Vintage ads gone bad: Buy a car, win a woman
Posted at 8:24 AM Nov 27, 2009
By Andrea Grimes
In advertising, when women aren't being broken up into body parts, they're often just full-on conflated with inanimate objects. Often, those objects have actual names and uses. But in this vintage ad from Honda, women are merely "things." I mean, they're just ladies, right? No need to get specific.
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Interesting, though: instead of claiming that a nice car will get you women, Honda's claiming that a crappy car will get you women ...
It also looks to me like the ladies in this ad are sexy-Halloween precursors. Seriously, Honda? A snow bunny, a cowgirl, a sailor? Even if these women weren't "things," they'd still be caricatures.
[Via Sociological Images]
Comments
Good thing advertising has come so far since... oh... crap, never mind.
Posted 11/27/2009 at 01:23:25 PMI kinda think Michelle, Tammy, and Allison would prefer air conditioning... but hey, Honda knows best. Clearly.
Posted 11/28/2009 at 08:38:01 AMWas I born too late, and raised too equally?
I mean, I didn't see this as insulting to women at all. I could relate to most all of the women standing around the car, and read this ad as telling me that the less I spent on a car, the more I could spend on all the things that make me tick: ski, go to the beach, go to work, go to school, go on road trips, play and have fun.
I even related in to the girl in sexy lingerie, except my nightwear is old Victorian nightgowns or button up men's long johns, that I find in 2nd hand stores in the ski villages where I play.
Does seeing these women as powerful instead of some man's toy, make me wrong? When was this ad printed? Before or after the woman's revolution?
Posted 11/28/2009 at 02:06:17 PMbefore, wendy. before.
Posted 11/28/2009 at 10:09:26 PMthis is, after all, the kind of shit that prompted a sex revolution.
Eushannasia, Women's Liberation really started kickin' some tail on this country's 100 yr.+ movement in the mid '60's. This ad is from '72, so technically it could very well represent the idea Emily got when she saw it. It's was not meant to be a message to men, but to women. "The more you spend on a car the more you can spend on other things" Women.
If this ad had been from the 50s or earlier than 65, you would have a point, but by 1972, the ad world had already entered into the sexual revolution, and had begun reflecting it t the market. This ad is one example.
Posted 12/01/2009 at 12:28:21 PM