Welcome back, readers! I’m hosting Feminist Friday again this week. Last week, we talked about the gender segregation of bath products. This week, we’re going to discuss two specific techniques of advertising directed at women consumers. First, we’ll be hopping back into our time machine to look at the “shaming” technique circa 1930-1960, and then we’ll return to the present (mainly 2010-2014) to look at attempts to use “empowerment” to sell goods to women.
Via Do I Offend?
Other women don’t have dish pan hands!
Even if you’re not a vintage-marketing geek, you’ve probably seen blog posts about “unbelievable” gendered vintage ads: shakes to make skinny women gain weight, Lysol douches, or “pep” to get that housework done. Whether you’re new to the field of vintage advertising or an old hand, go check out Lisa Hix’s interview “Selling Shame: 40 Outrageous Vintage Ads Any Woman Would Find Offensive” with Cynthia Petrovic for Collectors Weekly. Petrovic blogs at Do I Offend?, where she curates a huge collection of vintage ads that degrade and humiliate women by focusing on the various ways in which they apparently offend others with their breath, skin, clothing, food, menstrual cycles, or manners. Petrovic rightly points out,
When you feel good about yourself, you don’t buy stuff. Paranoia, fear, inadequacy—that all sells products. It’s also a part of the ad’s job to create and continually foster an environment where you’re perpetually terrified into purchasing things that don’t work.
The overarching narrative of the majority of these ads is that, if you offend people, often men, with your body, you will never find love, lose your partner, fail to get a job, or make others gossip about you. While the fear of unwanted singledom still guides some contemporary ads, the larger cultural implication of the vintage ads was that, for these well-to-do housewives or proper young women, the lack of male financial support would be ruinous to their position in society.
So humiliated when she realized the cause of her husband’s frigidity! Via Do I Offend?
This is not to say that women, especially women who lacked power, finances or partners didn’t support themselves or their families pre ~1970, but that the demographic targeted in these ads were women who had or who hoped to marry a man who could financially support them. (It goes without saying that these ads are directed at what we would describe as straight women, although the lines between lesbian, bisexual, and queer women were not as strictly divided at the time.) It’s also rather damning that the women who fix their work lives by using the products are mainly depicted as being secretaries and are rewarded not with a promotion but a date from a coworker.
In short, you better use these products, or you’ll die alone and in ruins.
Always #LikeAGirl via Bitch Magazine
Now let’s fast-forward to now. Contemporary ads, let’s say, circa 1990-2014, have plenty of their own sexist tropes: the useless husband; mommy martyrdom; the focus on heterogamous, presumably straight white couples; selling product with women’s bodies; anything Summer’s Eve produces. But the one newer trope is “empowerment.” Typically, this ad attempts to sell women products to with Feminism Lite: use Summer’s Eve and get that promotion; use Dove because real beauty comes in all shapes and sizes and with frown lines; use Pantene and stick it to those “bossy” stereotypes in the office. While most are a welcome change from the endless parade of yogurt commercials , there’s something disingenuous about selling a product under the guise of empowerment.
There’s been a lot of good articles about these campaigns as well as this trend. Here’s a long but excellent quote from Natalie Baker for Bitch.
These “fempowerment” campaigns do precisely the opposite. Their eventual purpose is to sell stuff, but their primary messages are that we should stop telling girls that they’re weak, encourage them to get into STEM fields, quit apologizing for ourselves, and remember that we’re damn good-looking just how we are. Me? I can get down with those messages, even when they’re being generated out of corporations’ self-interest.
In fact, I like that they’re doing it out of self-interest. I don’t want feminism to be charity. I want companies to consider supporting feminism to be necessary for their survival.
Considering that we live in a capitalist society, here’s what I want to happen next: I want these brands’ competitors to notice how wildly popular these stereotype-smashing commercials have been and then shamelessly copy their style. Maybe they can even up the ante—this is all about the competition, after all—and bring in additional marginalized communities to tell the world to quit messing with them, too. Maybe they can hire women to write, direct, and produce these ads, tipping the imbalance of the film industry, where men outnumber women five to one.
Then I want these companies to realize that they can never go back, that the reason this marketing strategy works is the same reason that reversion to stereotypical tropes won’t: we’re watching. And hypocrisy makes a hell of a brand loyalty killer.
And another from Andie Zeisler of Bitch for Salon:
Furthermore, the images and messages don’t go beyond the safe, upwardly-mobile striving of mainstream feminism. Verizon and GoldieBlox’s focus on how girls are discouraged from STEM studies is about as specific as the messaging gets; elsewhere, the lens is feel-good but safely generic. Most likely, we won’t be seeing ads from multinational brands that urge girls to help close the wage gap, battle colorism in media, or advocate for better labor conditions for the workers who make many of the products they’re being sold.”
I definitely recommend reading both full articles.
Like Baker, I find myself pleased that ads are taking a turn for at least paying lip service to stopping gender stereotypes, but at the same time, I wonder what these brands are really doing for women–what are their HR practices like? How do they treat their employees from corporate office to factory? Are they sustainable and safe or just selling us the shampoo equivalent of a Lysol douche? Maybe instead of telling us that women can Be Empowered, their ads should show us what equality and representation look like and treat it as normal instead of expecting a cookie.
Having looked at these two trends, what similarities do you see? Have you seen any properly feminist ads? Do you see a difference in the types of ads for national brand products vs. smaller businesses that focus on women (say, Always pads vs. Mooncups)? Seen any ridiculous vintage ads you’d like to share? Any other thoughts on feminist ads? Let us know in the comments!
