Vietnam-era anti-draft propaganda from The Draft Resistance offers girls to pacifist boys.
From Vintage Ads via Jezebel.
sex
Jenelle N. sent this ad in:
As she put it, “I’d say there’s nothing subtle about this one.” No, indeed.
Thanks, Jenelle!
The things here trivialized… not trivial. This ad made me shudder more than once. If you’ve ever been stalked, peeped, or sexually assaulted, you may want to skip this one.
It’s an ad for a cell phone kind of like the iphone (sorry iphone people, I’m sure it’s nothing like the iphone).
The phone doesn’t appear to be sold in the U.S. Via AdFreak.
Captain Crab sent in this image (found here) of pubic hair dye:
Here is a link to the betty website. According to the site,
In less than one year, over 100,000 happy customers are using betty to naturally match their hair above, cover gray or just for fun! Whether you’re a blonde (be a true blonde now!), radiant auburn, rich brunette, raven black or want to try hot pink for fun, our easy to use no-drip formula gives you the perfect finishing touch.
These might be useful for a discussion of the ever-increasing standards for personal beauty: once upon a time, you just worried about gray hair on your head. And taking care of things “down there” meant obsessing over odor and controlling evidence of menstruation. Now women get genital plastic surgery and “vaginal rejuvenation” (those sites aren’t work-appropriate) as they age or after childbirth, shave or wax their pubic hair, and apparently can now dye their pubic hair to be sure it doesn’t show signs of aging (or just doesn’t match their hair)–although the betty website FAQ link does mention that men also use the product. I can’t help but suspect that the mainstreaming of porn and increased access (especially online) to images of women’s genitals is providing average women with a new body part to compare to other women and find lacking.
At least the pink seems like something you’d just do for fun, not out of a concern to hide signs of aging. Although maybe there are 50-year-old women out there running around with pink pubes. What do I know?
Thanks, Captain!
Ben O. sent us this image of an H&M ad on the back of a no fare bus. He writes:
Spotted in Atlanta’s “Atlantic Station” development: a shuttle bus called the “Free Ride” juxtaposed with an advertisement for their newest retail tenant, H&M… The result: a half-naked woman in bed, with the words FREE RIDE superimposed above her. (As a friend commented, the “Top $12.90” being advertised could be interpreted as a sexual service as well.)
Thanks for thinkin’ of us, Ben!
Emily sent me pictures of Hip Parade toys. They are figurines shaped like women’s bodies from the waist to just above the knees. There are various types and colors. They’re only $8!
This one is called “Active Girls” and for some reason says “cat” and has a picture of a cat on the butt. I don’t know what the connection between a cat and being active is.
Found here.
Found here.
This one is the “trading torso.” You can trade with others to collect all four!
Found here.
Thanks, Em! Sort of.
I took this photo on Father’s day. The images were on the window of a Sephora store (basically, a make-up store) in Pasadena, CA. The text says:
father’s day is June 15.
who’s your daddy?
I’m sure it’s supposed to mean “Who’s your babydaddy?” But still… do we really need to go there?
—————————
Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
In a 1987 article titled “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” Carol Cohn discussed the way in which “defense intellectuals” (the scientists and strategists behind war) used language that was rife with sexual metaphors, sexual imagery, and the promise of sexual domination. Here are some of the words and phrases she heard these men (mostly) use to refer to military weapons:
“penetration aids”
“vertical erector launchers”
“thrust-to-weight ratios”
“soft lay downs”
“deep penetration”
“protracted versus spasm attacks”
“releasing… megatonnage in one orgasmic whump”
India’s first explosion of a nuclear bomb described as “losing her virginity” and then the United States asked whether they should “throw her away.”
An explanation of why the MX missile is to be placed in new silos: “because they’re in the nicest hole—you’re not going to take the nicest missile you have and put it in a crummy hole”
One journalist described a nuclear blast like this:
“Then, just when it appeared as though the thing had settled down into a state of permanence, there came shooting out of the top a giant mushroom that increased the size of the pillar to a total of 45,000 feet. The mushroom top was even more alive than the pillar, seething and boiling in a white fury of creamy foam, sizzling upward and then descending earthward, a thousand geysers rolled into one. It kept struggling in an elemental fury, like a creature in the act of breaking the bonds that held it down.”
With this in mind, consider the costume worn by Miss Atomic Bomb (1957). Yes that is a mushroom cloud or, dare I say, an “orgasmic whump” spreading out all over her. A full-size cardboard cut-out Miss Atomic Bomb, that is Lee Merlin, welcomed Gwen and I to the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas. Here she is in all her glory:
I want to give a shout-out to Vivek who mentioned Merlin in response to our previous post on the Atomic Testing Museum.
