads for soap and hotdogs recently – lemme see if I can dig them out. They were uh… well, you might say there were homo-erotic undertones, intentional or unintentional who knows.
always get those two mixed up! oh well. too late now… maybe it’s a typecasting thing? not that i’ve ever seen all of Taxi Driver so that may be a factor… really should get around to that.
lol especially if hubbie always wore his golf socks and suspenders. *wolf whistle*
and ok, homoerotically charged soap&sausages i *have* to see…
Sock suspenders – poss my fav thing about old-timey pr0n!
*melts*
i do like that line :)
and yeah… the not a feminist but thing… i’ve been hearing that a lot lately. i loved it once when i heard a guy counter it with ‘oh? but i am, and…”
cracked me up, just on so many levels.
God, I have no memory. Did I leave this link a minute ago or did I mean to leave this link a minute ago?
http://www.divinecaroline.com/33669/84173-vintage-ads–translation–sex-appeal-
my, oh my!
‘k…
1. i want cellophane wrapped babies, all the better not to ruin the assets on my ‘projector’, and
2. am thinking not so much vitamins as mummy’s little helpers washed down with a gin&orange… ‘cos otherwise there ain’t no way i’m loving a vacuum cleaner that long.
In this case, mother’s little helper isn’t valium but crystal meth! Who else but meth addicts and Anthea Turner get that upbeat about housework?
The worst offenders for me were the shoe polish – shine so bring you can see her knickers! That’s just sleazy, like a precursor to up-skirt shots – and the blowjob breakfast one. Not just because it was sexist, but because it was bad: the text is trying to sell them as gifts. Who buys ties as gifts? Women. How in hell does that imagery appeal to women?
Your two really didn’t offend me. Maybe because they’re so OTT I couldn’t take them seriously.
LOL crystal meth for sure. and yeah, the blowjob breakfast one hit me hardest, i think.
i wasn’t really offended by those two either. just found it remarkable that they made it in the advertising world when today, they wouldn’t… and not because they aren’t still playing on the same things. but because we’re sooo PC now ‘eh.
though the postage one honestly just baffles me. what were they thinking they were actually advertising? and the first, the image is a little shocking but the explanation tempers it, perhaps enough. i’m not sure. not offended but i greet it with a raised eyebrow… it’s not quite as subversive as the last, is all.
With the postage one, I feel like I’ve missed the first two panels. I just don’t get what’s going on there at all. I figure he’s meant to be the stressed out boss, so maybe she’s the careless secretary (bad!) but she has this total Katherine Hepburn arrogance about her that puts her way above him. (Here’s another wee gripe: romantic comedies are way too tame and sexless these days. Spencer-Hepburn, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell: there was no sex but they were all about sex!)
The first ad on the other link, the lipstick one, is weird do. Why did men think they could sell lipstick to women using blowjobs!? That’s some real Freudian psychology gone wrong. I’d be interested in how successful that ad was!
Apologies I appear to be typing with a cold. (On wee netbook while cooking rice, watching TV and petting cat, so distracted.)
hehe multitasking is approved of.
meanwhile, perhaps she’s denying him postage? ;)
i do love Hepburn so that may have been a factor in my posting it… *polishes halo*
he looks like he’s about to get his tie mashed in that dread machine though. perhaps it’s some secretarial pool in-joke we’re missing?
as for that lipstick ad. ahem. yes. really off the beaten track there, boys. it wasn’t even remotely sexy either so i’m not sure who it would’ve appealed to!
The Jodie Foster one is completely creepy. But this…look at the comment at the bottom by Moderno…
http://www.oddee.com/item_96674.aspx
Sigh…
@lili Lol ah. yeah. says it all, really.
Hey Catatonic Kid,
Thanks for adding me to your blog roll.
I think these retro adds and the media continue to view abuse as something as a social norm. It recently discovered a video on youtube called our hidden culture. Its about rape culture. http://www.youtube.com/user/hardcoverchicago#p/u/16/nv3Kz_CluTE
How the media shows things influences peoples thinking. I think of it kind of like programming. Probably not as extreme as abusive stuff but at the same time it creates unrealistic thinking. Thanks for the thought provoting post.
