"Free For Chubbies"
July 2nd, 2009
It’s an old-timey Lane Bryant ad! One of the Creepiest Vintage Ads of All Time.
Personally, I think the creepiest one is the Love’s Baby Soft ad. But a case could certainly be made for “is it always illegal to kill a woman?” Or… most of the other ones, really. (“Douche with Lysol!” is also quite a winner.)
Of the Lane Bryant ad, Retro Comedy says:
Who needs self-esteem when you can have a free fashion book for chubbies? Also, proving that advertising weight representation has always been screwed up, the girl pictured is totally not chubby.
I also think that skirt, pointing out madly to the sides, is a little bit crazy. Also, I’m not sure what exactly is “free” for “chubbies.” Is it the “Chubby Style Book”? Yay?
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Advertising, Fashion, Feminism, Old Timey
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I especially love that Lysol acts in a way that soap, salt or soda never can. Srsly – soda?! OMG.
And that dude with the tiger and the eyepatch? I have no idea what he’s trying to sell…
My mum works for a nursing organisation and has that lysol ad up on her bulletin board. She says all the older nurses flinch (they used to use it to disinfect wards) and the younger nurses just look confused.
RandomQuorum: That’d be baking soda, not the drink.
And the tiger/eyepatch ad is selling the shirt he’s wearing.
Oh my god, I can’t believe ads from my living memory are “vintage”! I’ve never felt so old in all my life!
The Love’s Baby Soft — I thought she was soooooooo beautiful! And sophisticated! Never for a second looked like pedophilia to me at the time. And the Hathaway shirt guy with the eye patch was around forever, though not always with an adorable baby tiger. He was debonair! Mysterious!
Come on people, the seventies was about more than birthin’ you all! (wanders off grumbling to listen to her old Chicago albums)
I have to say, the Chase & Sandborn Spanking and A Girl Around The House ads were the worst for me. The Love’s Baby Soft thing is an update of the same crap they did in the 70′s with a grown woman dressed up like a little girl. Most of the ads that we find so offensive from bygone days have really just been repackaged and retooled to carry the same destructive messages today. When we call companies out on it, they blame the ad firms they use, people dismiss the ads as being isolated instances instead of a decades long assault on our common culture, and we go around again for another era. The new favorite tactic is claiming that ads which air in foreign markets are somehow off limits to criticism, as if destroying the self esteem of non American or non Western women was somehow OK. (Example: Bacardi and Burger King’s latest piles of excrement.)
Some of the artwork on those ads are pretty good, with the Pears baby in particular. It would make a great poster for a horror/disaster movie. The Pitney Bowes ad, despite its tacky and offensive headline, is hysterical, because of the woman’s “screw you asshole” expression. And I’ve had a Pitney Bowes meter in my office too. They’re not worth the price they charge. I got rid of it and just went back to good old stamps.
With regard to the Lysol douche, upon enlarging the ad, I was further alarmed upon reading, “the very source of objectionable odors is eliminated.”
I’ll just bet it is. *crosses legs tightly*
Lilacsigil, I’m not altogether sure they didn’t mean caustic soda, if they were trying to eliminate the very source of said objectionable odors.
The lysol one is really frightening to me, because it seems targeted at women who were afraid that their bodies smelled, but were ashamed to buy a “femimine” product. So they could just use lysol and no one would know, since they might have already had it around the house. I guess people might know once their pine fresh insides rotted out, but until then, they could cleanse away their awful womanliness. ::shudder::
LOVED the link, hilarious — and the captions especially, very funny. Thanks for posting it!
Well, at least in those days, plus-size clothing didn’t cost more.