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27 June 2011
Sexism in vintage ads. These just get more appalling as you scroll down the page. A few I'd seen before, but most I had not.
it's funny how the 'new douching products' emphasize killing germs. today the idea that you need to go in there and KILL ALL THE GERMS in a balanced biological system sounds a bit crazy
edit: i just read the comments and it seems to be suggesting that the lysol etc. ads seems to be hinting towards usage as a spermicide
I wish I could say I was more shocked. After all, this is the world my mother and grandmother grew up in, and had to achieve and endure despite the incredible hostility of the social climate toward women. This stuff takes a long time to wear off. And I'd add, there are many similar angles still in use today.
I went to a wedding last night of two people in their early 30s, and I was surprised by some of the sexism that the couple allowed into it in this day and age. There were a couple of pretty sexist readings during the ceremony, and then at the reception they were introduced as "Mr. and Mrs. Hisfirstname Theirlastname." Like when a woman gets married, poof, there goes her own identity.
Yeah, it still shocks me that people have such retro weddings. I'm not sure I understand the whole subsuming-yourself-into-a-single-entity thing at all.
My mother was like that. She wasn't comfortable having an identity. From a Buddhist standpoint, she was in touch with a great insight. My father's great need for identity that included his wife lacking one was in many ways a worse problem. As kid, they were both pretty confusing to me.
Well, I do understand the drive to make something new of one's new family. But to me, that would speak more to combining names or something along those sort of symbolic lines. Not what amro's talking about which, yeah, weirds me out too. Still, over half of my good friends changed their name or hell, I had one friend (not religious even!) promise to obey her husband in the ceremony.
it also makes me mull the issue of the "it's just a joke" angle that many of these marketers would have said at the time (and still do.) Jokes are fine but when you press the same joke again, and again, and again, and again, and again ad infinitum.. the 400th time you see "your woman at your feet" then it's more than a joke
I've also been getting into the whole blaxpoitation depictions of the 'pimp' in the 70s a bit these days and it's interesting to see that that absurd caricatural mindset was put in ads for mainstream products in white respectable media just a couple decades before
I would probably do this if I got married, but because I wanted to, not because I feel like I'd have to. But I would want to be introduced as "Mr. and Mrs. Hisfirstname and Amro Ourlastname."
I've read that fundie homeschoolers use the Little House books as texts. Do they tell their kids Laura later changed her mind when she told Almanzo she wouldn't obey him?
I think the sexism in the ads is much worse than just how people decide to refer to one another when they marry, which is something that after all is personal to the people involved. I think a lot of what's in these ads borders on real hatred.
My wife and I are among only a few people that I know where the wife hasn't changed her name. It still causes pretty constant confusion, "yes we're really married but no she still has her own name". Most of her family refuses to acknowledge the choice and addresses mail to us a Mr. and Mrs. [Octothorpe's Real Name].
Most of her family refuses to acknowledge the choice and addresses mail to us a Mr. and Mrs. [Octothorpe's Real Name].
Because I have a tendancy to be deliberately difficult with people in circumstances like that, I'd probably send it all back stamped "Addressee unknown at this address".
I swear I read somewhere that the Schlitz ad was faked; I kind of suspect several of them were, including the one Miko linked. But I have no proof, not even Snopes (which is where I thought I read they were fakes).
Assuming they aren't fakes, I have to wonder if maybe they weren't a backlash against Rosie the Riveter, the concept of women doing "men's work" in factories and such. They did it out of necessity to the war effort, the war was won, and men perhaps expected women to go back to the way things were. I suspect that many men actually liked the message being sent to their wives- "I won the war; now go get me a sammich."
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
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