Feb 3, 2008

The Case of the Stinky Woman

You gotta love old ads. They sum up the attitudes of their era better than any scholarly study could. The heroine of this beauty is a young woman with marriage on her mind and only one thing standing in her way...
I love a happy ending. Oh by the way, this ad reminded me of Madmen - an excellent tv series on AMC.

I had to cut up the original ad and rearrange the panels to fit in this space and be readable the same time. Bellow is the original layout. Clicking on it will open a larger copy.
Of course it's far too easy to pick on old ads. Their manipulations seem so clumsy and obvious from the distance of time. The same is commonly overlooked contemporary advertising, but it's all there if you just look hard enough. I once saw a billboard advertising beer. There was a surfboard, the name of the beer in huge letters, a bottle, and a woman, or rather, part of a woman. She was present from crotch to boobs, no head, but I guess all the important bits were there. The headless female torso hawking beer seemed bizarre to me, but didn't seem to get much reaction from anyone else. I wish I took a photo.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm so glad they finally invented soup that stops odors! Mine just makes me smell like a cat...

Moby Dick said...

Europeans may be surprised to know that soap is very popular in the USA. I recall fondly my days living in Europe. I got used to the garlic aroma after a while.

Vanda said...

I guess missing the comedy and using this post as an opportunity to jump on your soap-box is appropriate, though I assume unintended.

By the way, garlic has many health benefits, and has been used by many different cultures for thousands of years. It is believed to be useful to prevent heart disease - a disease very common in the US these days, thanks to us being the fattest nation on Earth.