A Long Way, Baby

Consider this advertisement from the 1950's:

The actual text reads, in part:

"A man marries a woman because he loves her. So instead of blaming him if  married love begins to cool, she should question herself"...in other words, it's her fault for smelling like a woman when she should be smelling  like a janitor's bucket.

And what is hubby doing behind that closed door?

It could be worse.  In the advertisement below, the husband is leaving the house at night, almost certainly headed for a tryst with a ten-dollar  whore off to do the mercenary bop on the rubber sheets at the local No-Tell Motel because his wife is 'unclean'...his mistress  uses Lysol and never loses her "precious air of romance"...she might have sex with a dozen different men every day, but  she douches with  Lysol, otherwise that sort of behavior might be considered distasteful and unattractive to the man.

His wife, on the other hand, is perfect in every way - except for her lack of  'daintiness'. This lack, according to the ad, makes her seem disgusting to her husband.

 She gets no love until she cleans up her act with Lysol.

There are worse advertisements. This is one of them:

Nothing says "Lie Down and Take it Like A Woman" louder than a pair of  permanent-press polyester trousers. This clipping doesn't simply imply that women should be treated as objects and possessions, it mandates it.

This next one sends a not-very subtle and wholly sociopathic  message:

"If she doesn't give it to you, get it yourself", it advises the male- note that it isn't aimed at women (the purported givers of cologne gifts), but rather at the man, who just takes stuff. If he doesn't get what he wants from the woman, he should get it himself. If she objects...too bad. She's just a throw-rug with no human feelings, you might as well take what you want, right?

Hmmm...if you can't get laid without cologne, you probably can't get laid with it either, but that doesn't excuse the ad.

Instead of woman-hating disinfectant ads, there should be advertisements aimed at men:

"Are you lonely?  Has the fire left your marriage? Does your wife go 'bowling' twice a night and three times on Sunday, yet she doesn't even own a pair of shoes or balls? Well, stop blaming her and instead think about your balls. When was the last time you washed them? Can she even find your tiny mast of man-hood in the overgrown tangle of your intimate area? Restore the love with soap, water and a pair of scissors...give yourself a bath and a trim before she does it for you!"

In a sign of some sort of progress, there are now ads aimed at women that seem to imply that men are no longer even needed. I saw this in the reception area at work, it is the inside front cover to a recent issue of a magazine called 'Marie Claire'. The address label had been torn off the cover and the picture of the product was missing. I have no idea what this is intended to sell:

I think it says:  "He's a jerk, so do it yourself."