Donbros
Woman's Realm / 31st March 1967
Mmm…bri-nylon. Nothing clever to say about this one: it just caught my eye because of its clear lines and good use of colour. I bet the clothes weren’t as nice, though…
No pressure, like…
Woman's Realm / 18th March 1967
Hm. “…the mystery of woman.” seems to equate to hiding your hair dye from your husband, lest he discover that you *gasp* age just like he does. Even if you’ve been married for 17 years.
Tags: beauty, blatant sexism, dodgy advice, retail
Suddenly
Woman's Realm / 18th March 1967
Suddenly…her belly button disappeared. Was it the ‘Tric-O-Lastic’?
Tags: fashion, Maidenform, retail
More Ice Cream!
Woman's Realm / 6th October 1967
I have to say, out of the many fab adverts I’ve found in the course of doing this site, the ice cream ones are probably my favourite. I adore the packaging, and the sight of all those artificial colourings and flavourings are so evocative of my childhood. Yum!
Tags: food, ice cream, kids, Lyons Maid, retail
The fun of being thin…
Woman's Realm / 18th March 1967
Oh, piss off.
Tags: adverts totally made of wrong, blatant sexism, diets, dodgy advice, retail
Polyblonde
Woman's Realm / 11th March 1967
Right…so is she actually learning to fly, or does she just want to sleep with the instructor? I thought the picture looked sufficiently summery, though, so here y’go!
Tags: beauty, blatant sexism, retail
Moppets!
Woman's Realm / 6th October 1967
If you came from a working class background, like myself, then you’ll probably recognise these. My grandmother had a Moppet painting, along with all matter of tasteless figurines, which I presume she picked up from ads just like these. Lovely.
Berlei Teenform
Woman's Realm / 31st March 1967
I’m…not sure where to start with this one. Me and my boyfriend found ourselves writhing around in our seats with discomfort whilst reading the ad, and certainly the language alone is enough to put it in first place in the ‘Adverts Totally Made of Wrong’ category on Gypsy Creams. Actually, I may provide that as a category when the site’s given an overhaul later in the year.
But the language isn’t the only problem (although the ‘Berlei Teenform Littlest Darling’ is enough to distract you from anything else). This ad totally blows out of the water the oft-written about idea that the ‘Tweenage’ market is something new, with the odd name ‘beTweenager’, and the suspicious assertions that teenage girls need Berlei’s special bras. And that’s not all! Berlei have a whole range of girdles to ‘help’ your daughter’s posture. Oddly enough, in a world where girdles are no longer in fashion, we haven’t got young women bent double in the street, possibly because your posture is largely a matter for your core muscle groups, rather than a nylon strait-jacket.
As for the dire warnings that a teenager should NEVER wear an adult bra: well, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence to support this. I do remember reading a recommendation in a teenage magazine that girls shouldn’t wear an underwired bra until their breasts are fully grown, but I started wearing underwires from 14ish, and mine don’t seem to be an abnormal shape. In fact, the wide variance in size and shape of breasts suggests that there isn’t really that well defined a ‘norm’ to deviate from anyway, and there certainly doesn’t seem to be any evidence that there’s any connection between bras and breast cancer either.
So Berlei seem to have cooked up some copy here that The Daily Mail would be proud of: full of unsubstantiated assertions, scaremongering and of, frankly, a rather worrying tone. I must apologise for any nausea that results from reading this advert.
Tags: adverts totally made of wrong, beauty, Berlei, blatant sexism, dodgy advice, fashion, motherhood, teenagers
Handy Andies
Woman's Realm / 18th March 1967
“No more washing and ironing for you”. Oh the romance. Why couldn’t he have washed his own snot-rags?
Tags: blatant sexism, Handy Andies, marriage, retail, social history