Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Offensive Vintage Ads
During the "Golden Age of Advertising," many new advertising techniques were developed that are now considered vintage. This was around the 1950's and 1960's. It was the time that the business of advertising began to become a prominent thing.
Many ads during this time were for household products that portrayed a woman as a housewife and with a working husband. Today, this arrangement is not as common, though it still can be common in advertisements. In this day and age, women are just as present in the workforce and the typical family roles have been reversed in many situations. However, most commercials and ads for household products, especially kitchen and cleaning products, still show only women using and endorsing them. After all this time, the stereotypes still exist.
It is true that some products are made for men and will be advertised by men and some made for women, advertised by women. This is just what makes sense. But, when there are products used by both genders that are only advertised by one, this can confirm a stereotype. Yes there are hobbies that appeal to one gender more than the other, but both genders have to clean their house, so why is it always women in cleaning product commercials?
Cleaning product and household product ads are only one example. Many different gender stereotypes are present in advertising that may not be noticeable unless one is looking for it.
Offensive gender stereotypes were the biggest problem in vintage ads. But, there were huge amounts of racism and body-shaming as well. Many advertisements back then showed programs to help women gain weight so that men wouldn't think they were too skinny. It is ironic that the weight-changing programs today seem to aim towards the opposite result.
All of this racism, sexism, and body-shaing is something I would think would have changed since the "Golden age of advertising." During that time, ethics in advertising was not a big deal and people were not so outspoken as they are today about things offend them. Here are some examples of the types of ads released during this period:
Below are some examples of offensive vintage advertisements. The first two are examples of racist ads. The first is racist towards Native Americans, while the second is racist towards African Americans. The other ads are examples of sexism and body-shaming, as explained in the beginning of this post.
All of these advertisements that were released during this time would never be allowed in modern times. Marketing has improved greatly since this time, although it is still not ethical enough and it's questionable if it will ever improve.
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