{"id":62353,"date":"2014-05-01T09:00:22","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T14:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=62353"},"modified":"2014-05-02T20:02:42","modified_gmt":"2014-05-03T01:02:42","slug":"1954-and-the-fantasy-of-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/05\/01\/1954-and-the-fantasy-of-friendship\/","title":{"rendered":"1954 and the Fantasy of Friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ads are always selling more than just a product. They’re selling a fantasy. \u00a0In this case, buy Ballantine Ale and you’ll get\u00a0this:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The this<\/em> is this ad from 1954 is what interests me. \u00a0I see same-sex friendship. These are presumably two heterosexual married couples — though some<\/a> would disagree — but the ad isn’t about love, marriage, or sex. \u00a0The ad is about the friendship that each spouse finds with their same-sex counterpart. \u00a0The two couples come together not for platonic cross-sex companionship, in other words, but same-sex friendship.<\/p>\n

For much of American history, the idea that men and women could be friends made little sense. \u00a0This was not for the reason we tend to think this today (that is, sexual temptation), but because men and women were believed to be psychologically different. \u00a0Differences between the sexes were believed to make cross-sex friendship impossible and pointless. \u00a0You wouldn’t have anything in common and couldn’t understand one another. \u00a0Women needed men for marriage, domestic divisions of labor, and children — and vice versa — but true friendship was reserved for someone of the same sex.<\/p>\n

We certainly don’t need to return to that type of thinking — even if it was adorable<\/a> — but I do appreciate the way this ad is committed to the idea that simple friendship is fantastic.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ads are always selling more than just a product. They’re selling a fantasy. \u00a0In this case, buy Ballantine Ale and you’ll get\u00a0this: The this is this ad from 1954 is what interests me. \u00a0I see same-sex friendship. These are presumably two heterosexual married couples — though some would disagree — but the ad isn’t about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":62363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106,55,2102,253,23703,23705],"class_list":["post-62353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-friendship","tag-gender","tag-gender-history","tag-history","tag-marketing","tag-vintage-stuff"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/1a4.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62353"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62525,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62353\/revisions\/62525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}