Eli Rezkallah, a 31-year-old artist and photographer from Beirut, Lebanon, recently created a photo series called “In a Parallel Universe.” he recreated 1950s sexist adds from a reversed gender roles point of view. I find them extremely funny.
Very interesting to see the roles reversed. I hope it made people reading this uncomfortable, because this type of sexism *should* be uncomfortable. The feminist remake is not to illustrate how things "should" be (that's not what equality is), it's to illustrate how absolutely insane those old ads were because people would have been outraged if it were men who were put in a submissive and ridiculed position like that. It's merely mirroring the awfulness of the ads, because nobody deserves to be treated like that.
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Some of them don't really come off as all that offensive.
Like, the one about not burning the beer. It doesn't imply anything, it's just a joke about the beer being okay when something else suffered because of cooking. The cook being female isn't that big of a part of the joke.
The next one about opening things, though silly, makes even less sense in regards to men because men are far more likely to be able to open hard to open things due to the difference in strength.
The next one about a vacuum cleaner is just targeted marketing. Regardless of gender roles, women use cleaning tools far more than men. Makes perfect sense to market them in a way that gets more women to use them - even if it's the men who get the tool for them.
Only 2 of these are sexist, the rest are just marketed at women at a time when women generally housewives.
1. Not sexist.
2. Sexist
3. Sexist or just foreplay.
4. It would be quite upsetting for a newly married housewife to burn dinner considering the amount of planning, time, effort and love she put into it. Her husband joke about not burning the beer would be just the kind warm hearted gesture that would cheer her up.
5. Men have much greater strength than women and at the time a lot of jars and bottles were tough for women to open so these new fangled devices on jars and bottles would have been appreciated by most women.
6. In the 1920's- 60s era yeah most housewives would have preferred a Hoover as a Christmas present because it was such a time saver giving her more free time to herself as at the time housework was extremely time consuming and hardwork.
7. Is kinda funny.
8. Is not sexist either, anything in this era that could help a housewife get her work done quicker and more easily was greatly appreciated.
9. Kinda funny.
Honestly the artist who recreated these was going for shock value but it's all been done before and misses the mark. It's kinda pathetic and a clear case of liberal virtue signalling.
I get it, its trying to reverse it to show the pain women had to go trough and show how redicilous this is.
But there is quite a lot going on here on a lot of different levels.
At one point its making its intended statement that this is just weird advertising, we get that even if its not reversed. But at another point it also speaks on how men feel about feminism, like they are now forced to submit to female bullies that make them do things they do not wish to do or accept things they do not wish to accept. Forced into a feminine role because they are constantly blamed for being a man.
But in reality this is not depicting feminism at all, because feminism isn't about female superiority as some people may think. Its actually about eliminating strengths of both sexes. So if you really wanted to make feminism posters you'd add a few more posters to this about women suffering in the workplace. And depict both sexes suffering together as robots stripped from their strengths and identity. Because that is what equality is all about for them, the loss of your strengths and character. An attack on the successful in an attempt to make them more equal. But deep down its secretly because they are jealous of someone elses success.
Normally I have a real problem with this kind of pretentious "Look we finally got them! Those awful monsters!" self-victimising attitude. Especially when the real monsters are the handful of "Harvey Weinstiens" who are still getting away with it and caused problems like these in the first place. But this! This is actually really sobering... and strangely encouraging. As a woman, you get used to companies telling you how ugly/unprepared/guilty you are for not having a certain product it just becomes second nature after a while. But seeing it like this, really makes the awful stand out.
Not only was the guy awesome for helping out with these shoots but it shows just how far things have come and just how MUCH Western society has changed as a whole. I think if these pics were posted with the right article and captions, they could be really encouraging and a wake up call for discrimination towards either that's hanging around today. It's so easy for companies to exploit guilt and insecurity to sell products, unluckily for many today they've no idea of their worth. There will always be lazy, a-holes in advertising but these will make a pretty good yardstick for measuring sexist discrimination in advertising.
You can't use it to end it. The most you can do, is point out the absurdity of the thing. But if you enforce it going the other way, you accomplish nothing except to reinforce what came before, and make it feel validated.
Thus is the beginning of the folly of the zero-sum mindset. A better way to end such ads, is to simply not make any. And most advertisers wouldn't be caught dead making ads this horrible today. So to bring it back with a role reversal? Just more stupidity, but going the other way.
I once pointed out how monumentally uncool the song "Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood was, by making a parody called "Serial Bomber" going the other way. Except, nobody was laughing at the role reversal. A man trashing a faithless woman's car? Gasp! Not funny!
And then describing in graphic detail how he planted a car bomb in it to blow her up on top of it all?
And then going on a rampage of bombing any other cheating women he can find, culminating in nuking a motel because of a runaway bride inside? While laughing hysterically amidst escaping via helicopter?
Yeah. Nobody laughed. Which is why I couldn't understand why so many at the time were laughing at Carrie Underwood's song.
s I can why some people are bothered by this. But they also don't understand what's the purpose of these ads. Women were humiliated and this shows how normal sexism was at that time.
