I found this collection of vintage ads at the Mail online:
When I was copying the website link, I noticed that this story was in the “Femail” section. There’s the homepage, of course, and then there’s “News,” “Sport,” “TV&Showbiz,” “Health,” “Science&Tech,” etc. etc., and then there’s “Femail,” the section targeted at women. It seems to be mostly fashion with some mother-daughter stories of various types. I wish sometime I’d see a magazine (or magazine section) aimed at women that didn’t see “women’s issues” and science/technology/news/sport/etc. as completely different topics.
I did like this story about elephants doing math, though.
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Those are very sexist, it’s true.
Note that the spelling “femail” also effectively implies that the entire paper, the Mail, is for the “mail” (or “male” if you prefer). The parts set aside for women are fashion and stories about peoples’ mothers. Because why would men (in the UK no less) care about Margaret Thatcher?
Totally agree about FeMail being a warped concept - conversely, I have had to look for the film magazine I like in the “Men’s Interest” section at a certain chain of newsagents. Because obviously film geeks cannot be women. It rather put me off going there again, though I see they’ve now stopped this.
The Kenwood Chef is still considered an ideal wedding gift in Britain - I speak as a third-generation KC owner (that’s Granny’s in the picture. It’s still going strong, as is my mother’s.) You’d still only see ads for such things in women’s glossies such as “Good Housekeeping” - though the assumption that cooking gadgets are for women is less overt, it is still there. (My husband cooks more than I do, but I admit he doesn’t touch the KC.)
I’m not so sure the last ad isn’t more anti-dollybird than anti-women-in-general - like a blonde joke. But it’s a very fine distinction.
Since the joke is about a patriarchally-constructed stereotype of a certain kind of woman, then yeah, the joke is anti-woman. After all, it doesn’t matter which variety of pigeonhole the patriarchy wants to put a given woman in, there’s always one.
True!
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