We’re in the midst of swimsuit season and women are on a mission to get skinny. Everywhere they look they’re faced with advertisements for products and diets telling them to lose 10 more pounds. But squeezing into a smaller-size bikini hasn’t always been the goal for summer.
British blogger Chris Wild takes us back to a time when beach weather meant putting on pounds. His telling collection of photos (above) features vintage advertisements pushing products to help women have fuller-figured bodies.
“If you want to be popular,” the copy on one ad reads, “you can’t afford to be skinny!”
Today, you’ll find similar slogans on weight product ads but instead “skinny” would read “overweight.”
The images appeared in magazines and newspapers between 1908 and 1984 but Wild says the majority of them are from the 1930s and 1940s. During the Great Depression, the United States faced a food shortage and appearing thin and malnourished wasn’t in style. The trend continued through the 1950s and 1960s with big-bosomed, curvy-hipped celebrities like Marilyn Monroe appearing on the big screen. In the 1960s, rail-thin models like Twiggy started to popularize being skinny, and in the 1970s, as obesity rates increased, the weight-gain craze stopped. The ads seemed to disappear altogether in the 1980s—and American women became fully focused on losing weight.
On the surface the vintage ads might seem refreshing in today’s world overrun with get-skinny-fast dieting ads but on a deeper level both types of ads do the same thing: Make women feel like their worth is dependent on their looks. Too thin! Too fat! When it comes to the advertising industry, women can never win.
http://blog.chron.com/momhouston/2012/07/vintage-ads-push-women-to-gain-weight/Click the link to see the ads.
