ANTI-contest entry: 1942 Westinghouse scholarship

[tvini.livejournal.com]

As we go through some astoundingly sexist ads, I thought we could use a reminder that it wasn't all a horror show.

Sexism-free 1942 ad for Westinghouse science scholarship for high school boys AND girls.

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Those future Faradays and Curies would have been, of course, white.

[tvini.livejournal.com]

It doesn't say, but then, it wouldn't, would it? It would just be assumed.

You make an excellent point.

[seamonkey-mags.livejournal.com]

And mostly male anyway!

Some googling got me the info that in 1945 7 boys and 1 girl got 4 year scholarships.

Also some guy in 1990 complaining "I have a 3.6 average, and I didn't get a scholarship. I have black engineering friends with less who get $2000 Westinghouse scholarships". I wonder what that jerk is doing now.

[tvini.livejournal.com]

Re-examining his white privilege? Naaaaah.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Dammit!

[misstia]

excellent post!

[nimbus9.livejournal.com]

Tsk tsk-ing ephemera from another time isn't very interesting to me anyway. People seem to get upset and angry for no other purpose than to be upset and angry. What is the point? Does anyone feel as if we are in a danger of reverting to social mores of a bygone era? Sure it is interesting to see these ads but the sanctimonious "wows" I could live without.

[contradictacat.livejournal.com]

Given that today people are still fighting against the same general mindsets, so it isn't exactly "social mores from a bygone era", it doesn't seem entirely irrelevant to notice when the same things show up in old ads.

[classicality.livejournal.com]

Does anyone feel as if we are in a danger of reverting to social mores of a bygone era?

What do you mean? When exactly did this "bygone era" end? I'm confused, because I thought this same bullshit was still going on.

[nimbus9.livejournal.com]

If it is still going on I'd be interested to see contemporary examples of the style of advertising being targeted here.

[tvini.livejournal.com]

I think we'll have to wait 40 years to see it viewed through a non-contemporary lens.

yeah...

[radteacherally.livejournal.com]

just yesterday I was reading a wedding magazine that belonged to a coworker. There was an ad for a waterproof camera. It mentioned something about a "forgetful husband" who left it in the sand on their vacation and thankfully the wife was smart enough to buy this camera so the pictures weren't ruined....again....by the "forgetful husband."

These ads still exist in 2010!!

I will rip it out of the magazine at work tomorrow.

Re: yeah...

[basking-lizard.livejournal.com]

There was a billboard ad that showed up in ontd_feminism (I think?) for Stella Artois, with a man staring at a woman holding a beer and the tagline 'She's a thing of beauty'. so yeah, still happening. :/

[seamonkey-mags.livejournal.com]

You mean, sexist/racist ads?

Assvertising part 1: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2005/12/theres-easier-way.html

Practically all of Sociological Images: http://contexts.org/socimages/ (there are a few long-running sections on various types of racist and sexist stuff)

[tvini.livejournal.com]

I don't think the first link goes where you meant it to go. It was a single post without a link to what may be a larger series and the post itself didn't relate to sexist/racist ads, but to idiotic ones. Which, really, is all of them.

[seamonkey-mags.livejournal.com]

That was odd, it totally had all the links to the series when I put that up.

Well, let's try #108...

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/06/assvertising-mcfail.html

Ask, and ye shall receive

[dubhain.livejournal.com]

Re: Ask, and ye shall receive

[tvini.livejournal.com]

Why did I click? Why?

[meleth.livejournal.com]

Pretty much all beer ads, particularly the recent Miller Lite ones. Just about every ad shown during the Super Bowl. The Touch of Gray ads which with very blatant subtext tell you that you can impress chicks with your experience and ability to also get it up and keep it up.

[classicality.livejournal.com]

Also, like every Axe spray commerical, ever.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, excellent! And THANK YOU!

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Awwww...

[catharsisss.livejournal.com]

What a creepy ad...

[gwenyvere4.livejournal.com]

Neat ad, I like it a lot!

