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From Oddee.com comes this impressive collection of woman-dissing ads of yore, most of them directed at women themselves.

My “faves” involve wives getting beat for fucking up the coffee, wives preempting emotional estrangement from their husbands by diminishing their morning hideousness and douching with Lysol (?!), and, uh, this one. (To see closer-to-full-size ads, click over to Oddee.)

Thanks for the heads-up, Metafilter.

David Schmader—former weed columnist and Stranger associate editor—is the author of the solo plays Straight and Letter to Axl, which he’s performed in Seattle and across the US. His latest...

32 replies on “Today in Old-Timey Sexist Advertising”

  3. “Lysol” has has amazing, proved power to kill germ-life on contact . . . truly cleanses the vaginal canal even in the presence of mucous matter. Thus “Lysol” acts in a way that makeshifts like soap, salt or soda never can.

    Appealing daintiness is assured, because the very source of objectionable odors is eliminated.

    That’s good stuff. I imagine the older guys at Sterling Cooper knocking out sexy copy like that in the years before “Mad Men”. “Daintiness”, indeed — sproing! Lysol is only named after “lye”; why wouldn’t you want lye in your cooter? Come on, ladies. Get douchin’! Habit-forming, too (since it kills the good bacteria, and encourages the bad ones, so you have to do it again…and again….and again…).

  4. Lysol ad FTW.

    A man marries a woman because he loves her. So, instead of blaming him if married love begins to cool, she should question herself.

    Jesus… it’s a miracle that all women from the 50s weren’t totally batshit crazy.

    (Plus, you know, douching with Lysol = Branding fail)

  7. Uh… so many good ones…

    After one look at his Mr. Leggs slacks, she was read to have him walk all over her.

    The Chef [mixer] does everything but cook — that’s what wives are for!

    Most men ask “Is she pretty, not “Is she clever”

    And my absolute favorite, given my love of hiking/climbing:

    Men are better than women! Indoors woman are useful, even pleasant. On a mountain they are something of a drag.

    There is a 100% chance I would have offed myself before the age of 30 if I was alive back then…

  8. The ketchup ad isn’t necessarily sexist. Women often ask men to open bottles without thinking it makes them lesser beings. The woman isn’t too stupid to open the ketchup bottle. It’s about upper-body strength. But if the man can’t open it, she will think him a lesser man.

  9. I sometimes wonder where my grandmother gets all her hangups about being someking of archetypical Perfect Housewife. Then I see things like this and I realize it could’ve been a lot worse.

  13. @8 as soon as a gave birth to a child, i swore i would never ask a man to open a jar for me again. and i haven’t. go me!

  14. Those bastards on Madison Avenue! I can’t look at this era of advertising anymore without picturing Donald Draper from Mad Men.

  18. The Lysol ad makes me want to cross my legs for the rest of my life out of sheer fear that when I’m sleeping, someone might run up and forcibly douche me with what I use to clean the toilet with.

  20. Oh, Saturday Night Live did a great spoof of such ads. It had Jane Curtain talking about a shampoo that makes the user dumb, because smart women are intimidating to men. I can’t remember what they called the product.

  21. Just give the lid of the jar a good rap against the edge of the counter. That works like 99 percent of the time. It really only doesn’t work if some man* tightened the lid way beyond what is natural and right or if the jar mouth is caked with something sticky.

    *It really figures that the few times I can’t get a jar open it’s because a guy tightened it way too much. The first time I had to fill a car’s gas tank was a barrel of laughs – my dad tightened the cap way beyond the standard and correct three clicks. I had to get the gas station cashier to open it for me.

  22. I have no shame handing off a jar for my husband to open, especially because, as keshmeshi said, it’s usually because he screws the lids on even tighter than they are when I first opening the bottle. If he’s not around, running hot water over the lid usually works.

  25. @20: I remember that ad too.

    “Wash your brain as you wash your hair’

    Though I can’t recall the name of their shampoo either.

  26. Today’s ads are just the opposite. Products aimed at women (i.e. household goods) are advertised with ads showing lazy and stupid husbands being outwitted by fantastic wives and their fancy new products. As a house-husband myself, I think both the old and the new are pretty offensive.

  28. @26: Ditto. I’m still offended by the idea that men can’t cook (especially silly in the face of the fact that professional chefs have been almost exclusively male in most restaurants) and my dad’s cooking *rules.*

  29. Dave probably didn’t grow up in a house full of womenfolk. Many a bathroom linen closet in the 50s and 60s smelled faintly of Lysol and had the hot water bottle/DB hanging on the inside of the door – nozzle and all.

    I think the correct dilution rate was 3 Tb. per quart of water, but since I didn’t partake, don’t hold me to that dilution. Douching was even listed as a use for Lysol on the box that the bottle came in (as I recall).

    It was considered hygienic and believe it or not in the 30s, 40s, and 50s it was considered a form of birth control. Women would douche after fucking.

  30. @26 and @28 — About ten years ago, I remember watching a news story on a local Fox affiliate that was covering a Mr Clean cleaning competition for men. The competition in and of itself was pretty stupid, but the tone of the news story was all, “Oh my gosh! Men can clean! Will wonders never cease!”

    It managed to be offensive to pretty much everyone, men and women…

  32. My mother not only did douche with Lysol, she did her level best to teach that vile habit to all my sisters and myself. Clearly it didn’t work so hot as birth control, as she had 15 pregnancies in 13 years.

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