Vintage

As I scroll down my YouTube feed, a certain video catches my eye. The title is 20 Most Offensive Vintage Advertisements Ever (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4IpNvMbUaU). I thought back to our group discussions on Monday about the advertisements and more specifically to mine, the one about women careers. Before I watched this, I predicted that most, if not all, were sexist because we all know that back then, companies didn’t really care about equality between men and women and just wanted to sell their product. Usually their products were directed towards men so they needed to appeal to them and thus women became objectified. Aaand I was correct. Most of them depicted some sort of female incompetence. For example, this ad from the company Drummond Sweaters basically has men are better than women slapped across it in bold capital letters.

Of course, this was normal back in the 1950s and 1960s but if that was shown anywhere in the present time, it would definitely be ripped apart from both women and men. Sexism has come a long way compared to now and the past. But why did these companies make these advertisements the way they were? Back then, women didn’t really have a voice in the community and were seen as socially inferior. Their position was indoors and in the “kitchen”.  

The ad for the Kenwood Chef claims that it does everything but cook – because that’s what wives are for. And this was basically what they did. They were expected to follow one path and one path only. It was to marry in her early 20s, start a family, and devote her life taking care of the house and kids. They were essentially owned by their husbands since they could not own property or control their earnings if they even had one. The basic jobs for women were limited to teachers, nurses, or secretaries. A shocking fact was that in “1960, women accounted for six percent of American doctors, three percent of lawyers, and less than one percent of engineers.”*

This advertisement explains that if you are a male and blow smoke into a woman’s face, then she will follow you everywhere. It is appealing to males and using women as objects to lure in men into buying the product. Honestly, it’s not that different from today. We always see beer commercials

on the television that are always like hey! If you bring this 12 pack of [insert in brand of beer], you’ll be the life of the party! 

That, or they include over-sexualized women in their campaigns to attract the main drinkers, males. So in a way, sexism still exists in modern day advertisements, but it is waaay more risky because one wrong move, and those advertisements could cost the company their business.

Oh and we can’t forget this stereotypical “women can’t drive”. Even in the automobile industry back then thought of women as clumsy as and worse than men in driving. Although, that stereotype still lives on today.

An example of a modern stereotype with cars. From the movie Scream 3

*https://tavaana.org/en/content/1960s-70s-american-feminist-movement-breaking-down-barriers-women