The Lobster Dance 
Reblogged this on Natacha Guyot and commented:
This week’s Feminist Friday discussion is hosted at The Lobster Dance. As always, you are all invited to check it out and chime in, either today or this weekend!
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I remember “dishpan hands” commercials on tv from the late 70s, but I’ve never seen a dish soap ad that was so up front with the shaming. The interesting thing about that ad to me is that it’s saying that the wife should be ashamed because her husband is being humiliated. I also remember some gendered cigarette ads from back in the day. I’d have to do some digging to see what they actually said, but I’m thinking of the difference between the way Camel and Marlboro were marketed versus brands like Virginia Slims.
The STEM ads are the closest things to feminism I’ve seen on TV lately. The only other good example I can think of is some PSAs I used to see for Take Your Daughter to Work Day. I have no idea who paid for those, and I’m wondering when they stopped running.
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I remember the cigarette ads from the ’90s– Virginia Slims were “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!” I think Marlboro was still cowboys, and I remember the controversy and eventual ban of Joe Camel, who was sort of a “cool dude,” as much as a camel who smokes can be.
I’m curious about the PSAs, too. I haven’t had consistent access to on-air TV since high school, so I’m not sure if they stopped showing them or if I haven’t been watching the right places.
Thanks for the comment!
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Reblogged this on Sourcerer and commented:
The Feminist Friday post is up, and it has links to some awesome articles about sexism in vintage ads and recent attempts to sell products to women using Feminist ideas. Hop on over and check it out!
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This commercial is one of but a few reasons I bought a Lenovo. They also have a program they launched in 2007 called WILL (Women in Lenovo Leadership) where they prioritize the growth and development of women in the company. I don’t feel like the commercial got a lot of airtime though, and I think that’s a shame.
I’m also reminded of that Legos ad from 1981, which was crazy progressive but so simple! HuffPo wrote about it not long ago.
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That’s a great commercial– I like that it shows a woman DOING things and needing technology for practical, realistic reasons instead of just paying lip service to empowerment and patting itself on the back for being feminist. The LEGO one is also a great example the same: keep it simple, show the subject as a subject using the product.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
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Not much to add here, but the trends are definitely interesting. I’d second your thoughts about not expecting a cookie, and about the actual corporate behaviors beyond their ads. I’m most likely to buy something if the marketing materials aren’t gendered at all, or if it’s like the Dollar Shave “his/hers” ads, rather than if it’s some Dude Council trying to figure out “how to market to women.” Even if they do it “right,” I still resent it a little bit because women are being singled out and often condescended to even while being “empowered.”
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The Great Dude Council: we’ll tell women what they want! I agree–I get really sad when I get to the end of a commercial and it’s just “buy our same-old product so you can be empowered, I guess?”
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Some products are made to be sold to people who are afraid, like some of these hygiene products in the article. “Whitening” cream sold to women in Asia being on of the foremost products I see everyday. (living in Asia now) Going beyond simple advertising, perhaps we should reconsider the existence of certain kinds of products being on the market at all. It makes money, hence someone will sell it, but if its very existence is hurting people, there should be a drive against it, not just the advertising.
My quick thought before I run out the door. I’ll be back again later.
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I saw SO much 美白 (beauty-whitening) products in Japan. It’s really upsetting to see “empowerment” sold to American women and then have the same company sell fear, as you said, to others. And yes, the advertising is sometimes the issue but not the product, or the product itself is inherently problematic. Thanks for stopping by! I’d love to hear more!
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Reblogged this on Odespinner's Blog and commented:
how times have changed…or have they?
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I definitely appreciate “fempowerment” ads over terribly misogynistic ones, but I doubt that testosterone-ruled corporations will start ACTUALLY believing in feminism. Right now it’s using feminism to sell a product, and while capitalism is a huge driver of opinion, I’m skeptical that “real change” (namely, hiring women filmmakers, promoting women to board positions, etc) will be a direct effect of this movement. Many men think they know best, and know what women want, even without female input.
This seems like a really pessimistic comment, but I do think that telling girls to value themselves more is refreshing, and a million times better than shaming housewives for having slightly wrinkly hands that embarrass their husbands.
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It’s a pessimistic subject! It’s sort of what Zielser said: we want the feminist advertising, but not like this… I do wish these corporations would get it together. I mean, for products like cloth pads and moon cups, the ads are just “here is the product. It’s eco-friendly, sustainable, and designed by women.” That’s all you need! No pouring blue liquid on things!
Thanks for stopping by again!
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Agreed! And you’re welcome, it looks like I’m going to be hosting feminist Friday in a couple weeks so you should definitely participate!
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Of course! 🙂
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Great!
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I absolutely love looking at vintage ads. I have a whole collection from my days of teaching ad analysis in composition classes. It’s easier to spot the marketing trends in the older ads because 1) they generally have more text to work with and 2) trends have changed so wildly that they’re amusingly out of date.
I think we see similar messages in a lot of of today’s advertising, but it appears in different guises. Advertising as a field, and graphic design—they’ve had tremendous advancements and paradigm shifts over the course of the century.
That said, I think we can tell a lot about who is being marketed to by looking at the marketing. And I think we’ve seen a shift in the kinds of things women are able to and do buy, which has caused a major shift in how those products are marketed.
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The text on these ads really makes them great to analysis–the intent is so clear! With contemporary ads, more of it relies on the visual alone, which is good for impact but requires a little more consideration of tone and message. You’re absolutely right about the seeing to whom the marketing is directed point as well.
Thanks for commenting, and I hope Do I Offend provides more good material for your classes!
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