Are Today's Ads More Sexist Than They Were 40 Years Ago?
KegWorks, a blog about beer, resurrected a gallery of hilariously bad beer ads from what looks like the 1950s and 1960s. Almost all of them feature women cooking or being housewives, while men pour beer and wear suits. We’re supposed to laugh at their chauvinism.
But compared to some of today’s advertising, it’s tame. Quiznos “2 Girls 1 Sub” ad, which features two Playboy models in swimsuits making orgasm noises while eating a sandwich, is supposed to be ironically funny … but really it’s just a blatant attempt to attract male eyeballs. It’s not comedy. It’s just two women without their clothes on.
And then there’s Danica Patrick and GoDaddy, whose career as a racecar driver seems to come second to the advertising value of using her as an excuse to make jokes about breasts. (Although to be fair her recent work for Boost Mobile, in which she signs a pair of “man-boobs,” seems to be poking fun at her previous work for GoDaddy.)
But the main difference between the old ads and the new ones is the fact that 40 years ago the women in ads were allowed to keep their clothes on and performed non-sexual functions. Today, that no longer seems to be the case.
Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.
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