Thread by @ClaudiaLamb

A thread about mid-century advertising as it relates to sexism and racism:

Perhaps it's because I spent my childhood with a camera pointed at me, but I have a morbid fascination with ads created by white, upper middle class ad execs who thought racism and misogyny was cool.

I fully admit to having a fondness for vintage recipe ads that induce the involuntary gag reflex. The grosser the better.

In the Before Time I amused myself & friends with disgusting ads that looked like vomit on a plate.

Once Trump seized power I no longer had the heart do it.

It seemed wrong to be making light during such extreme times, and to pretend everything was the same, when US Muslim residents were being refused entry back home.

So, I stopped posting ads like Campbell's Tuna & Waffles, or the ever popular 'Sack O' Sauce In A Can O' Meat'...

I know I'm not the only person who finds making light of things in the era of babies in cages is wrong.

So one of my simple delights in the world, of finding shockingly gross or just plain shocking ads that were once mainstream & sharing them with friends, fell by the wayside.

It seemed *wrong* to post sexist ads from the 60s that joked about rape when a man who bragged he could 'Grab 'Em By The Pussy!' at will had been installed in the White House.

We were no longer looking at how far we had come, but were looking at where we were sliding back to...

As far as racism? That was even worse. Over the years I'd collected hundreds of ads from the last century with goggle-eyed POC speaking in pidgin English, framed by Wy Peepo indulgently gazing at their lessers.

Van Heusen, though, managed to slay at both sexist AND racist ads.

But, you don't have to go back to the pre-civil-rights era to find egregious ads that always 'Other' anybody but white dudes (however staggeringly mediocre they may be).

Frankly, the most shocking thing about this ad is the Rice Council & ad agency didn't call them Orientals...

Children of the 60s grew up on ads that told us that being different was a crime punishable by mockery.

Dumb assholes who enjoyed feeling superior to women & minorities balked when the butt of the ad industry's jokes fought back about how disrespectfully we were represented...

Unsurprisingly, when women didn't want to be portrayed as vacuous bints & black people wanted to stop being shown as servile and grinning, and when our First Nations people didn't want to be portrayed as ignorant savages - the fragile white dudes lost their collective shit...

Mediocre white men complained *bitterly* at not being able to hang on to their illusion of superiority. They accused the butt of their jokes of having no sense of humor, and of being 'PC'.

These people wanting to be treated with respect are TRULY history's greatest monsters...

Which brings me to this morning, when I spent several minutes looking at a FB page for mid-century advertising. There were gorgeous print ads for train & plane travel, and a few fun appliance ads. But, glancing through the page, it felt very sanitized. There was a good reason...

It felt sanitized because it WAS sanitized (massively) at the behest of the page admin.

Among the rules of the page was this beauty: "We ask that members avoid looking for ads on humor sites or in articles with names like "Racist/sexist/Un-PC ads that will make you cringe..."

The post continued, "...because they usually have been posted many times before, and mostly provoke arguments & trolling. (Van Heusen ads especially)"

So... the admin decided that ACTUALLY *posting* ads from the period wasn't okay because people rightfully commented on them...

Instead, the page's admin chose to insist that we all pretend that imagery like THIS wasn't making the rounds to sell children fruit punch in the late 60s and 70s.

This person wanted us all to gaslight ourselves and pretend that ads that featured only white people existed...

... & ignore the horrific racism & sexism that we were exposed to EVERY DAY on the boob tube & in magazines **because it led to uncomfortable conversations about the way women and POC are portrayed in the media**

Let's not forget that LGBTQ people did NOT even exist in ads...

This page purports to be about mid-century advertising, but doesn't ACTUALLY want to see ads from the mid-century like this one from AC.

Becky knows people are BOUND to comment on the black porter being portrayed as a FUCKING MONKEY, and we *can't* have Wy Peepo uncomfortable.

Ads like this (from 1975) make Becky too uncomfortable to deal with the screaming white privilege she was born into, so she pretends they don't exist.

Cover your eyes - and they go away!!

Wy Peepo magic....

So, this page that is supposed to reflect the ads we were immersed in during the last century has been scrubbed clean and sanitized for OUR protection.

Becky's page is a gauzy look at a Wyt Supremacist never-was America, with NO POC & where Wyt Women wore pearls to vacuum...

God forbid we look at the OTHER ads women were subject to: The ads for the pills.

Mother's Little Helpers.

The ads that DEMANDED you drag your morning-sickness stricken lazy ass out of bed to cook some eggs for your man, and iron his shirts.

The ads that demanded perfection.

You were expected to immediately deflate back to size 2 after popping out crotch fruit - no matter how many you had.

After all - if the ads taught us ANYTHING it was that a woman's worth was in her fuckability. Lose that & lose it all.

Why not try speed to stay fuckable?

Even worse were the doctors forcing benzodiazepines down bored housewives throats.

That led to a rash of women becoming alcoholics, who began abusing highly addictive sedatives to take the edge off of morning hangovers, and help drinking all day because they were dying inside.

Which led to the ads that insisted women needed Thora-fucking-zine to get through MENOPAUSE!

Yes. Let's ignore that we medicated women to shut them up about their loveless, lifeless, dead-end sentence of permanent drudgery being a nursemaid, at the mercy of the whims her man...

... and pretend that American Wyt Women were happy as clams because they were all a size 2, and lived in the suburbs - and none of them were being forced to have children they couldn't take care of mentally, physically or emotionally, and ALL of them felt financially secure...

Let's ignore the unsettling message of an older man checking out the barely pubescent young woman, who's grinning broadly at the notion that if she's REALLY lucky she can grow up to be Dr. Creeper's RECEPTIONIST!!! Squeal!!

That's just unpleasantness we don't need to revisit...

Definitely ignore the rape scenes depicted in 1970s ads, because rape is ICKY... and it makes people uncomfortable to ponder what decades of the subliminal message 'If she doesn't give it - TAKE IT!' do to the psyches of both men and women.

Edgy broomstick gang-rape ad, dude...

Beyond pretending that women had agency & weren’t forced broodmares, Becky did NOT want ads showing how People of Color were disrespected with vicious caricatures.

You see that makes her feel *uncomfortable*, and we can’t have that.

That way Becky can pretend the racism didn't exist – or it wasn’t THAT BAD.

Becky doesn’t want to face how advertising has dehumanized everyone darker than a flat white, and reinforced institutionalized sexism and racism.

You do understand that’s just not pleasant, don't you?

By trying to stop arguments Becky has turned her page into what some people imagine America looked like, once upon a gauzy, fevered dream.

It is nothing more than a homage to mid-century white supremacy, and white-washing the truth to feel more comfortable about privilege…

Becky’s page is just one of hundreds that are devoted to nostalgia that demand we focus on the pretty ads that feed their ego, but ignore the ads that impacted us.

Instead of properly moderating comments on racism, sexism & inappropriate sexuality, they deny any existed at all.

Lest you think that racist ads ended in the last century - feast your eyes on this Intel ad from **2010**.

Muscle bound men of color debase themselves at the feet of a chinos-wearing pasty person with the appropriate dangley bits.

Subtle, huh?

It just NEVER ends.

/end