Woman and Home / 1st January 1962
Yes, an electronic pencil. Not an electric pencil, like you thought. Electrolysis is still used to remove hair, but it’s generally advised nowadays to consult a trained professional, rather than muck about with electric shock equipment at home. What I want to know is: what do wristbands have to do with the whole thing?
Tags: beauty, dodgy advice, electric, retail
Woman's Weekly / 9th March 1957
Heh! Yet another idea that’s been reinvented for modern times: soap with moisturiser added, to avoid a ‘tight’ feeling on facial skin after use. It’s telling that the advert assumes that make-up is needed for beauty, so their soap is also needed to remove it. No-one starts off with their own natural beauty in this world…
Tags: beauty, blatant sexism, retail, same old ideas
Woman's Weekly / 9th March 1957
I wondered why Women’s Weekly readers needed advice on how to shampoo their hair, and then I read here that modern shampoo was only launched around 20 years earlier in the US, so it’s quite probable that it was still something that readers needed advice on. Note also the question about ‘toilet water’!
Tags: beauty, social history
Woman's Own / 21st March 1969
Is it me, or does the copywriter sound like they’re trying to convince themselves rather than anyone else?
Woman's Weekly / 9th March 1957
Good lord. I don’t know quite what to say, apart from: how does getting married to a young surgeon in the Indian Army give you body hair? Surely this woman would already be used to it, if she’s gone through puberty? I don’t understand.
Tags: adverts totally made of wrong, beauty, blatant sexism, dodgy advice, retail, social history
Woman's Own / 9th August 1968
Yeah, you all know why this is here. I believe the modern version is called ‘Adios’. And here’s the old British TV ad, courtesy of TV Offal (clip ‘may not be suitable for minors’).
Tags: adverts totally made of wrong, beauty, blatant sexism, diets, dodgy advice, retail
Woman / 21st April 1967
Well, that’s me speechless. Has anyone else seen a perfume ad as pretentious as this one? What are all those men planning? No wonder she looks pensive…
Tags: adverts totally made of wrong, beauty, blatant sexism, retail
Woman / 5th May 1967
Well, no, it doesn’t, but this advert is rather optimistic about the effect of a home perm, especially as it boasts about making your hair smell like lemons (which may please any wasps lurking around, but wouldn’t cheer me up). Anyway, wasn’t this woman’s hair quite nice to begin with?
Tags: beauty, blatant sexism, dodgy advice, perms, retail, Sandra Howard, social history
Woman / 9th December 1967
Ooh, blimey. Those of us born from the mid-70s onwards won’t have remembered that it was once normal for shampoo and the like to be in glass bottles. Just think about that for a moment. Ouch. I drop bottles in the shower almost every day!
Tags: beauty, retail, scary thoughts, social history
Woman's Weekly / 23rd February 1957
Stop sniggering at the back. A reader asked for beauty items, so I decided to rewind 12 years and take this article from the earliest of my magazines; an issue of Women’s Weekly from February 23, 1957. Of course, modern women have all sorts of facial gadgets to help them, as opposed to cold cream and ‘skin freshener’ (toner?), but the main question for me is: if the aim is to cleanse your face, why is the photographic model covered in make up?
Tags: beauty