Train Your Wife in 5 Easy Lessons Booklet

Scrawling through friends' Facebook posts recently, I saw an image posted by my godsister that actually made me appalled.

It was of a vintage 1950s advertisement titled "Learn to Train Your Wife in Five Easy Lessons."

It proclaims, "FREE booklet shows you how! Teach her to: Fetch your slippers and pipe, massage your feet, serve you ice cold beer and snacks, sit quietly while you browse your favorite television stations, respond to nonverbal cues (such as the snapping of fingers), answer "Yes, Dear" to any and all requests …"

My godsister included a comment, "Oh, heck no!" (though her language was a little more colorful).

I'm with you, godsis.

I'm sure most women fully appreciate being thought of as if they were dogs in an obedience class.

This started me on a quest to find out if this advertisement is authentic or if it's a satirical fake that's making fun of actual vintage ads from back in the day.

I couldn't really find anything that answered my question.

But I did find real throwback ads of the same general demeanor.

Kellogg's once marketed a brand of whole-wheat cereal called Pep that was a longtime rival to Wheaties.

One of the advertisements for Pep features a husband in his dapper business suit, circa 1950s, embracing his wife, who is wearing an apron and toting a feather duster. A conversation bubble proclaims, "So the harder a wife works, the cuter she looks," along with "Vitamins for pep! Pep for vitamins! Kellogg's Pep."

Another vintage ad, this one for Lux dish soap, proclaims how "Romance dies at the touch of dishpan hands. Maybe men respect them, but believe me, they don't admire dishpan hands! I won't have them, thanks to Lux!"

Another Lux ad sticks to the same theme: "Wash dishes? Yes. But I'll not rub off honeymoon bloom by having dishpan hands. I'll use Lux!"

An advertisement for Palmolive shows a housewife with this thought bubble beside her: "A wife can blame herself if she loses love by getting 'middle-age skin'!" It comes with an addendum to the bottom of her photo: "She learned her lesson" and ends with another thought bubble, "Bob's so proud of me again, since I only use Palmolive, the soap made with olive oil, to keep skin soft, smooth, young."

Nice -- threaten women with the loss of their husbands and the loss of love by playing on their insecurities.

Next thing you know, someone will be headed to the Museum of Broken Relationships.

Yes, it's a real museum that opened in May in Hollywood in what a Business Insider article called "a hall of horrors for the heartbroken," complete with used-up tubes of toothpaste, a jar of pickles and other significant-to-someone breakup mementos that are "painful reminders of infidelity, ugly breakups, unrequited love, remorse and plain ol' messed-up situations" (though the author did use a more colorful word for "messed-up").

I can imagine one more breakup memento sitting somewhere in the museum, possibly a bottle of dish soap, next to a card that says, "My romance died because I had dishpan hands."

Van Heusen, known for its ties, also did not shy away from sexist advertising.

One of its vintage ads says, "Show her it's a man's world" with an image of a man lying in bed and a woman holding a breakfast tray while kneeling below him. "For men only!" it continues. "Brand new man-talking, power-packed patterns that tell her, it's a man's world … and make her so happy it is."

Another Van Heusen 1950s-era ad shows a man dragging a woman behind him with the words, "Are you a man," followed by an image of a woman dragging a man behind her with the words, "or a mouse?" Then it says, "Assert yourself."

Interesting way to sell ties.

Then there's my favorite, of a husband with his wife over his lap spanking her. Printed with it: "If your husband ever finds out you're not store-testing for fresher coffee …" It was an ad for Chase & Sanborn Coffee.

All these sexist, pre "Mad Men"-era advertisements -- a reflection of the times -- make me think about how two women recently ran for president, how powerful companies such as Yahoo! and GM are run by women, how Oprah Winfrey owns her own television network, and how women run entire countries.

How the times have changed, and guaranteed, it's probably not because these powerful women worried too much about fetching their husband's slippers, which brand of coffee to buy, or her dishpan hands.

Follow Times Record News senior editor/reporter Lana Sweeten-Shults on Twitter @LanaSweetenShul.

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Source: https://www.timesrecordnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/lana-sweeten-shults/2017/01/13/s-mans-world-not/96542890/

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