JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1149

Three ads disappearing women– first with a muzzle, then with a full head mask, and then there’s nothing left but legs–part of this blog’s History of Women series.

There’s nothing quite like objectifying women than objectifying them, making their objectification so wide and gross and visible that it is almost impossible to imagine that it was done–but, then, there it is.   And that’s part of what we see as standard operating procedure here in these ads in Life magazine for a four week period in 1953,   I started out on this foray looking for an article about US aid to Vietnam, but kept bumping into these advertisements.  The images today have certainly changed and have become more subtle, but the message is still the same. 

The first series
 

is so odd; I’m not so sure why the dog was barking to muzzle the woman–she has hardly said anything…but perhaps that’s the entire message.  There there’s this approach:

keeping a beautiful, manicured and jeweled body while getting rid of the face and head and personality.

And then

Old Gold makes a final assault on womanhood, replacing her upper half with another oral fixation, keeping the booted lower half for whatever.  I think that there was a refrigerator with high heels in that year, somewhere, but I can’t find it.