Blondes have more puns

Hmmmm. Do I detect a bit of innuendo here?


Of course, what else would you expect from the company that introduced the first one-step home hair-color formula five years earlier with this memorable teaser:


The 1969 ad at top, for a coloring formula with deceptive but irresistible name, "Born Blonde," foregoes that coy innuendo of an earlier era for a more leering come-on befitting the late-'60s sexual revolution (complete with the faux-psychedelic typeface of the free-love generation). As Wikipedia explains,
"In contemporary popular culture, it is often stereotyped that men find blonde women more attractive... Anita Loos popularized this idea in her 1925 novel, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."
(And of course, it helps when the film adaptation of said novel starred Marilyn Monroe.)

Clairol took that idea of the special appeal, and really ran with it, with headlines like "If I have only one life, let me live it as a blonde." and this one, which, later switched to a declarative sentence, remains embedded in our popular culture: "Is it true blondes have more fun?"

(By the way, that's '60s supermodel and '70s TV actress, Susan Blakely, in the paisley scarf -- a natural blonde apparently, but never mind. You can see a video retrospective of her modeling career and other ads she appeared in here.)

Comments

Paul Duca said…
Just discovered your site, thanks to your comment on Ken Levine's. I see myself coming here often.

Don't forget, it was a woman copywriter, Shirley Polykoff, who coined both "Does She or Doesn't She?" and "Only Her Hairdresser Knows for Sure"

Also...when LIFE magazine resisted publishing a "Does She" ad, Clairol challenged them to prove their claims of salaciousness. The magazine put the ad before a review board. None of the women on it felt it had sexual overtones, but all the men did
(LIFE ultimately ran the ad).
November 29, 2010 at 6:06 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fly Me Again

Image
We referenced this ad campaign in an earlier post , but it really deserves its own entry. This memorable/notorious American Airlines campaign appeared back in 1971, at the behest of National Airlines'  Lewis Maytag  who sought to modernize the airline and the image of its stewardesses.  (Yes, they were still known as stewardesses back then.) At the time, airline advertising had frequently based their messages on the friendliness and attentiveness of their stewardesses, but previous efforts tended more toward the chauvinistic end of sexism spectrum, treating them more like Ladies Of The Air than ladies of the night: (Despite the caveman ethos of the headline and illustration, if you click on the ad to enlarge it and read the copy, you'll see it's actually about men being so beguiled by their stewardesses that they often took them for wives -- after first mistaking wives for servants, I suppose.) But now, with the sexual revolution and women's liberation in full swing (an...
Read more

I wanted to like this ad, I really did

Image
When I first came across it, I (wrongly) assumed it was the work of Doyle Dane Bernbach, using a very minimalist layout to catch attention and evoke emotion, sort of like they did with the Polaroid ads in the ‘60s . No logo, just a simple headline, and an intriguing illustration that tells you nothing about the product, only the elation it will inspire in the woman in the your life. What an incredible way to portray a woman leaping into the arms of her man, I thought, showing only what’s necessary to imply the situation, spurring the reader to imagine the embrace, the eyes, the kiss.   Brilliant, I thought. Then I read the headline.    “Wear an Arrow Shirt and you'll simply sweep her off her feet!”   No.   No, I don’t believe this ad, even for a minute.    The only way to sell this scenario is if the emotion implied feels true. Even in 1949, it’s hard to imagine anyone got this excited about a dress shirt. Unless he just got home from the service and t...
Read more

Not just hyperbole

Image
Maybe you've seen this classic Guinness poster, created back in the '30s and assumed that it was nothing more than silly hyperbole: And you'd be partly right. The idea is actually based on the high iron content of Guinness (probably from the water used), though of course, the benefit of this is exaggerated to an unbelievable extent in the poster above. That didn't stop the image from becoming so iconic that a pint Guinness became known as a "girder." The image also inspired this parody from Heinekin some 40 years later (though its likely that many young drinkers never realized its source), that both fit the idea into its own ad format and made the male sexual subtext even more implicit: (Best not to take any of this too seriously, though. In reality, the pictures in the Heinken ad would have to be reversed.)
Read more