Reference: Cohn, Carol. 1987. Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals. Signs 12, 4: 687-718.
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.
Jenelle N. sent this ad in:
As she put it, “I’d say there’s nothing subtle about this one.” No, indeed.
Thanks, Jenelle!
The things here trivialized… not trivial. This ad made me shudder more than once. If you’ve ever been stalked, peeped, or sexually assaulted, you may want to skip this one.
It’s an ad for a cell phone kind of like the iphone (sorry iphone people, I’m sure it’s nothing like the iphone).
The phone doesn’t appear to be sold in the U.S. Via AdFreak.
Captain Crab sent in this image (found here) of pubic hair dye:
Here is a link to the betty website. According to the site,
In less than one year, over 100,000 happy customers are using betty to naturally match their hair above, cover gray or just for fun! Whether you’re a blonde (be a true blonde now!), radiant auburn, rich brunette, raven black or want to try hot pink for fun, our easy to use no-drip formula gives you the perfect finishing touch.
These might be useful for a discussion of the ever-increasing standards for personal beauty: once upon a time, you just worried about gray hair on your head. And taking care of things “down there” meant obsessing over odor and controlling evidence of menstruation. Now women get genital plastic surgery and “vaginal rejuvenation” (those sites aren’t work-appropriate) as they age or after childbirth, shave or wax their pubic hair, and apparently can now dye their pubic hair to be sure it doesn’t show signs of aging (or just doesn’t match their hair)–although the betty website FAQ link does mention that men also use the product. I can’t help but suspect that the mainstreaming of porn and increased access (especially online) to images of women’s genitals is providing average women with a new body part to compare to other women and find lacking.
At least the pink seems like something you’d just do for fun, not out of a concern to hide signs of aging. Although maybe there are 50-year-old women out there running around with pink pubes. What do I know?
Thanks, Captain!
Ben O. sent us this image of an H&M ad on the back of a no fare bus. He writes:
Spotted in Atlanta’s “Atlantic Station” development: a shuttle bus called the “Free Ride” juxtaposed with an advertisement for their newest retail tenant, H&M… The result: a half-naked woman in bed, with the words FREE RIDE superimposed above her. (As a friend commented, the “Top $12.90” being advertised could be interpreted as a sexual service as well.)
Thanks for thinkin’ of us, Ben!
Emily sent me pictures of Hip Parade toys. They are figurines shaped like women’s bodies from the waist to just above the knees. There are various types and colors. They’re only $8!
This one is called “Active Girls” and for some reason says “cat” and has a picture of a cat on the butt. I don’t know what the connection between a cat and being active is.
Found here.
Found here.
This one is the “trading torso.” You can trade with others to collect all four!
Found here.
Thanks, Em! Sort of.
I took this photo on Father’s day. The images were on the window of a Sephora store (basically, a make-up store) in Pasadena, CA. The text says:
father’s day is June 15.
who’s your daddy?
I’m sure it’s supposed to mean “Who’s your babydaddy?” But still… do we really need to go there?
—————————
Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
In a 1987 article titled “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” Carol Cohn discussed the way in which “defense intellectuals” (the scientists and strategists behind war) used language that was rife with sexual metaphors, sexual imagery, and the promise of sexual domination. Here are some of the words and phrases she heard these men (mostly) use to refer to military weapons:
“penetration aids”
“vertical erector launchers”
“thrust-to-weight ratios”
“soft lay downs”
“deep penetration”
“protracted versus spasm attacks”
“releasing… megatonnage in one orgasmic whump”
India’s first explosion of a nuclear bomb described as “losing her virginity” and then the United States asked whether they should “throw her away.”
An explanation of why the MX missile is to be placed in new silos: “because they’re in the nicest hole—you’re not going to take the nicest missile you have and put it in a crummy hole”
One journalist described a nuclear blast like this:
“Then, just when it appeared as though the thing had settled down into a state of permanence, there came shooting out of the top a giant mushroom that increased the size of the pillar to a total of 45,000 feet. The mushroom top was even more alive than the pillar, seething and boiling in a white fury of creamy foam, sizzling upward and then descending earthward, a thousand geysers rolled into one. It kept struggling in an elemental fury, like a creature in the act of breaking the bonds that held it down.”
With this in mind, consider the costume worn by Miss Atomic Bomb (1957). Yes that is a mushroom cloud or, dare I say, an “orgasmic whump” spreading out all over her. A full-size cardboard cut-out Miss Atomic Bomb, that is Lee Merlin, welcomed Gwen and I to the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas. Here she is in all her glory:
I want to give a shout-out to Vivek who mentioned Merlin in response to our previous post on the Atomic Testing Museum.
Reference: Cohn, Carol. 1987. Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals. Signs 12, 4: 687-718.
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.