6 Sexist Ads Even Too On-the-Nose for ‘Mad Men’
Mad Men took place at an ad agency, which gave the writers a good avenue for digging into a bunch of themes they wanted to address. Advertising was a lens for looking at identity, deception, consumerism, technology, prejudice and more. That means at no point was it essential that the show portray advertising totally accurately. You might see the ad campaigns those characters wrote and say, “Clearly this serves to tell us about the characters themselves, even if this ad would never have been made in real life.”
But, in reality, the actual ads of yesteryear were just as ridiculous as anything those chuckling drunks could come up with.
Women Are Soft and Gentle, But They Hit Things
The idea that you could easily repair or replace the parts of a Volkswagen really did make for a good selling point. But if you suspect you’ll get into a lot of accidents, that might mean you’re a bad driver. This 1964 ad relieves you of that worry by saying that your wife is the one who’ll keep hilariously knocking into lampposts.
One might imagine that an ad that refers to your spouse crashing the car, rather than to you doing so, would seek to arouse a protective instinct, giving the ad a chance to tout the car’s safety record. 1960s cars couldn’t quite do that because none of them were safe. Auto deaths spiked in the 1960s, with auto deaths per 100,000 people being twice what they are today. “At least you can easily replace the rearview mirror” was the most they could promise you.
Dry Vegetables Are Gross, Just Like Women
National Association of Ice Industries
“Women and carrots have one enemy in common,” says this 1941 ad. You should take a second to try to puzzle out the answer to that riddle before reading the answer: dryness. Luckily, you can spare your carrots from this terrible fate by investing in a refrigerator.
This analogy might be hard to follow, particularly because “dryness” isn’t the first flaw we think of when we picture unrefrigerated carrots. Instead, we picture the stiff root vegetable going soft and shriveling. If you have to link decaying carrots to the members of one sex, women probably would not be your first choice.
Note, however, that this ad doesn’t insult women by equating them to rotting carrots. Instead, it insults rotting carrots by equating them to women. The ad assumes that we’re all aware women lose their beauty and now applies that familiar image to something you think less about: the shelf life of produce. Presumably, the man who makes major appliance purchasing decisions didn’t spend much time monitoring vegetables to see which ones needed to be discarded.
In 1940, just 50 percent of American homes had fridges. By 1944, it was 85 percent. During this tumultuous time, consensus didn’t yet exist about what sort of fridge everyone should use. As you can see in the above ad, you could buy a traditional ice box, a newfangled electric fridge or a fridge powered by gas. Each cost $450, which is over $10,000 in today’s money.
Delta’s Catalog of Women
Delta
Speaking of dropping prices, take a look at the numbers in this 1973 ad. They were advertising flying from Miami to New York for $38.89, thanks to a half-off military discount. Today, you can fly that same route for that same price, except without a discount, and in 2025 dollars. We’re not going to name drop the modern budget airline here, because they didn’t sponsor this article, but you probably know the one.
The undiscounted 1973 fare would be $584 in today’s dollars, or more than 15 times today’s cheap fare. Some people pine for luxurious air travel of the past, and if you’re willing to pay 15 times today’s base fare, you’re able to get that same experience today, and more. But you also have the option to travel even if you can’t afford those prices.
As for the models in this ad, that’s Delta cracking a joke. They’re not really saying you have a girlfriend in every American city and that they conform to geographic stereotypes. They were just playing on the idea of a sailor having a girl in every port, across a bunch of international destinations. That idea, unlike the domestic version pictured here, was one that people really did believe — and was just as ridiculous and imaginary.
Men Are the Victim of Menstrual Cramps
Thayer Laboratories
Here’s another ad that’s a joke. This 1968 ad is being funny by saying the husband is the one who’s truly suffering during a certain time of the month. But it’s not totally joking. It really does try to appeal to husbands with this message.
The product in question is a drug that was originally called phenacetin. Scientists first prepared it in 1887, and companies sold it as a painkiller, with limited success. Starting in the 1950s, Thayer Laboratories mixed it with salicylamide and marketed the product specifically for relief from menstrual symptoms. In 1983, the FDA banned phenacetin for killing the kidneys and causing cancer.
Please!
Thomson
Don’t worry – this ad isn’t really showing a boss groping his employee against her protestations. You’re just supposed to be so familiar with that image that you assume that’s what’s going on, until you read further and learn she’s really talking to a salesman, begging for information about spandex.
Spandex stretch pants weren’t so popular in 1964, when this ad came out. The material had been invented for stretchy girdles. Then, as girdles lost favor with the public, companies pushed increasingly hard to sell the stuff as athleticwear.
The “Mr. Thomson” campaign appears to have gone through some workshopping. In this earlier installment below, the man isn’t revealed to be a salesman but really is grabbing at the woman.
Thomson
In this next version, there’s no joke surrounding the “please” line. It’s simply a woman objecting to Mr. Thomson touching her. The campaign assumes this would be a fantasy for its female customers, as it means that you’re irresistible.
Thomson
Planning for Your Wife’s Death
Albany Life
The images in the above ad first appear to be tools you can use to kill your wife. Read closer, and you’ll see that these instead represent the many household chores your wife performs, making her death an expensive proposition, as you’ll have to now pay someone to do all these tasks.
“This looks like murder only at first glance” is always a winning form of humor, and this breakdown of the worth of a homemaker’s labor is surely downright feminist. But the assumption that the reader’s wife is a homemaker might not be so accurate, considering that Albany Life produced this ad in 1983. And though life insurance very much is about replacing the departed’s financial contributions, people usually don’t like thinking of it as that, which is why most ads stay less explicit, talking vaguely about “security” and “peace of mind.” Either that or they talk about providing for your loved ones after your own death.
If you do decide to kill your wife for the life insurance money, you might be delighted to learn that your policy doesn’t block you from receiving a payout in that situation. Life insurance policies often refuse to pay out in cases of suicide, but they don’t specifically ban murderers from receiving benefits. The state already punishes proven murderers, so the terms of the insurance policy can offer little disincentive on top of that. This results in some strange situations.
In 1982, Colorado man Clarence Burns killed his wife Patti by shooting her five times in the face. Prosecutors charged him with second-degree murder, and a judge sentenced him to spend nights in jail for two years, followed by two more years of probation. This lenient sentence would allow Burns to continue working by day, supporting his teenage son. Then the judge learned the death had scored Burns an $82,000 life insurance payout. Reasoning that the estate was now valuable enough that the father didn’t need to work, the judge changed the sentence to straight prison.
Burns’ job, by the way, for which the judge chose the special sentence? He was a butcher.
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