"Girls Say Yes To Boys Who Say No"
If you skip Vietnam, boys, these chicks will sleep with you! Because pacifism makes them drop their drawers!
"Put Some Fun Between Your Legs"
One day members of the national bicycle council sat around a table and brainstormed how they could make their products seem more attractive to the fairer sex. And so an ad campaign was born.
"My Man Likes Something Unexpected Now And Then"
And nothing says hot times like cooking rice for your hubby. Not totally sexist per se, but has a nice Stepfordy quality.
"Look Who Reads The Bible"
Why, it's TV's Sonny and Cher! I love the submissive pose Cher (frickin' CHER!) strikes here, and that Sonny is made to look taller than her. Family values.
"So The Harder A Wife Works, THE CUTER SHE LOOKS!"
Okay, honestly, sometimes I get the "you should take your vitamins" speech too. But still...
"It's Nice To Have A Girl Around The House"
No comment.
Re: Leggs.
ReplyDeleteHoly fucking shit.
Yeah, that last one reminds me of the vicious misogyny in advertising that I've just been reading about elsewhere on the web (via the Feminist Carnival) - where advertisers tell us they hate us and we're still supposed to keep buying their stuff. OK, the modern take has more blood and detached body parts, but I thought old-skool misogyny was more that Stepford stuff and patronising men in white coats, and not so much with the using women as furniture. Blimey.
ReplyDeleteYes, sometimes a man does like something unexpected. But I swear to you rice council, you better lay off the strong arm tactics or I'll break your face!
ReplyDelete..seriously there's is/was a rice council?
God, I miss it.
ReplyDelete"put the fun between your legs" is still used today.
ReplyDeletethough i've never seen it as geared just towards women.
Because no one ever expects rice.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think that last ad was thought up by Ted Bundy.
ReplyDeletethat last one: JUMPIN' JEHOSEPHAT!
ReplyDeleteThat last one...whoa.
ReplyDeletewere any of these actually effective???
The "Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No" was a riff on Lysistrata. So it may be sexist (I don't think so, but I'll agree that it's debatable), but it's sexism with literary pedigree.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the first one is too terrible. It doesn't seem to actually be suggesting that there are someone women who will (and should) sleep with any man who doesn't go to war. To me, it is merely appealing to the notion that left-leaning/pacifist women shouldn't sleep with right-leaning/war-like men. This doesn't seem sexist; it seems responsible.
ReplyDeleteOur system of checks and balances has provided 30 years of sitcoms where the husband/father is an inept, bumbling doofus as a kind of mea culpa for this sort of thing... ^_^
ReplyDeleteThe girls say no ad is interesting as the military was, like, 110% male at the time. I don't think using sex is sexist, but, how would you do such an ad today with so many women in the military ?
ReplyDeleteThe girls looking cuter one is just weird. Guys may have maid fetishes but it's the maid at the start of her shift - not at the end.
That Leggs ad is just crazy. What the heck are they even selling ?
Ah... I remember the Virginia Slims ads in my mother's magazines. "You've come a long way baby." Shot in historical sepia, it depicts women sneaking a cigarette in "the good ol' days" and being caught and reprimanded because smoking was not lady-like.
ReplyDeleteI always wanted to do a version showing a black female slave. I always chuckle at the irony of african-american smokers who seem to have forgotten history.
RE: "Girls say yes to boys who say no"
ReplyDeleteI remember an anti drunk driving ad campaign from five years ago that had a tagline that was, I swear to god, "There are no chicks in prison."
Re: Girls say yes...
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that this particular poster is being held up as sexist, since it was part of a way women in the anti-war movement tried to use their influence to encourage draft resistance. That's Joan Baez and her sisters in the poster, there. It was hardly a male idea- as another commenter mentioned, it was a take on 'Lysistrata', with empowered women in the culture of the Sixties using sex as a tool.