Ad here. Is this real or fake?
I found this link which seems to take it at face value.
In the 1950’s, I shopped for my first bra well before I really needed one. Bras were available in really small sizes, not just chest sizes but cup sizes. AAA cup? You don’t need a bra but maybe you want to be like mommy, or maybe you’re slow to develop but all your friends are wearing them.
So I can believe the ad.
I’ve been wondering if that old Vaseline add is real. The one that says “caring dads always lube”. This one:
Is this real? If it is, what does it mean?
Playing “dress-up” with Mommy’s high-heel shoes, etc., was so common (and innocent) in the 1950’s as to be a cliché. I can believe the ad.
But it’s entirely possible it’s not from a mainstream publication, even if from the back pages. Do we give the same credibility to “X-Ray Vision” goggles sold in comic books?
Nevertheless, I think it’s an extreme reaction to be seriously concerned about a vintage ad.
Preventing diaper rash?
No cite, but I’ve read it’s a fake ad that was originally posted as a joke on some comedy website but it’s realistic enough looking that it’s been circulated as real.
It appears to be real. I traced it back to a blog that does vintage photos, and it was picked up by Boing Boing and spread from there.
This one is a known hoax.
I vote “fake”.
For starters, I was a little girl in roughly that era, and I don’t remember anything like that ever being even mentioned.
The pose and garments would have been considered a bit risque even for grown-ups. Mainstream lingerie modeling was a specialty area, and models’ faces were often not shown.
Thirdly, Better Homes and Gardens would have been a very odd placement for any apparel advertising, let alone children’s garments.
Not to mention: the ad copy has multiple anomalies. For example, “mommy” is the singular spelling, not “mommie”. The size range is given as “2-12”, when the lower end of that range would be in diapers and the usual girls’ range was 6-12.
I don’t think it’s plausible as something authentically from 1959 even aimed at a pedophile market. Which wouldn’t have been trolling the back pages of BH&G for their specialty.
I don’t think this is a real ad either but one of my cousins did have a bra made for little girls we were about 7 at the time I saw it and said "what is that? as I remember she called a camisole but it was definately more like a bra than a camisole as I know it. She did a lot of performing (dance recitals etc) so it may have been an underlayer for a costume.
( I am a girl so no ickyness about me seeing her underwear)
On second viewing, maybe you’re onto something. It looks like there’s a child’s head on an adult’s body. The arms are thin and the legs are too shapely. Also, the ad wouldn’t have “Better Homes and Gardens 1959” as part of the copy.
Actually I think you’re correct on both those issues. In looking closely that’s a pretty unusual body for a little girl relative to the size of her head, and the “BH&G 1959” note at the bottom makes no sense for the ad to waste precious space on.
That’s what I was thinking. The high heels caught my attention first. If she was prancing around in huge shoes that belonged to mom, that would be one thing, but those shoes fit the girl. After that, I noticed the ‘done due’. She’s supposed to be advertising the bra and panties but her hair is done up like a 1950’s house wife and that’s all she’s looking at. It almost seems like it might be an ad for Aquanet or hot rollers.
It’s very skillfully done, but I don’t think Dallas used the five-digit P.O. box numbers in the postal zone era. In fact, I don’t think Dallas ever had five-digit P.O. boxes at all; they jumped straight from four-digit ones to six-digit ones where the first two digits are the zone number sometime in the 60s.
There is a rather sick meme on Fark.com that some posters seem to think is funny.
It’s involves a popsicle, some little girls in bathing suits and a slogan captioned underneath. (Sorry to be so vague, but that’s the best I can bring myself to do.)
The slogan itself isn’t all that bad but used in juxtaposition with these girls poses makes you think WTF?!
It was a long time before I found out that ad was fake.
Thank god.
I’m still thinking about it. It’s creeping me out.
The fakeness isn’t because the body doesn’t match the head. That’s just poor artwork.
It’s because of the BH&G 1959 across the bottom. Like astro says, it’s a waste of ad space, and why would A&B Sales want to use their ad to pimp BH&G?
An ad for Ivory soap might have the Good Housekeeping Seal, and an ad for GE light bulbs might have the UL logo, but they’re not going to have the name of the magazine or the date of publication.
And like FeAudrey says, the sizes are wrong. Sizes for little girls would have started with 6, not 2.
Just to argue the ‘it’s real’ side. The ad doesn’t continue all the way down. If you look at the boarder on the left, it stops at the bottom of the picture. If one wanted to argue that it’s a real ad, they would/could easily argue that it’s not scanned out of an actual magazine, but maybe out of something historical. Perhaps a the manufacturer or advertiser or copywriter or someone somewhere along the line kept a copy for themselves and printed out the BH&G/1959 line and posted that underneath so they knew where it came from and that’s what we’re seeing.
It would be like arguing that this or this isn’t real because they shouldn’t be front page news when in reality they’re just cut and pasted together for the presentation.
ETA, I just googled “framed article” to get those two links, I didn’t actually read them, they just looked too unimportant to be front page news.
My connection is working today so I think I found the original page.
Thursday, April 14, 2011 To be a kid in the good 'ol days! #4
Sunday, April 17, 2011 Just Like Mommy!
And the rest of the series:
To be a kid in the good 'ol days! #3 [Smoking Cowboy Doll]
To be a kid in the good 'ol days! #2 [Child-size TV camera]
To be a kid in the good 'ol days! #1 [space beanie]
Others from April 2011:
“Don’t let Daddy lick me again!”
NSFW:
Not a kid, but it will disturb you even more
The design and typography is perfect for the time period. Either it’s a hoax so good it fooled him or it’s real.
“Poor artwork” can explain a lot. If real, this wasn’t a full-page, full-color ad that an art dept spent days on.
The credit might have been added later. When I cut out clippings, I usually add info like that, defining the source.
Could the “size” be age? I know little about such things, but when I first saw it, that’s what I thought. I remember wearing a size 6 when I was about 6 yo.
The B&H could have been added by the archivist, and it’s only cheap artwork. I don’t think we can expect much from the artist.
I agree, but it was in the back pages, where many pubs had junkier ads.
Cheap ad copy writers aren’t the best source of spelling rules. If the ad writer thought “mommie” would sell, I’m sure it would be used, rules be damned.
I think the only way we can settle this is to get a copy of the original Better Homes mag. Not knowing which of 12 possible editions from 1959 makes it harder. Checking online, I haven’t been able to find all issues, all pages available, even in Google Scholar.
There is a newspaper archive site which offers a free 7 day trial, but I can’t find out if it shows newspapers only or includes magazines.
I get the impression that the Mitch O’Connell site has real ads, even though he is listed as an artist. Samples of his art work don’t match the vintage ads in the slightest.
And it’s possible that he is merely repeating stuff from other secondary sources without question.
I emailed the address given for him. Let’s see if he will reply.
Heh. I’ve met Mitch at an art show in Pittsburgh. Very cool guy. He had a bunch of art done on skateboards. I bought a shirt he designed with a pink elephant and “never forget to get drunk” on it. I was wearing that shirt when I went through a DUI checkpoint and the cops all laughed at my nervousness.