This isn't about making women feel superior and men inferior, this is about showing how wrong those ads were.
I really don't understand the need for these to have been made other than some radical feminist wanted to get her man hating on again. People know those ads were bad this is just another example of feminism being sexist and doing something that proves they don't care about real issues or women.
Some of these so called adverts are FAKE. The first one from Hardee's is a case in point. Hardee's DID NOT acquire "The Famous Star" logo until they merged with "Carl's Jr." until 1997 and both chains (Hardee's in the Eastern and Southern USA, Carl's Jr. in the Western USA) adopted similar logos.
And even the ones which are NOT fake, feminist criticism of those ads betrays a shocking ignorance of the times. See the Hoover Vacuum and Lux diswashing liquid ads. When powerful motorized vacuum cleaners and effective solvent detergents became more affordable to common people in the 1940's, they were a savings of oh so many "man-hours" (woman-hours?) of sweeping and scrubbing, and yes, women DID want such items, even as Christmas gifts. If any of you still have now very elderly grandparents alive from those times, ask them about this.
Okay, Now do ones that are sexist towards men (like how every Christmas I have to hear about how I'm suppose to want power tools and how I have to not be stupid and go to X jewelry store for her or I'm a deadbeat. Or how the add about women in the kitchen is incredibly sexist because it talks about the male role of provider and how he is expected to work his ass off for her (because apaparently it was only sexist when women had expectations not men (just like today) or how about the non stop attack ads we see today that are rampantly sexist (and the laws that descriminate against men, that would be an interesting take, sexist laws that descriminate against men (their is a lot of them) that affect us in the modern day vs. ads taken out of context from the fifties and sixties that are sexist (some of them are I guess)). I love how women being sexist today is justified by pointing to fifty years ago and proclaiming (quite frequently inaccurately) that men where sexist then.
Wow those ads were nothing but disrespect. I have no problem with a man being the leader or head of the household sense God appointed you to do that, however, that doesn't give you the right to treat me like shit. I think a lot of men let it go to their heads, God said to lead and provide for your family as men not disrespect your wife because your the leader/head or become tyrant.
I did find this funny, albeit in a sad, pathetic way. This guy is creating fantasy out of fact. He takes real ads which people responded to, paid for, and ran, and creates his own fictional world which never happened. In this time where everything is an -ism and nobody has a sense of humor, of course, the only person left to hate and to run over roughshod is the man. It's always so easy to engage in chronological snobbery and condemn the past because it isn't now -- never mind any deeper analysis. People take ads as though they were gospel. The same people believe what CNN reports, too. Rage on.
This artist should go work for a company that sells products that men buy. I hear Gillette's none too happy at losing $8 billion and would like for some other foolish company to lose more.
Oh I’m sorry, I thought feminism was for equality. That’s what they keep telling me and referring to the dictionary definition while they pull this crap, handwave any male specific issues and actively make them worse. You want examples? They are making it nearly impossible for a man to be a victim of domestic violence, being able to steal a man’s sperm by taping him and sue him for child support or chop a man’s penis off or force a man to jump off a balcony and a female talkshow host and her audience will laugh about it. Thanks for finally setting the record straight.
This is why I hate modern feminism. The feminist movement was intended for equality but this is not equality. What it is is subjective men to the same oppressive mentality we went against years ago. That’s bullshit.
They're good to show how gender roles are ridiculous, but it doesn't promote equality.
Though they are funny they are still offensive same as if the originals ran today. We have learned from the past and no longer run such ads because we realize they were sexist and hurtful. Yet feminist and some feMENist dont seem to want to let wounds heal. They dont seem to want peaceful co existance. They dont want equality. They want vindication. They want men to feel as subjugated as women were once forced to feel. (in your grandma's day and beyond) It feels a lot like " you hit me so I hit you back" vs both parties saying violence isn't the answer. SMH
The originals were funnier, more clever and less sexist than the remakes.
The artist didn't do anything apart from switching the genders and removing the parts he has clearly deemed non-sexist just so they would fit his agenda better.
The original message was lost, and the new message is either just plain nonsensical or sexist.
All in all, I would give this artist a 1/10 for cleverness and creativity.
Wow. Never seen any of these. I know women were suppressed but did not realize it was to the point that it was mocked in the media too.
I personally preferred if they really change it, not just try to make a copy of it that some look cheaper (its fair as one is a painting yet I think could have looked less like a set
I think this is cute but could have been done better
Dont worry darling you didn't burn the beer
That ad is cute! <3 haha How is that ad sexist in any way?
Some of the others I find funny.
Some are obviously sexist, but that was 1950, things were different. I find it funny when young women get offended for something they werent even alive for.
Ohhhh God! the horror! washing dishes and cooking for your provider! the dread! the despair! lmao
I actually like some of the original ones.
Also not all of the original ones are really offensive or even sexist, but rather are just having their jokes misread or are just clear examples of targeted marketing which is no different back then then it is today.
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