By David Futrelle
With Christmas only a couple of days away, I decided to put together a little roundup of some of the most wildly misogynistic Christmas ads from the Mad Men era — loosely and somewhat expansively defined as the mid-50s through the mid-70s.
Looking through a number of examples — I borrowed a bunch from a big collection of them here — I was struck by how weirdly horny a lot of the old Christmas ads were. Now, obviously sex sells, and advertisers look for any excuse to work it into their ads. But I have to say I was a little startled to see how eager the ad execs of the Mad Men era were to shoehorn sex into the stereotypically wholesome world of Christmas ads.
I was also a bit surprised by how often Santa himself figured in these sexy ads. Evidently the real-life Mad Men of the era spent a lot of time thinking about Santa fucking.
Let’s start our tour of Horny Vintage Christmas ads with an example of a Christmas-ized version of one strangely popular ad trope from that bygone era: Women positively ecstatic over household appliances. Though in this case the woman in question is portrayed as being as excited by the symbolic submission as she is by the Hoover itself.
But it’s not just appliances that arouse this level of lust. This is definitely the horniest ad for spoons I’ve ever seen.
And somehow this ad for boot polish managed to be even hornier, to the point that the model’s nipples are visible. Was this one aimed at actual shoe and boot fetishists? Or just at women hot for Santa?
Turns out Santa was a bit of a horndog himself. And more than a bit creepy.
Hey ladies! Wear our stockings and creepy old dudes will look up your dress!
In the minds of mid-century ad men, Santa had a wife who was kind of way to young for him — and who evidently loved ironing as much as she loved to swoon over her candy-cane daddy.
Those Mad Men really did spend a lot of time pondering the secret sex life of Santa.
And of Mrs. Claus, who had admirers of her own, and who was apparently into threesomes.
I guess the Clauses had an open relationship.
Of course, not all of that era’s sexy Christmas ads involved the Man in Red himself. There were plenty of horny ads with no Santas in sight:
On the Eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
One juicy steak
Two crab legs
Free parking
Four teriyakis
Five fab desserts
Six great drinks
Seven artichokes, yep!
And a really nice pair of jugs!
There were definitely some weird Christmas traditions back in the day.
More weird ads tomorrow.
We Hunted the Mammoth is independent and ad-free, and relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
Either the lady in the spoon ad is a corpse, or it’s really an ad for Real Dolls. That’s some creepy looking shit right there. It’s like a Criminal Minds episode.
In fairness to the Santa ones, in most of those households if anyone was wearing a Santa suit it was the woman’s husband.
Loopier is that women are depicted wearing high heels to do the ironing and to climb a stepladder (shudder).
I’m amazed the sheer-nightie one made it into print, given the prudish mores of the times. Most other content from those times that shows a nipple was unavailable anywhere but on the top shelf at the cigar store, or delivered to one’s doorstep in a plain brown bag, and subject to ongoing Supreme Court litigation regarding its very legality.
Pretty sure if some dude was hanging in my living room I wouldn’t be ogling his shiny, shiny boots.
What is happening to that poor woman’s spine in the Hoover ad?? Those two perspectives (the vacuum and the woman) just make no sense together
Why has nipple lady hanged Santa?
That’s the name of my new indie rock album.
@Flora
I think she’s supposed to be laying on the floor.
@Moggie
To steal his clothes, obviously. She clearly needs them.
Why’s the Hoover lady laying on the floor anyway? That struck me as extra odd.
I love that artichokes (wink wink, yep!) get a call out in the swinging steakhouse ad. Men’s magazines of the 1970s used to tout them as a surefire aphrodisiac. They’re the Axe of vegetables.
I’ve never seen an ironing board meant to be used while seated. It’s a pretty good idea.
Only thing is, I iron about three times a year.
I’ve seen old copies of “Wink” and “Flirt” magazine, which I understand were the precursors to Playboy. I wonder if that shoe polish ad was in one of those magazines.
That shoe polish ad would be blocked on Tumblr for having female presenting nipples.
Other than the color scheme, I fail to see what the “jugs” ad has to do with Xmas at all. On the other hand, it sure is cringe-inducingly suggestive. In a thump-you-over-the-head-with-clunky-crockery kind of way.
