Once upon a time women did what they were told and didn’t answer back. Sadly those days are behind us now and the female of the species no longer knows her place.
All joking aside, if you want proof of just how much social attitudes towards women have changed in the last half a century then you could do a lot worse than looking at the advertisements of yesteryear where sexist slogans and friendly advice for women to “keep their weight down” were commonplace.
In honour of the gentlemen who should have known better, here is a top seven of some of the most sexist ads ever.
When Smoke gets in Your Eyes
We begin our list with a double whammy. The above advert would be banned on two counts by modern standards. One it endorses smoking and two, it doesn’t work. If you try blowing smoke in a lady’s face I guarantee you won’t get the above reaction. Trying to look like James Bond and calmly exhaling nicotine into a lady’s faces doesn’t turn her into a playful little kitty cat who will follow you anywhere. It’ll probably turn her into a snarling pit bull who’ll break a bottle of Barcardi Breezer over your head quicker than you can say “It said it would work on the box!” What were those crazy ad guys thinking! And more to the point, what the hell were they smoking?
The Housework Diet
There’s nothing like coming home from a hard day’s shift at the pub or down the bookies and finding there’s dirty dishes in the sink and the carpet needs a damn good hovering. But wait! Instead of doing the unforgivable and attempting to do the housework yourself, why not try to gently persuade the lady in your life that housework is like a session at the gym and she could kill two birds with one stone. It’s all about semantics you see. The above ad is blatantly sexist because it suggests that all women left to their own devices will end up fat and lazy, and they need the discipline of endorsed and rigorous housework to keep them in shape and pleasing to a man’s wandering eye. Now while there’s an element of truth in this, there’s more than one way to skin a chicken and these ad guys should have really known better. Tut! Tut!
Putting the Boot in
The above ad appears to be little more than the warped product of a very twisted mind and positively reeks of male dominance, foot fetishism and above all a criminally vulgar taste in shoes. To try and sell a man a shoe by suggesting it will keep the woman in his life in her place and “where she belongs” is in very poor taste indeed. When a man has to resort to placing a strange looking piece of footwear on the floor in front of a naked female to assert his authority then we’re on very dangerous ground indeed. And that’s before you factor into the equation that the obviously emotionally and mentally disturbed woman in the ad is not the sort of stray any self-respecting gentlemen would wish to attract in the first instance. Personally I think the ad men pushed the envelope a little too far on this one.
Happy Christmas Darling
In the consumer age, exactly what to get the lady in their life for Xmas is an eternal dilemma for the discerning gentleman. You’re pretty much damned if you do and damned if you don’t. In the old days things were a lot more simple for a man who had other things on his mind than presents for the missus. As the above ad shows, once you could just buy them a hoover and not only would they absolutely adore you for it but they’d lie on the floor and gaze lovingly at the cleaning device for hours on end and occasionally touching it because they couldn’t believe how lucky they were. Which was great at Xmas because it entailed you could watch The Great Escape and drink your lager in peace. Oh how these ad men’s artistic works encapsulated the uncomplicated way we gentlemen once lived.
Mum’s on the Warpath
Once upon a time women were not only really useful at domestic chores they were also figures of fun for the males in the household to wind up and tease endlessly with all sorts of tomfoolery and japery. In this ad we see some good old fashioned father and son bonding at the expense of the overly-emotional and no doubt over-worked mother. Just look at the dad and his boy, what fun they are having in winding up mum. They can barely conceal the joy on their mischievous little faces. Yet the ad also strikes a serious note in that it warns the mother not to take things too seriously and ruin the evening. As it states ,”Housework on hot days is bound to leave you tired and cross.” So it’s advising mum to have a long soak with some New Ivory Soap and chill the Hell out. I feel the ad men hit a righteous tone with this one
Cleanliness is next to Godliness
In bygone days men appreciated just how important it was for a woman to have the correct tools if she was to run the house properly. The above ad highlights that some men failed woefully in this task. As the good lady said to her other half, “If you ever broke 14 fingernails cleaning an oven, you’d know why I want this new self-cleaning one.” In a perfect world a woman should never have to ask for a household appliance, it should be her birthright. The ad men were certainly answering the call of duty in a big way here.
Putting the sex into Sexism
Finally we come to an advertisement which appears to capture the ad men in a particularly playful mood. No doubt such an image today would lead to accusations of soft porn, and the objectification of the female body, but perhaps the ad’s creators were driven by a more elevated aesthetic quality when it came to producing such an enigmatic masterpiece. Showing a picture of a well endowed woman in a bikini carrying a bottle of booze with her head cut off, alongside the caption, “The first thing I noticed was her big mouth.” would suggest all manner of crazy things, but it’s probably best for us not to dwell on them. I’m sure those mad and bad ad men didn’t!
