The Funnies - Compensation (1892)

Compensation

"Dogs are more faithful than men!"

"But men have bank accounts."

Life Magazine, February 18, 1892

Happy Mother's Day!

A 1948 Whitman's ad for Mother's day and a window into the inner workings of the American family. I don't know, but it looks like dad's kind of phoning this one in on this one. The expression on his face is a mix of "What in the hell is that?" and "I just got you a box of friggin candy, now you expect me to look at the baby?" He could handle Okinawa, but Sissy's dirty ditey, not without a flame thrower. 

Mom, on the other hand, has that demoniac expression so common in 40's ads featuring women extolling the virtue, satisfaction, and fulfillment of a life consisting of nothing more than home, hearth, family, and the occasional gin-soaked mid-afternoon bridge game. Give her three or four more years and you'll see her in new ads, wearing a psychotic grin and shilling chunky peanut butter or a new fridge.

Buick - The Woman's Car

An odd combination in this ad, it manages to recognize a woman's independence while at the same time maintaining a chauvinistic and patronizing tone. What makes the Buick the perfect woman's car? Well the fact it has cushy seats, the steering wheel isn't too hard to turn, and the driver doesn't have to reach for the controls of course! The accompanying imagery maintains the same weird dualism too - the woman is obviously a mother taking her brood out for a little healthful fresh air, but at the same time there's no chauffeur, so our young lady is actually off under her own power.

The woman as independent being capable of self determination and not prone to putting the fliver in the ditch can probably be attributed to the fact that this ad ran in a 1922 issue of Ladies' Home Journal. If it had run in Popular Mechanics it probably would have read something more like "I don't worry about the little lady driving when she's in a Buick..." and there would have been a lot more Americana, patriotism, home town glory, and grease involved. An interesting shift for car ads, though, and the first example I've found that is overtly targeted at women.