It just doesn’t get more cheesy-’70s than that, does it?
Ad number two… She’s a hostage, right. Or a real doll. One of the two.
The Seagram’s ad is actually kind of cool/classy, in a very 70s way. The rest are just weird.
That ironing board would be good for people with mobility issues, so it’s sad that they didn’t show the woman in a wheelchair.
@Dormousing_it:
Now I’m annoyed, because I have a pile of shirts and trousers to iron.
There are people who iron their bed linen! I’ve never understood that. If your sheets have a few wrinkles, so what? As long as they’re clean, who cares?
The “nice pair of jugs” (groan) ad reminds me of a blog I came across recently: Broken Chains. It’s about fast-food chain restaurants whose corporate mortherships have died and have dwindled to a handful of outlets, or sometimes even a single remaining one, very often trapped in the time period of when the hammer finally came down, like insects in amber. Or this ad. Presumably very nostalgic for the people who grew up in the chains’ heydays.
@Nikki the Bluth Wanna be
The Seagrams ad reminds me of my ’70s childhood, ‘cos my dad was an alkie. Also, IMO, the guy in the ad is pretty hot.
@Moggie
I’ll do ANYTHING to avoid ironing. It helps to work at a place with no dress code.
@ Dormousing_it
The one in my childhood home was like this. I thought it was great. In fact I was kind of hoping to inherit it after my Mum’s death… until I realised the heat-resistant bit was asbestos. We had to pay quite a bit to get it disposed of safely.
When I finally became a home owner, in my late 40s, I was disturbed by how interested in vacuum cleaners I became. But I’ve never thrown myself at one’s feet. And if anyone ever tried to decorate one for me with bows and holly they wouldn’t get a warm thank-you…
To everyone, and especially to David, thank you for laughs, insights, information and plumbing of the depths of the manosphere with wit and humour. Merry Festiveness, and I hope we all see a much happier and healthier New Year for us all.
Well we seem to have survived another year down the ‘I can’t believe that’ll happen !’ leg of the Trousers of Time. Happy Hogswatch everyone.
@Bluecat:
Yes, I think ironing boards of that vintage always used asbestos. Certainly that was the case with my family’s board.
And now I remember, as a little kid, “helping” dad build his garage, out of asbestos sheeting. Last time I looked at the old place in google streetview, that garage was still there, in a state of disrepair. I wondered why the new owners hadn’t disposed of it. Never occurred to me that this might be a big problem for them!
I have to wonder where these ads ran. Booze ads I could see running in Playboy or something, but where the hell did that bootblack ad run???
Eh, probably Playboy too.
@Surplus
You noticed that too, huh? Totally impractical tree-trimming footwear.
Years ago my husband bought me an iron for Christmas.
I was not pleased.ç
Then he explained that he knew I hated ironing, so he thought the posh iron would help me get it over with faster. It did.
But with hindsight, I wonder why on earth I never asked him to do the ironging instead?
@Katamount I remember the 70s and some of the 60s. That ad could have run in a woman’s magazine, or a regional magazine or… Nt just Playboy and similar. Ads were like that then.
Esquire was running ads like that, too… I remember Esquire running Alberto Vargas” soft-porn drawings of women in my Uncles’ Esquire mags… that was my intro to objectification of women…. 🙁 🙁
Something that’s been encouraging to me in these troubled times is the amount of diversity seen in advertisements. While “white on white, man on top” is probably still the default, there seems to be a lot of non-conformity. I saw a Jared (jewelers) ad on Saturday which, at least to my perception, had diverse groups in every scene. Mixed-race couples, a white and a black child playing together, a white MAN proposing marriage to ANOTHER MAN… and a black man at that!
What made this odder by a couple orders of magnitude, the ad was on ESPN during a college football game….
Now, I don’t believe the corporatists are doing this as a service to the forces of change and social justice… they obviously feel there’s money to be made. Still, the longer that horse runs, the more people will see social progress on the small screen! Call it “subliminal enlightenment”…?
The woman on the ladder, there’s no way those heels are actually on the rung, is there?
@ Bakunin:
That’s called “artistic license”….