Advertising that would be prohibited today
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
How marketing from the 50s to the 80s crossed all boundaries: sexism, racism, and emotional manipulation
The history of advertising is also the history of our contradictions as a society. Few periods show this as clearly as the decades of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Often called "the golden age" of marketing, they were also years in which advertising shaped deeply toxic imaginaries: rigid gender roles, normalized racism, boundless emotional manipulation, and a blind faith in the power of images to justify any message.
Looking at these ads today provokes discomfort, rejection, and even second-hand embarrassment. But that unease is valuable: it allows us to understand how commercial aesthetics can normalize behaviors and values that, when viewed from a distance, are unacceptable. At the same time, it forces us to ask whether we’ve truly changed... or if we’ve only refined the ways of persuading.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Explicit Sexism: When Women Were Accessories to the Product
Mid-20th-century advertising created a universe where women had a limited and deeply stereotyped role. In advertisements for cars, drinks, appliances, and household products, women were portrayed as:
Objects of desire to attract male attention.
Subordinate housewives, grateful for receiving a “wonderful” vacuum cleaner or detergent.
Silent companions, whose value depended on their appearance, obedience, or ability to please.
It's easy to laugh at these outdated ads today, but at the time, they were incredibly influential. They didn't just reflect the prejudices of their era; they reinforced them. They nurtured a culture that told women how they should look, behave, and exist.
The uncomfortable question is: Have we completely overcome these patterns?
On social media, the idealized body remains a tool for sales. The difference now is that it’s the users themselves—pressured by algorithms and unrealistic expectations—who reproduce these codes. Sexism hasn't disappeared; it has simply become more sophisticated and "self-imposed."
Two advertisements from 1952 and 2003 with the same style
If you want to learn more about how women were treated in advertising, you can read: Advertising for Idiots: The Ancient Art of Reducing Women to Packaging.
2. Normalized Racism: An Exclusively White Advertising World
Advertising from the 1950s to the 1980s defined who deserved to be represented… and who did not. Most ads were led by white, affluent people. When ethnic minorities appeared, it was almost always in roles that were:
Servile
Exotic
Caricatured
Totally stereotypical
Some campaigns directly used language and visuals that would today be illegal for being discriminatory. These representations were not only offensive: they built symbolic hierarchies that influenced how society understood diversity.
Today, racism in advertising is more subtle, but it persists:
Campaigns where diversity is used as an aesthetic element, not as real inclusion.
Racialized profiles pigeonholed into certain product categories.
Significant absences: entire communities that rarely appear in premium advertising.
The aesthetic has changed, but the logic of exclusion remains present.
3. Emotional Manipulation: Selling Through Fear, Shame, or False Authority
Between the 1950s and 1980s, regulation was virtually nonexistent, and advertising took advantage of this gap to exploit human vulnerabilities. Some practices that would be illegal today included:
False experts recommending cigarettes, tonics, or miracle products.
Misleading medical ads, many of them dangerous.
Campaigns based on social shame, especially in hygiene and aesthetics.
Promises of emotional well-being without any kind of evidence.
If you want more information about old tobacco advertisements, we recommend reading: How tobacco was sold to us: the wildest ads in history
The most unsettling thing is that these techniques didn’t disappear; they simply changed formats. Today, they take the form of:
Algorithmic micro-targeting based on insecurities.
Influencers recommending products without declaring commercial interests.
"Emotional" messages optimized to keep us hooked on scrolling.
Manipulation is no longer mass-scale: it is personalized.
4. The Current Mirror: What Was Forbidden in the Past Lives Disguised in the Present
If we compare old advertising with current ones, it’s tempting to think we’ve made enormous progress. And yes, there are undeniable improvements: stricter regulations, higher cultural sensitivity, and more active social surveillance.
However, many past patterns continue to exist under renewed aesthetics:
The perfect body still sells, now filtered and retouched.
Racism is hidden in the lack of real representation.
Emotional manipulation is automated through data.
Inequalities are disguised under aspirational rhetoric.
The advertising industry no longer openly crosses boundaries… but it constantly skims them.
5. What We Can Learn: Ethics, Criticism, and Responsibility
Reviewing advertising from the 1950s to the 1980s shows us that what society considers acceptable is deeply changing. Perhaps in 30 years, people will look at our current campaigns with the same horror we feel now toward the old ones. And this raises crucial questions:
What are we normalizing today without realizing it?
Are we creating impossible expectations around beauty, success, and consumption?
Who really controls the message: creatives or algorithms?
What role should ethics play in advertising design?
The evolution of marketing is not only technological: it is moral.
Conclusion: The past is unsettling because it is too familiar
The advertising that would be banned today seems grotesque because it shows, unfiltered, the harshness of its time. However, many of those dynamics are still with us, more polished, more aesthetic, harder to detect. Looking back is not an exercise in nostalgia or judgment, but a tool to understand the present and build a future where creativity is not an excuse to legitimize inequalities.
At a time when real, retouched, or AI-generated images circulate faster than ever, the responsibility lies with every creator. And this is where creative studios play a key role: betting on ethical, careful, respectful visual communication, and being aware of the cultural impact of every image.
We work with brands that want to build coherent, contemporary, and responsible campaigns.
Because good advertising doesn’t just sell: it also contributes to a fairer collective imagination. And that’s the kind of image we like to create with you at FotoProStudio.
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