Example One: Is it me, or do the bare buns in this ad seem just a little bit child-porny? It’s a nice example of how our sensibilities change; these days there is a loud and ubiquitous discourse around children’s vulnerability to sexual exploitation. A discourse that, I think, would make this ad inappropriate today.
Example Two: After decades of anti-smoking public health initiatives which included, along with health warnings, the association of smoking with bad breath, yellow teeth, and stinking clothes and hair, I somehow don’t think food would be marketed with a cigarette in its mouth (1950).
Example Three: This candy ad begins “Some tigers eat people. I eat tigers. His tail was 3 chocolates longer.” Then, it continues, “P.S. I made a gun from the tube.” Today, in most parts of the U.S., childhood innocence is no longer marketed with firearms.
Source: Vintage ads (here, here, and here) and Found in Mom’s Basement.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 19
The Muslim Anarchist — March 13, 2010
Since when did you get that many smarties in a tube?
Anonnymouse — March 13, 2010
Harvey's: The nation's capital--with an a--is not in Maryland. And even if your restaurant was in DC, it wasn't in the Capitol.
Kalos — March 13, 2010
One thing that jumps out at me about the first ad. Not only are we seeing bare backsides down at the bottom of the page, but up at the top -- are those little girls sunbathing without any kind of shirts on?
Maybe this isn't the case (cos really, at such a young age you're pretty much relying on gender-coded haircuts to differentiate.) But I'd be really curious to know when it started to become indecent to have even very little girls be topless at all, whether in public (at a pool or beach) or in advertisements. I know you'd never get away with this anywhere in the U.S. anymore, unless the child was too young to walk.
A friend of mine relates the story of going into a coed public hot spring in Taiwan at about age 12, completely topless (as she hadn't hit puberty yet), and how nobody seemed to think anything odd of it.
I kind of see how the panic over pedophiles and sexual exploitation of children makes us want to cover up anything that could even possibly be seen as sexual, even if only by a very small minority of the population. But in my mind that's tantamount to saying there IS something fundamentally sexual about a girl's chest at any age, even when there's nothing there to distinguish it from a boy's chest. Maybe I'm in the minority in this, but I find it infinitely creepier to see very young girls running around in bikini tops.
Gene — March 13, 2010
I find the first ad creepy for reasons unrelated to the amount of exposed child-skin. It looks like the poster for some kind of dystopian movie. Somehow, a long line of children walking in the snow and a doctor in goggles just doesn't say 'sunshine' or 'family fun' to me.
macon d — March 13, 2010
That Seven Up commercial is a trip, thanks.
I wonder if that's really Elvis' voice?
Michelle — March 13, 2010
The 7-Up commercial was painfully dorky.
Christopher Subich — March 13, 2010
Minor comment -- those are chocolate Smarties, which are marketed only outside of the US by Nestlé. US Smarties (marketed as "Rockets" in Canada) are fruit-flavoured pressed-sugar tablets, made by an entirely different company altogether. That ad couldn't be a US one, my guess is Canadian.
Kelly Holden — March 14, 2010
Another shift in social mores (though this may be more obvious in Australia with our high incidence of skin cancers) -- children sunbathing being presented as a good thing, rather than borderline abusive on the part of the parent allowing it.
Cycles — March 15, 2010
Another way the "Drink Sunshine" ad is outdated: the copy claims this product adds "70% more food-energy to milk" (food-energy = calories) and contains "EXTRA carbohydrates" (in the form of sugar: sucrose and barley malt extract). The ad implies these are supposed to be good things. Other ads of the time also seem to stress the importance of children getting enough calories. More calories = better.
Contrast with today's themes of childhood obesity, and its prevention via less sugar and fewer calories.
justcallmejo — March 15, 2010
I found it interesting that in the first ad, the benefits along with "straight strong bones" was a "well-formed husky body". When I was little thirty years ago, "husky" was the name of sizes of clothes for kids that were above-average in weight and wouldn't be used as a positive adjective.
I didn't think they sold Smarties anywhere else but Canada - must be a Canadian ad although isn't that ironic given Canada's much stricter gun laws than the States?
eshamlin — March 16, 2010
I think it's sad that we're so programmed now in our fear of pedophiles that we immediately see bare buttocks as 'porny'. Instead of blaming the perps we blame (and overprotect) the victims.
The culture of fear is pervasive.