Vintage Sexism: Heinz soup or a beating edition
This seems too insane to be real. (Click here for larger image)
Via copyranter, we find this old ad for Heinz soup that starts with:
"The things women have to put up with. Most husbands, nowadays, have stopped beating their wives, but what can be more agonizing to a sensitive soul than a man's boredom at meals. Yet, lady, there must be a reason. If your cooking and not your conversation is monotonous, that's easily fixed."
Just cook up some nice soup for your man to keep him preoccupied, because you wouldn't want to make him bored, would you, lady??
Totally. Speechless.
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Wow...way to trivialize domestic violence. Do you have a year on this?
I am reminded sometimes of how much I take the gains of feminism for granted when I see things like this and go, "It couldn't have ACTUALLY been like this. Could it?" I just can't wrap my mind around a world where this was not immediately an outrage.
since when does 7 x 3 = 18?
I was wondering the same thing!
I think it's something to do with Sunday dinners? Like, didn't it used to be that you did something special, like a big roast or whatever, on Sundays? I think that's the day they're skipping. It's the only way that comment makes sense, anyway.
Looks to be 1920s-1930s. And fake.
Hmm, there's nothing on Urban Legends Reference pages about it. While it's possible that they haven't gotten to it yet, that website has been very comprehensive in covering this kind of thing. Where did you see that it was fake?
Just a hunch; it smacked a little of The Onion's Our Dumb Century.
HA-HAA! The name Heinz is so appropriate. Sieg heil, y’all!
It DOES look fake, also.
I'm not trying to justify this...and certainly, it's offensive.
But I'm MORE offended about TODAY's ads that are equally as sexist and disenfranchising. There's a liquor billboard out right now in NYC (can't think of which, offhand -- I believe it's Remy Martin) where women in bondage, showing off their "assets," re-enact soft-core lesbian scenes as a man looks on. "Things are about to get interesting," says the tagline.
This is in 2008, in New York City, with a newly-elected African-American President. THAT is a tragedy...because we should KNOW better.
Oh God, I know. My boyfriend saw it on the side of a building at Broadway and Houston the other day and was really creeped out, and I've been seeing them on the subway. So, so horrible.
Is there some kind of ad complaint department at the MTA? Because I really want to gripe to them about those and the "Abortion changes you" tripe.
Broadway and Houston! That is EXACTLY where I saw it! Ha ha!
Yeah, needless to say, that's the ultra-trendy, "progressive" SoHo district. Nice. If that's what NYC spews forth, then Nebraska has no hope. :P
And I'm with you on those "Abortion Changes You" ads...
You gotta love it that the guy who's "changed" from abortion is a tatted-up, earring-wearing rock'n'roller, the "bad boy," because y'know, those good Christian boys and clean-cut Upper East Siders born with the diamond-encrusted 24-carat gold spoons in their mouths would NEVER, EVER, commit date rape and/or knock up their teenage girlfriends. No, never. [/sarcasm]
I don't think the MTA can do anything about it...I think the best place to go is the ad agency that puts this tripe forward. or, contact the company directly and state that you will not patronize them (and you will be sure that you will spread the word post-haste) if they continue with this line of advertising.
the ad uses the Rockwell typeface very prominently, which dates to 1933. so that might help you date it.
I've seen this advertisement before; that however, isn't the whole of it. I believe it has a picture above it with a woman serving her husband Heinz Tomato Soup.
However, the blatant sexism, although harsh (and some of the worse I've seen in an ad) is not at all uncommon. Have you seen the advertisements for Lysol? Initially used as a contraceptive douche, the advertisements implied that if you do not keep your vagina clean with Lysol your husband will leave you:
http://community.livejournal.com/vintage_ads/tag/lysol
Advertisements are really interesting.
Jesus H. Christ, I sincerely hope their formula for vaginas isn't the same thing we clean our floor with now. Yowza!!
Sadly, it probably was. Didn't you know, the va-jay-jay is a dangerously germ-infected place and must be scrubbed with industrial-strength cleaners?
Wow! The first couple sentences just kill me. "A man marries a woman because he loves her. So instead of blaming him if married love begins to cool, she should question herself." Yikes. Sex in those times had to be REAL fun for the lady.
Close your eyes and think of England, as it were.
But then, has it really changed that much? Look at Cosmo these days, and what's the ratio of articles on how to please him : articles on how to get him pleasing you? Or for that matter, compare Cosmo and, say, Maxim. Again, same idea.
One of my favorite quotes from Coupling a few years back, when a character is going through a tough breakup and reading a magazine with her friends: "This is crap! Pages and pages about how men are utter crap, and in the middle, an article on how to wake him with a blowjob!"
True that. I'm looking at vintage sexist ads online right now, and the only difference in the manipulation of the female form then and now is that back then, the female forms were still realistic, instead of the photoshopped impossibility they are now.
All the "how to please women" articles are in men's magazines.
That's got to be fake. Who would buy that??
WOW
not a fake ad, unfortunately. i found an article from "the torontoist" regarding this advertisement. it's a candadian ad from 1950, and the free guide it offers is from 1944.
Exploring health possibilities, for example, we can see how seemingly disparate economic activities can be brought together, such as holiday and convalescing resources, nutrition and organic food, projecting a city as a place to recharge batteries, a capacity to provide medical operations perhaps at a lower cost, or specific medical research strengths. In this way, a calm, seemingly dull city could become a hospital and recovery space.