That one eyebrow being raised in disgust looks downright villainous!  At the very least, her stockings were enough to interupt the enjoyment of his newspaper.

Of course, she's knitting, being busy with the work of the house, while he reads of the world's events, as his sphere is public life while hers is private and hidden away.  Other things we could make explicit in this image is the way the man looks, while the woman is looked at.  Like Mulvey said of film and the Male Gaze, those who look are viewed as the subjects, a position offered as more powerful than those who are merely seen.

I'm so glad I'm married to a woman then!

But things were apparently different for both sexes.  He is sitting at home wearing a full suit.  Now-a-days, he'd probably be wearing underwear and a t-shirt.  Both people in this ad are dressed up.  So it kind of makes sense for her not to have runs going up and down her stockings. He's not sitting there with mustard stains all over his lapel.

You make it sound like a bad thing for a woman to take pride in keeping herself clean/tidy/up-with-her-appearance. Personally, I look at this ad and think "What happened to those days? The day's where we gave a d-mn about our looks, our spouses, our homes and even the way society is?"

Then again; I'm also someone who looks at a man in the kitchen and thinks "GET THE H-LL OUT!!!"

"Honey, we have to talk."
"Oh, what is it, dear?"
"Those...things you're wearing..."
"Yes? What about them?"
"Do you know that those runs are unsightly AND expensive?"
"Wait...how are they expensive?"
"Every time you get a new run, I have to pay off the fashion police. Seriously, this is getting ridiculous."
"They're real?"
"...They're EVERYWHERE."

This picture, as a poster to pursuade people to buy new stockings, reveals the old values of people - men's satisfaction is equally important, or more important than, women's preference. Although the woman in the picture does not seem to care much about her stockings, the copywriter brings out the message that for a good marriage, a wife should place higher importance in husband's preference than her own. I think this phenomenon of women trying to satisfy men in order to get their care and love still exists in contemporary US society. This also reflects the long-rooted inception of men as the center of the community/family and women as the secondary/inferior group.

He is looking at her legs with fright, not approbation. He is hoping she will not see the runs caused by his secretly wearing the stockings the night before.

You can just bemoan or castigate the cultural narrative, even of the past. You need to subvert it. :)

I can assure you at that age when I was looking at my wife's legs, I wasn't thinking about her stockings.  Nor was any man of that era, likely.