Monday, October 25, 2010
You Have To See This
Last week, a reader forwarded me an e-mail of a post from ufunk.net. It is a collection of 27 vintage ads that will absolutely make your jaw drop. Seriously. Below are several of the worst offenders, and you can click here to see the rest. I talked about these all weekend. I have seen old ads before but don't remember any that were quite this extreme.
ok, these all freaked me out but the Loves Baby Soft one gave me cold chills. ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww. I forgot how blatantly sexual adds were in the late 70's early 80's. Anyone else remember Brooke Shields Calvin Klein ad?
ReplyDeleteWow. Some of them are shocking like the last one and the one with innocence being sexy. The ones with the husbands being all dominant makes me angry. I'm glad (and thankful) that the sexual revolution happened, so I could go to University and travel and be my own person.
ReplyDeleteI mean the second last one. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteumm, can we bring back the Cocaine Tootache Drops please. I have a toothache.
ReplyDeleteOh wow. I laughed and then I remembered that they were real. Pretty sure a few of them will be my profile picture of Facebook over the next few days though *L*
ReplyDeleteRecently I went to an estate sale and purchased old magazines from the 30, 40 and 50's. The ones that killed me were the ones geared toward "womens hygine". Did you all know that Lysol was used as a feminine hygine product to take care of "odors"? I also got an old Hollywood mag that had this as a cover artice"Rock Hudson-What he looks for in a wife". We laughed so hard over that one.
ReplyDeleteSome of these ads seem like the type that Don Draper would have come up with!
ReplyDelete@timebob: At least they'd be more effective than those silly Oil of Cloves drops you get at the drug store now!
And that Love's Baby Soft ad is just creepy.
Timebob - BB's headache powders do a pretty mean trick. Just rub a little on the achey tooth.
ReplyDeleteTo think I used to wear Loves Baby Soft - I feel all sorts of wrong.
We got an e-mail circulated around from a friend last week with these in it.
ReplyDeleteWe have come pretty effing far, huh?!
I used Love's Baby Soft in middle school and high school (76-82) and I can assure you I was not as innocent as some would have believed by about tenth grade... heh heh
ReplyDeleteWow. Just wow.
ReplyDeleteAs the white mother of a black daughter, I am fascinated by the ad for the Fairy Soap. What exactly were they trying to say? That if you don't use Fairy soap, you will turn into a dirty little shoeless black child? Or that Fairy soap will turn a dirty little shoeless black child into a clean white fairy child? I wonder what year that ad came out and if they realized at that time that it was offensive. It just amazes me (and wonderfully so) how much more accepting our society has become. I know there is still a lot of racism in the world and hatred of all kinds, but I am thankful to say that my daughter enjoys a happy and healthy life as a young African American child. She is accepted and loved by our entire family and community. I do not think it would have been possible even 20-30 years ago.
ReplyDeleteEnty didn't show the worst ones. Oh my, just, oh my.
ReplyDeletei bought some Life magazines from 1955-69..wow. that is some sexist,racist shit!
ReplyDeleteIce Angel - your story makes me happy.
ReplyDeleteI've seen most of these. The hatred towards anyone other than a white Christian male in this country is astounding. I'm so relieved for social change. A few years ago I was talking to a black friend from high school. We got into a deep conversation about what it was like for him to going to school in Tennessee and dealing with racism there. It was sad and surreal to bring this up, but 60 or so years ago he and I probably wouldn't have been able to be friends. Thank god for change.
I bought a few postcard books of these last time I was in the U.K. and had 12 of the best ones framed in one large picture in my apartment. They are amazing.
ReplyDelete@Ice Angel: It seems to me the ad plays on the theme of the white child's naive assumption that the black child is "dirty" because her mamma doesn't wash her with Fairy Soap. Racism was shockingly blatant in those days.
ReplyDelete@Moosefan:I saw some Saturday Evening Posts from the WWII era, and two things struck me: no rock and roll or its effects, and not a single black face in any magazine except a cartoon about a black woman hanging out some white people's washing. Pretty bizarre.
