Are you sure the man is meant to be a chef? The way I read it the Chef is the Kenwood (it does all the preparation but not the cooking), the man is just your regular white collar professional who has just won his wife's affections with white goods. I don't know any chefs who wear collar and tie.

Still sexist claptrap of course.

Agreed. The Chef is the appliance being sold, not the man. But yes, still heinous with the "That's What Wives Are For!" stomach- churning copy.

I think you're both right-- The Chef is the appliance. Thanks for clarifying that! But, still sexist claptrap =) And the chef=man and cook=woman is a powerful image that sill holds some truth!

I think it's obvious the chef is the appliance (it's called a chef, for crying out loud), but there IS a play here on the idea of the chef as necessarily male.

And I'm sorry, but I absolutely fell over laughing upon reading the "that's what wives are for" line. It's so ridiculously quaint, I guess. Or naive, or what have you. It's really hard to imagine, these days, how this sort of line DIDN'T get women pissed off at this company (and, in the end, it's the women who are the targets of the ad, not really the men).

That's what wives are for! And that dreadful grin on her face! I should print this and hang it over the kitchen sink. If I want a good wallop, that is.

"(and, in the end, it’s the women who are the targets of the ad, not really the men)."

Looks like the ad could be trying to convince the men who have more of the income after all to buy one for their wife. It says so in the corner. It's like, your wife cooks so better get something to help make it easier for her.

I saw the something similar happen in some kind of classification of French blogs. There were several categories, mostly occupied by men: politics, geek, etc. and gastronomy. Then women complained and so special categories were created for women's blogs (the fact that they couldn't share the same categories as the guys is already ridiculous) and "gastronomy blogs" became "cooking blogs".
Men cook food = it's gastronomy !
Women cook food = well it's food.
And there were no "politics" category for women's blogs, but a "motherhood" one.

Judging from the hairstyles, the design of the machine, and the font used, I wouldn't be surprised if this ad's from the mid 1960's.

With a little googling, I found this website stating that it's from 1961. The design of the machine actually looks a little later than that to me, but this is the only date I could find.

http://momgrind.com/2008/08/05/cooking-thats-what-wives-are-for-wordless-wednesday/

The fact that the ad is actually referring to the appliance I agree with, obviously. I'm not very well-versed in the norms of advertising in this era, but the fact that the man is even in the picture when it's pretty unnecessary for him to be there (in my opinion) shows that that sort of double-meaning is exactly what the people who made this ad had in mind.

Also, with a boyfriend in culinary school, I can tell you that I never refer to his schooling or his colleagues/instructors as "cooks". The women, who know how to cook, are still not proficient enough to do all of the work, which is why they need the appliance, the "Chef".

At least from what I've seen and heard, the man-chef woman-cook mentality isn't as common as it once was, as some of my aforementioned boyfriends most respected, talented, and innovative chefs have been women. How the rest of the country (or people in other countries) see it, I'm not so certain.

i think it's safe to say that the advertising industry's concept of who does the cooking at home has not changed since this ad. in the few instances where men are cooking for their family, they are either using a microwave or bumbling the whole thing up.

This ad is actually from the early 60s.