Blog Post 2

Hannah Dickie

2/6/15

Advertisements

            Advertisements are something that we have become accustomed to in our everyday lives. They are all around us whether it’s on television, radio, or even in magazines. In the second chapter entitled American Dreams, Stifled Realities, of Andi Zeisler’s book Feminism and Pop Culture, she talks a lot about different ads in the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s.  Zeisler lists some of the ad slogans that were being sold during this time period. Some of them included “Be the girl he marries…forever”, “Keep that school girl complexion”, and “Often a bridesmaid but never a bride” (Zeisler 25). These ads were made to make women feel uncomfortable, even in their own skin. They make it seem like the only purpose a women has is to get married and try to look young and beautiful for as long as they can. They targeted women and purposely made them feel like they needed a certain product in order to be loved by a man and accepted by society. One ad that Zeisler describes really stood out to me. It was the ad about Miss Edna. The ad says “Edna’s case was really a pathetic one. Like every women, her primary ambition was to marry. Most girls of her set were married- or about to be. Yet not one possessed more grace or charm or loveliness than she. And as her birthday crept gradually toward the thirty- mark, marriage seemed father from her life than ever” (Zeisler 25). There are so many things I find absurd with this ad. The first one being it’s for Listerine, the mouth wash. I think it’s crazy to believe that the reason some girl isn’t getting married is because she didn’t use Listerine after brushing her teeth, to make her breath smell better. Whether you use Listerine or not should have nothing to do with relationships. Another thing I found really ridiculous was that it literally said her primary ambition in life was to get married. This once again shows that women were being told that the only thing they were good for was being a wife. Yes marriage is a goal many people eventually want to achieve but it’s not the only or primary one. Now a days people want careers and to establish themselves even before getting married. These advertisements of that time really make me think that a woman was not considered successful in her life unless she was married, and according to this ad it should be by the time she’s thirty. In today’s society I think it’s very common for people to be marring later on in life. Not everyone is getting married as young as they did in the 40’s and 50’s. I also think it’s become more accepted for women to not be married until later in their lives.         

            One thing that Zeisler said that surprised me was that “Ads aimed at women, however, were much more about romance than about sex” (Zeisler 24). The reason this surprised me was that in today’s advertisements there is much more sex appeal then there is romance. In many commercials the people in them tend to be attractive skinny people. And if it goes with the product women might either have on very tight clothes or not much clothes at all. One of the commercials we discussed in class was the Nair commercial. I wanted to see what the difference between an older Nair commercial and a newer one looked like so I went on YouTube and found a Nair commercial from 1975. In this commercial the women had on something like gym clothes. They had running shorts and loose fitted tank top with sneakers. They were “working out” on the bleachers. The Nair commercial for 2014 was much different and had far more sex appeal to it. The women were in tight bathing suits sitting by a pool and posing. These commercials show perfectly the change that has happened between older advertisements and the advertisements of today.