25th July 2011 / 3 Comments
Woman's Weekly /
9th April 1965
In fact, I don’t envy her figure, mainly because she looks like a smug 13 year old, and that’s not my style. I found it curious that this is called a Milk Diet, because it doesn’t have an awful lot to do with milk at all, apart from it being the one comfort that you’re allowed during this week of misery. The milk is obviously there to replace the fat and calcium that you wouldn’t have otherwise, and although I think it’s likely that you would lose weight on this diet, it’s hardly a sensible long-term eating plan. Quite what they expected you to do after the week was up, I’m not sure: feel smug for a week and then realise you’d put it all back on?
Tags: blatant sexism, diets, dodgy advice, food, health
21st July 2011 / 4 Comments
Woman's Weekly /
2nd April 1965
Yes, I know, I’m a bit obsessed. I blame Jasper Carrott’s routine about ’18-Hour’ girdles suddenly bursting open at bedtime, letting acres of female flesh loose in bedrooms across the country, and my mother’s threat to me that I would have to wear a pantee girdle someday. Who would have thought that female flesh was so dangerous, eh?
Tags: beauty, blatant sexism, girdles
17th July 2011 / No Comments Yet
Woman's Weekly /
2nd April 1965
It’s our Mary again! Here she gives reasonable advice to a woman who is contemplating an affair with a married man (although note that she can’t resist implying that she’d be a ‘home wrecker’, as if the man involved had no responsibility at all), but what struck me was her reference to a ‘special boyfriend’ in the second reply.
This reminded me of my mother and aunt suggesting that I could go on dates when I considered myself to be in a committed long-distance relationship, and I think this change is probably down to the fact that relationships can now be serious without marriage getting involved. A generation or so ago, it was far more common to date (in theory, without sexual intercourse taking place), then getting engaged once you felt you’d found ‘the one’, whilst my generation haven’t really dated in that respect, as sex tended to happen at an earlier stage, meaning that a series of serious relationships are now more the norm.
Other letters of note here include the rather sweet enquiry about having youngsters around the farm (I would have loved to go on holiday at Mrs T’s place), and the mother who was clearly dying to address her son with the letters ‘B.A’. I presume he was the first in his family to get a degree!
Tags: blatant sexism, marriage, Mary Marryat, problem page, romance
13th July 2011 / 5 Comments
Woman's Weekly /
2nd April 1965
Right. So this advert’s saying that you can’t attend family events if your hair’s a bit of a state, as if any of your loved ones would really give a damn. Still, Prom does look tempting; after all, you might get flirted with by a camp-looking photographer!
Tags: blatant sexism, dodgy advice, emotional blackmail, perms, Prom
26th June 2011 / 2 Comments
Woman's Weekly /
20th March 1965
I know, it’s a cheap laugh, but I’m going to do it anyway…
Tags: adverts totally made of wrong, beauty, blatant sexism
24th June 2011 / No Comments Yet
Woman's Weekly /
19th August 1965
Here’s a few interesting indications of what life was like in 1965 for women. ‘Ruth’ seems to have paid the price for putting her own feelings above those of her family, ‘C’, thankfully, describes her positive experience of a ‘shotgun wedding’, and ‘Mrs S.C.’ seems to have a worryingly insensitive husband, judging from Mary’s reply.
Tags: blatant sexism, Mary Marryat, pregnancy, problem page, social history
27th March 2011 / 1 Comment
Woman's Weekly /
18th March 1967
I found this interesting as it seems to mark a point at which cosmetic surgery started to be used as a consumer product, rather than as a solution to disfigurement. This seems to be a subtle advert, judging from the phrasing used, and I’m also wondering just how they can show such a transformation when the two pictures are taken from such different angles…
Tags: beauty, blatant sexism, social history
1st February 2011 / 2 Comments
Woman's Weekly /
23rd May 1969
I imagine most people reading this will remember the Miss Pears competition, which promoted the Pears soap brand in the UK. There’s a newspaper article online suggesting that it ended in around 1997, in reaction to a change in demographic, but it’s a shame that the official Pears site doesn’t work properly in Firefox OR IE8 (seriously, Pears?), so I’ve got no idea what the official reason is!
Tags: blatant sexism, household, kids, Pears, retail
13th January 2011 / 2 Comments
Woman's Weekly /
20th March 1965
Good old Hoover: there for when the gloss of unending domestic drudgery finally wears off.
Tags: adverts totally made of wrong, blatant sexism, Hoover, household, retail
9th January 2011 / 2 Comments
Woman's Weekly /
20th March 1965
It’s interesting that 45 years ago, 30 was considered the age from which you got old. Nowadays, it’s the age at which many middle-class women start families, and I certainly don’t consider myself old in my early thirties. However, even though 30 isn’t really considered old any more, it hasn’t stopped beauty companies targeting younger women, under the banner of ‘health’. I’m not sure an unhealthy lifestyle will be fixed by a cosmetic product, but I’m running a small website for no money, not CEO of a global company: so what do I know?
Tags: beauty, blatant sexism, Endocil, retail