It makes you think why people miss the good ole' days.....it's like they don't realize the good ole' days where horrible for women and minorities.
ReplyDeleteBut the innocence being sexy is so disturbing and gross. eww.
@Vanessa: I totally agree and always correct people when they talk about the olden days. Yeah, right...the olden days when people sent their kids into the coal mines and sweat shops to work. When women and blacks couldn't vote, or sit on a jury. I'll take today any day!
ReplyDeleteIce Angel, me too, only with a son. What an adventure it's been.
ReplyDeleteI have always been a big I Love Lucy fan, but the one where Ricky puts Lucy across his knee still kills me.
We have come a long way, baby.
That reminds me of a book I read called "The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible!" It's a collection of illustrations from various magazines from 1880-1910 or so, detailing how almost every aspect of life was horrifying. Also, check out shorpy.com, a website of photos from this, earlier and later eras. Pretty incredible.
ReplyDeleteI made a zine about these in college for a Gender and Women's studies class and there are some today that are just as bad! This, for example: http://cdn.trendhunterstatic.com/thumbs/duncan-quinn-suit-ad-depicting-strangled-woman.jpeg
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty happy that, in Canada, we didn't have such a huge racial situation that America had. It pretty much set the tone for a lot of problems down the road. Problems we don't have, or don't have as bad.
ReplyDeleteAgree with the person above and immediately thought these ads came from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.
ReplyDeleteNow we know what LiLo was taking for her dental problems.
ReplyDeleteThese ads are wonderful - in the way that they show us how far we've come, even though sometimes it doesn't seem like it.
ReplyDeleteThe reason the 2nd to last ad is so disturbing is because that is really something a kid would say - it hits home, but these are adults coming up with these ads, which makes it wrong. My sister and I had best friends who were black when we were growing up. We used to call them, 'the doik (dark) faces' (mid-1960's) according to my mom - I don't remember that. My mom also corrected us when we chanted a playground ditty that had a racist word in it - I didn't know what it meant, but a black girl told me I said a bad word. Again, I was ashamed, but my mom never told me why it was a bad word. Jesus, this makes me want to slap my 4-year-old self, but my sister and I did not understand prejudice, and we didn't intend to be hurtful. I'm ashamed because had I known better, I'd have been absolutely appalled.
My daughter didn't even notice skin pigmentation when it came to her friends. I taught her that being different was something to be embraced.
That "Loves Baby Soft" ad makes me cringe. Wear "Love's Baby Soft" - pedophiles love it!
i don't know where you live Sue Ellen, but we had it and still have it. we just have different races that are dueling than black vs white. the way we treated the Native/Aboriginal/First Nation people was pretty fucking awful. it's the lazy mexican joke of canada-let's be real, I still hear them all the time. Not to mention racism against Indo Canadians, Asian Canadians and Muslim Canadians.
ReplyDeleteNot disagreeing with you but we need to remember our history isn't spotless in that department.
It makes me wonder what sick twist of an ad executive thought up the Love's Baby Soft ad.
ReplyDeleteI got into an argument through e mail with a male friend of mine who thought these ads were fine because it wasn't just men who perpetuated these images but all the women who worked in advertising at the time as well. I responded with a very simple comment--I didn't think that the ad men really cared much for the opinions of their secretaries unless it had something to do with the color of their tie or which messages were most important. He still doesn't get it. To quote another well known ad---We've come a long way, baby.
ReplyDeletei love it!!!!
ReplyDeletewhile they're all disturbing...i just can't fathom that a parent(s) back in the day allowed their child to pose for that love's baby soft ad. =O
ReplyDeletei saw these a while back, and i just couldn't stop wondering about the little girl in the 'Loves Baby Soft' ad. i wondered if she ended up totally messed up because of being over sexualized at such a young age. crazy stuff.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what people will gasp about in our ads 50 years from now.
ReplyDeleteWhat ever happened to Lucky Strike cigarettes?
ReplyDeleteThe 'Loves Baby Soft' ad made me think of Jon-Benet Ramsey. It gave me the shivers.