Take Care. Be Well.
Hope
G’day Hope :) Cheers for the linkage! Timely since am currently off on a whole tangent on just that topic on the post behind this one. Ranting somewhat, I admit… doubtless the vid will be vastly more succinct.
Take the copy away from the first image and it looks like those two are having a blast! :P
Second one looks like it belongs in Pedo Monthly.
Third… yeah? Ummm…
Love the other vintage ads via @la… everything from homoeroticism to blatant sexism, semi-porn, the beginnings of America’s gun culture, stuff I can relate to (see “Projection”, ahem!), yummy mummy hostesses and definitely love the cellophane babies.
Coz who doesn’t want to wrap babies up? I mean, just yesterday my niece was busily wiping her grubby hands on my jacket sleeve. And why was that? Because she wasn’t wrapped in cellophane, of course! ;P
The gun one is hilarious. They’re so wholesome with their guns on Christmas Day. I imagine they like to go on a Boxing day killing spree, y’know, as a family.
But the air hostess mother confuses me. She doesn’t look motherly to me; she looks mussed up in a morning after “layover” kind of way. She looks tired and sad. Because she’s not 19 and blonde maybe that made her motherly back then? I dunno. I can only see her as a single mom of a young son who hands her a box of tissues each time the latest jerk dumps her. He’s the only good man in her life. (OK, I might be reading too much into this.) I don’t get it at all. She’s kinda sexy, but not overtly and she’s supposed to be your mom. What kind of sexually repressed men fly with this airline?
Y’all watch Mad Men? I loved the “Daddy, what did you bring me?” slogan Peggy came up with when they were pitching to the airline. That was inspired.
Imagine the first “look what I killed with my Christmas present gun” photo. That one’s going straight to the pool room (Australian pop-culture reference – see The Castle).
Re: hostess. Actually, I think she looks all mussed up morning after a shag with one of the many names in her little black book… rather than mummy-ish. Haha. I see her with her foreign ciggies relaxing in a bar after she’s arrived in yet another strange country, sinking back a scotch or two and getting a little “hello sailor” with one or two of the locals. The next morning, bright and early, she creeps out of his apartment and fixes her makeup in the airport bathroom before turning up for her next shift looking like that… :P
Can’t say I’ve ever seen Mad Men. But then, that’s me. TV dork. Hardly see *any*!
Well we both agree she looks shagged out! Your scenario is just a lot happier than mine. In mine, she is the name in the little black book…
I wonder when exactly they stopped advertising guns to/for children.
You know, I think in America they simply haven’t stopped running children’s gun ads. *Cough*
*snort* that we’re filing under ’sad but true’
I’m really confused about the Pitney Bowes/postage one, too. Every office I have ever worked in has had a Pitney Bowes postage machine, and now I won’t be able to look at one without thinking about this ad.
Love’s Baby Soft had some pretty creepy ads when I was a kid, but that one’s the creepiest!
This is the ad I remember the most. It was probably in every issue of every teen magazine back in 1991. http://www.painted-ladies.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/loves.jpg
well i’m glad it’s not just those of us who’ve never encountered such technology!
seems like it was rather an odd ‘niche’ for a brand. and yeah, even that relatively ok one is still just a little more suspect than i’m entirely comfortable with.
I love these old-style ads. I’m sure I’ve seen a few funny ones but can’t remember them this minute. It’s a good thing we’ve moved on, if only a little x
enough to see the humour at least :)
Hey, these are great! Where’d you dig them up? You women sure have been the butt of ad jokes through the years. Bad pun? Great set of old ads, thanks for posting ;)
Oh mai. I have a hard time deciding which of these ads is the wrongest!
The last one is definitely the funniest, though. Dearie me. After countless retro-ads suggesting that housewives are all hopeless closet-alcoholics, it’s now suggested that housewives do… what? And that back in the 60’s?
And I agree – we most definitely needed feminism. And we still do.