Friday, January 7, 2011

Talk about Sexualised! Old Love's Baby Soft Advertisement

I have no idea of the original magazine source for this ad, which appears to be from the late 1970s or early 1980s, as I discovered it during a procrastinatory exercise that rambled through photo collections of strange animals and bad celebrity plastic surgery. This was among a collection of "weird old ads".

Given the recent reports about a beautiful artistic photograph of a young boy depicted as a peacock being considered inappropriate for sale in a charity auction conducted by the Sydney Children's Hospital Foundation, it is hard to believe that an ad such as this one for Love's Baby Soft ever made it to print with its explicit connection of childhood with sexiness. Then again, we didn't have little girls in extreme beauty pageants in all their spray-tanned, be-wigged and sequinned glory at this point I'm guessing.

3 comments:

Kris said...

Very creepy! And enough bare skin to suggest that she might be naked beneath that soft stuffed animal. (But what is that ruffle on her shoulder?!) And the hair? Looks suitable for a middle-aged woman, not a young girl. Fascinating.

Michelle Smith said...

You're right about the weird ruffle. Is she wearing an off-the-shoulder top? Or did they think the ruffle was essential to reassure people that she's not naked? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

TD said...

If you look carefully under the inset picture you will see the ruffles continue. Further if you draw a line from the top of the bears right eye to the edge of the picture you can see a small 4 pixel wide tringle of white, whos shade is an exact match for the right shoulder ruffle - it is too white for the bears fur. Also if you look to the left of the ruffle under the inset you will see a patch of flat white fabric. Further, the white ruffle is attached to what appears to be 1.5-2cm wide strap that appears to extend down to the ruffles under the inset.

A small bit of extrapulation gives us a second ruffle over the covered shoulder and that the ruffle continues down to loose a waist strap which would be attached to a loose dress - a style of clothing otherwise known as a sun dress.

And as far as the hair - have you seen some of the styles popularised through the 70's to today?!?

While the caption intones an unwanted context there seems to be nothing wrong with the picture. A girl holding a stuffed bear. Delete the caption and inset and brush the hair more backward and you would probably say it was a cute photo. The rest is an overactive imagination.