ReplyDeleteI am taking a Womens and Gender Studies class on American History and it is a trip. There are stereotypes and things we believe about genders, races, and classes that have literally been created to justify the way the U.S. exploited and subjegated a whole slew of people.
Women and minorities are constantly used to this day to promote their binary opposites- which are white middle class heterosexual men who need to be affirmed of their manliness at all times.
We have come a long way but we still have a long way to go.
That being said- I think these ads should be shown to kids in history classes as a way to warn what blatent racism and sexism looks like. The very in-you-face way these ads are conducted are good reminders of how mainstream hate can be if we let it get out of control.
ReplyDeleteI remember that Love's Baby Soft. The ad was supposed to reflect that movie that Brooke Shields was in when she was 13 and a hooker that was so controversial.
ReplyDeleteI think that Loves Baby Soft model is Denise Richards. Spitting image.
ReplyDeleteSome of these were featured awhile back on Gawker. I was both appalled and amused. There are some new ones here though. My God...
ReplyDeleteI love the Pitney Bowes one.. "Is it always illegal to kill a woman?"
I mean you have to just laugh.
Watching Mad Men, we always get tickled at certain things (my personal favorite scene was last season(?), when Don/Betty were on a picnic w/ the kids & when leaving instead of throwing all the trash away, Betty just tossed up the blanket & left all the trash there) that just seem so unbelievable but these ads say it all.
@Vanessa
ReplyDeleteThey realize it--it's just that they want to bring back these days. This is the world the Fox Newsies and Sarah Palins of the world want to bring back.
@jax
ReplyDeleteI live in Toronto which has always been a melting pot. I know we have our share of problems, we just didn't/don't have it to the extent that America did/does. That's why part of the Underground Railroad came up here.
I remember Love's Baby Soft when I was a teenager from 1983 to 1989. I remember the commercials being geared towards teenagers. I thought of Jon-Benet Ramsey too and how sexualized she looked in her photos.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet the bunch of you just love gushing about Mad Men (and openly misogynistic dlisted). Contradictory much?
ReplyDeleteI've had some of those ads as my profile pic on fb. I find all but the racist ones amusing. I don't believe they reflected the real world - just the world advertisers wanted people to live in.
ReplyDeleteI completely forgot about Love's Baby Soft. That's from my time. Pretty creepy. And I remember Brooke and how nothing came between her and her Calvin Klines.
Sue Ellen, Canada has a horrible legacy of racism. Just look at what we did to Japanese Canadians in WWII, not to mention our treatment of our First Nations!
ReplyDeletei think if these were dated, many would not be as "creeped out".
ReplyDeleteor maybe it's because i was pretty much raised without prejudice or bigotry (as far as my parents went) as i understand it now. my mother grew up dirt poor in texas and to this day i carry over a lot of southernisms that would offend many, but i certainly don't mean to offend! my parents never used any ethnic slurs, and even though my father was terribly old fashioned, he NEVER treated her with disrespect (ha! mom's the one with the temper!). he didn't swear, even. you can imagine what a shocker my first marriage was.
but at the time these ads ran, they were reflective of the times. hell, i wore love's baby soft and wish they still made it (my body chemistry does NOT work well with most fragrances). the men/women ads were tongue in cheek, the little black children ads are probably very old. i don't get the problem with the diaper one at all.
remember, as late as the 60's doctor's encouraged women to smoke when PG, to keep their weight down. coke syrup (without the cocaine) may still be available for children's tummy aches. dentists still have access to cocaine for medicinal use. and soda CAN ease a baby's gassy stomach-- not that i'm recommending it!
my mother now shakes her head at the "warm tea enemas" she was prescribed to give me for terrible colic, and as an adult i have IBS.
i think these are found disturbing because of culture shock. like when we travel now to places that don't ban smoking indoors!
here's a good example:
right now there's a RX product on the market that really worries me. the birth control pills that reduce your periods to 4 times/ year.
how do we really know how these are going to affect our bodies or our daughter's bodies years and years from now? what will our grandchildren think of those ads?
sorry about the novel, i just find the ads and the response to them really fascinating from a sociological point of view, not trying to start anything!!
:)