[baron154.livejournal.com]

"Someday, we'll turn this lazy coastline into a hard-working oil refinery and nuclear plant. To the future!"

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

Great ad, and nice co see - but I echo all the people who said "yeah I bet they were all white" or "yeah, token woman." This was before Affirmative Action and before non-profit groups urged schools to pay more attention to girls in math and sciences classes. My own mom, who ultimately got a degree in physics, was repeatedly turned away from classes like Latin, science, and math and routed into Home Economics classes when she was a kid in the 1950s and 1960s. She was one of two women in her major at her university in the 1980s. So, yeah, nice talk about wanting to find more "Marie Curie" type women, but usually that simply didn't happen.

However, that doesn't mean Westinghouse wasn't the odd, unusual company that did actively seek women - and the fact that this ad was placed in Better Homes & Gardens is pretty interesting, too - though that might just be to prompt mothers to have their sons apply.

But, yeah, it was all a horror show. It still is. The occasional non-sexist ad just illustrates the prevalence of the norm. I have yet to see home cleaning products advertised by male actors who appear to know what they're doing around the house, for example, and where are the beer ads that don't feature hot girls with sultry looks and wet beer bottles? Or, worse, the Heineken Keg Girl (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-NfrBgYIEQ) commercial?

[tvini.livejournal.com]

Having learned my lesson from the Rustler's ad above, I'm not going to click on the Heineken Keg Girl link. I'm out of my blood pressure medication.

Thanks for the well-reasoned comment. When I looked at the ad, I wondered what effect wartime had on their decision to hand out scholarships to women. Shortage of male candidates? Educate the women so the men can go off and fight? Or had they been doing it before the war? I don't know. I posted it because I was feeling bludgeoned by the onslaught of godawful sexist ads and wanted ONE example of an older ad that mentioned women but wasn't berating them for doing something wrong in the kitchen or with their personal hygiene that would let down the man in their life.

I guess I was also thinking of my eighth grade math teacher, who had worked as a scientist doing research relating to submarines during WWII. Those women had to come from somewhere, and I'd like to think that they occasionally got a leg up instead of a boot to the rear.

Side note: I haven't found very many sexist ads at all in craft/needlework magazines. Maybe we knitters don't play that crap.

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

Well, for every horror show there's some pretty awesome thing out there relating to women, what they did, and how they changed - or at least affected - American history. For example, my boyfriend's grandmother flew planes across the Atlantic during WWII (America to Britain) and then, after the war, she became a geneticist and raised three kids. I wish I could have gotten to know her.

Have you heard of Women Strike for Peace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Strike_for_Peace)? In the early 1960s about 50,000 housewives "walked off the job" for a day to protest to Pres. Kennedy to stop nuclear testing. It's a great story - the Wikipedia entry doesn't do it justice at all.

Your comment about the wartime contingencies is a good one - there weren't many men in the colleges and there were a lot of white women (and black people of both genders) in heavy construction. So, while it's entirely possible that no woman in her right mind would have steered her daughter into the sciences in the 1950s, they might have done so in the 1940s. Women had more leeway then. The 1950s (the "nostalgia era") were unusually repressive.

I totally get the desire to have an ad out there that wasn't awful. I'm trying pretty hard not to pay attention to the ads this week, and I'm actually a little sad they're going to continue next week. I hope we don't do a "racist ads" contest.

[tvini.livejournal.com]

I promise to put up a couple of non-contest ads. :)

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

... yeah, don't click on the Heineken ad. It's about as bad. Worse, in some ways.

[caerfrli.livejournal.com]

Still, it does seem to require quotas to get one girl a scholarship.

[cinchona.livejournal.com]

I am confused.

The ad says that in order to enter in the Science Talent Search competition, high school seniors must "take special examinations in their local schools and submit essays on 'How Science Can Help Win the War.'" But two paragraphs down, it says that of the 10,000 entrants in the first ever Talent Search, only 3,200 completed examinations and submitted essays.

Maybe the 3,200 were finalists, and had to take extra exams and write additional essays?