18th July 2017 / No Comments Yet
Woman /
25 December 1965
Godfrey Winn is a name almost forgotten today, but thanks to the wonders of Wikipedia, I’m able to tell you that he was a respected war journalist, actor and author. However, at this point, Winn was a much-loved columnist, writing for women, and this advert clearly shows him in this role.
Two things clearly leap out at me from this ad copy; that being in your 40s was considered vaguely shameful for women back then, whereas the stigma is considerably reduced nowadays, and that her appearance is much older than would be expected of someone her age now. Not only does she LOOK older than she is by modern standards, but her description of her ‘rheumatism’ is akin to something I might expect from someone at least 20 years older than her. Getting older in the 1960s does sound a little like Logan’s Run, but it’s important to realise that life expectancy for women when Mrs Baker was born was around 60, so perhaps it’s not that surprising that her attitude might be one of a woman approaching old age.
I’ve put rheumatism in quotes for a reason, as Fynnon Salt, from what I can gather online, is another name for Epsom Salts, still sold today as a treatment for aching muscles, and rheumatism is nowadays recognised as an umbrella term for various muscular aches. Given the description of her job and her age, I would expect Mrs Baker to experience pain in her legs, but the attitude in the advert suggests that this is an actual condition, rather than a normal reaction to fatigue. Plenty has been written about the ‘medicalisation’ of human pain, and it continues to be a controversial and complicated subject, but this seems to typify a common attitude of the time, where normal pain is seen as something wrong with the person, rather than the pressures they are subject to.
Tags: 1960s, blatant sexism, dodgy advice, health
10th May 2017 / No Comments Yet
Woman /
25 December 1965
Aha! A problem page! Although Evelyn Home was compassionate by the standards of the famous Mary Marryat, the advice here is both bad by its own standards, and, understandably, compromised by her inability to discuss homosexuality frankly, which wouldn’t be legalised between men for a further two years.
Although I can understand her urging to the writer of the featured letter to ‘forget’ her friend (a sexless affair, it seems), there was really nothing stopping him getting in touch to tell her what was happening, apart from, I suspect, a childish inability to deal with both his and her emotions. But of course, there wouldn’t have been the counselling services to help her deal with her understandable sadness, and so Evelyn could do nothing but urge her to push her feelings away, leading this poor woman to run the risk of becoming divorced from them entirely. What a sad situation.
Evelyn does redeem herself when advising a woman failing to cope with the idea of having a son-in-law with a different skin colour to her, and giving a woman who has developed a crush outside marriage permission to recognise her own sexuality. However, there’s an awful lot of avoidance here, and I recognise this attitude in older members of my family. I’m relieved that we can be franker about sex and more open to recommend talking about problems nowadays.
Tags: 1960s, dodgy advice, Evelyn Home, problem page
15th January 2017 / No Comments Yet
Woman /
25 December 1965
Now don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not against makeovers per se, and I’m a great believer in enhancing your best features, but *honestly*, this poor young woman.
Obviously, with this being the 1960s, the ability of this woman to get ‘boys’ to notice her is all-important, and naturally, poor Paulene had to ‘admit’ that her eyebrows were bushy (gasp!), leading Woman to advise her on a plucking method that would give her the least unnecessary pain. We’re also taken through a make-up routine to bring out her ‘latent prettiness’, which raises an interesting question; what does that actually *look* like?
The new hairstyle is quite something, too; a perfectly reasonable bob is turned into something more suited to a member of the Household Cavalry. In fact, I’m reminded of the makeover that poor Kate Middleton was subjected to when she became the Duchess of Cambridge. Still, now she’s getting admiring leers from her male co-workers, she’ll soon be able to bury any ambitions she might have had and get married. Thanks, Woman!
Tags: 1960s, beauty, blatant sexism, dodgy advice, fashion
1st April 2015 / No Comments Yet
Woman's Realm /
15 July 1961
Nope, not an April Fool, but a reminder of how times have changed!
Tags: dodgy advice, food, health, kids, retail, social history
3rd October 2014 / 3 Comments
Men Only /
July 1950
Always nice to see one of the adverts which inspired this Viz parody many years later.
Tags: adverts totally made of wrong, dodgy advice, retail, social history
24th August 2014 / 3 Comments
Men Only /
July 1950
Now, these ads really WERE written by drunkards, weren’t they? “Cheer up!” and “THIS IS THE GIN” indeed.
Tags: booze, dodgy advice, health, retail
15th July 2014 / 1 Comment
Men Only /
September 1951
I presume the woman embarrassing this young man is his wife, and that we have an early dandruff remedy being marketed here. After the many adverts humiliating women that I’ve seen for this site, it’s interesting to see an advert doing the same to a man.
Tags: beauty, dodgy advice, retail, social history
11th July 2014 / No Comments Yet
Men Only /
September 1951
Dubonnet is a famous French apertif, and, as the Dubonnet Wikipedia entry tells us, most certainly has alcohol present, so the tagline is a massive fib. You may not *think* you’re drinking something strong, but a fortified wine with an ABV of 15% isn’t to be treated lightly, even if you do drink it with a mixer. Dubonnet is a drink very much of this era, as this BBC News article explains. I’m in my mid-30s, and I’d certainly never heard of it. I’ve noticed that there seems to be a general admiration towards France from Brits in the 1950s, which I’d attributed to the British middle & upper classes going to France on their holidays, which the BBC article appears to support, and which would explain the prominent use of French in this advert.
Tags: dodgy advice, retail, social history
18th June 2014 / 3 Comments
Men Only /
July 1950
Well, it’s not quite as awful as this corker from Amplex, but how fascinating to see men’s grooming as closely scrutinised as women’s, so early on in the development of deodorant. Naturally, the approach is to appeal to men’s ambition, rather than whether their very existence is causing offence to others, but the message is clear; high-ranking men might sweat the same as a spot welder, but they’re not allowed to show it.
Tags: dodgy advice, emotional blackmail, health, retail, social history
