Sexism in advertising

Some of it's amusing to look back on, but pretty shocking:

Commercials from the 1950s are jaw-dropping in their prejudice. Some of the decade's slogans -- "The harder a wife cooks, the cuter she looks!; "Christmas morning, she'll be happier with a Hoover" -- are peep-holes into an era when women's roles were confined to the corridor between the bedroom and the kitchen. The ads depicting women outside that stretch of home tended to be even more offensive.

(Image: the famous – or is that infamous – Hoover ad, via Webcrawlerblog)