Lucinda Betts, Mistress of Websurfing, forwarded me Time Magazine’s 10 Questions for Nora Roberts, wherein readers asked her questions. My fave? How do you react to critics who say romance novels are trashy?
Why, you send them to this website, of course. Heh heh.
And, a link that has nothing at all to do with the previous one, a link from the Daily Mail courtesy of Janice, which features advertisements from the 50’s and 60’s that are breathtaking in their sexism. I find my self staring at the woman who’s getting a rather startling spanking because she didn’t “store-test” her coffee for freshness. What does that mean, exactly? She didn’t fire up a portable percolator in the aisle and covertly crack open a can? That ad is unsettling, too. It’s a mile past “cute” well into “discomforting” territory. Not even the argyle socks help that image out.
That said, I bet a cover artist will harvest that image for a future BDSM cover very very soon.
Even worse than the adverts are the comments section—most of them are from men who agree with them!
Some of the comments in response to the ads in the Daily Mail are pretty frightening.
Why go on about political correctness and not about gender equality—or rather, lack thereof?
Perhaps because it’s easier to lump everything under “PC”—good, bad, absurd, reasonable—than to come out and say that many of the attitudes portrayed therein are pretty much still common place all over the US.
spamword: anti69—hell, NO
Yaaay!!! Nora Roberts is a bad speller too! Now I don’t feel so bad, lol.
A lot of those attitudes ARE still around, but they’re not as universal as they once were.
When I graduated from high school in 1969, the classified ads were headed “Help Wanted – Male” and “Help Wanted – Female”. Guess where all the good jobs were?
You can read a lot of frightening stuff in the Daily Mail – particularly if you are an immigrant or an asylum-seeker, or are pro-choice…
I’m just saying…how pretty does she look in that photo? Man…
Heh, thanks for reminding me of a 1970s childhood—I loved using the coffee grinder in the supermarket. You’d grab a bag of beans from the shelf, pour the beans into the top of the grinder, put the bag under the funnel, and then stand back while the machine produced a TERRIFIC noise and wafted great clouds of fresh-coffee smell into the next aisle. Bliss!
“Is it always illegal to kill a woman?” Man, the stuff they got away with then.
Does the couple in the first photo look exactly like Buffy and Angel, or is that just me?
Some of the comments were worse than the ads. For any mystery fans Dorothy Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise is excellent. Lord Peter Wimsey goes undercover in an ad agency.
The lady with the ketchup bottle was possibly inspired by his wife’s reaction to the size of his, uh, equipment when he asked her to blow him the night before. You’ll notice she’s measuring something small with those beautifully manicured nails.
Verifying with hands92. Ahem.
Diane
Well I knew I loved Nora before… now I love her more. I can’t spell either. I type my comments in Word to do a spell check before posting. I just cross my fingers that I use the right word. We non-spellers need to start our own blog, but then we probably couldn’t understand our own misspelled comments.
As to the ads, has anyone seen the new McDonald’s commercial? It has his “girl†making breakfast for his roommates. There is another comment about his “girl†in the ad. I’ve only seen it once but feel like I should find out how to complain to McDonalds. Or am I over reacting. I graduated in 1970, so I too know what it was like to hunt for a job back then.
I regularly read the Daily Mail on-line and I love it when they do a story on some strange look back at society and women. Somehow I missed this one. Thanks for the link!
Uh…am I the only one who thinks advertising is STILL inundated with sexist bullshit? Every bloody time I see one of those NutriSystem “you’re a disgusting manatee who should be nursing a good case of self-loathing if you don’t wear a size 2” commercials, I want to detonate some explosive.
Here’s another unrelated comment for this unrelated-comments post. Mailer ended up winning the Literary Review’s 2007 “Bad Sex” award, largely on the strength (or lack thereof) of his “coil of excrement” simile.
Way to go, Norm!
Advertising today – not so blatant but many of the same messages are still around today.
Nora – her author photo, yes. (I want her coat!!)
Author photos in the other post? Pass the eye bleach, please….
If you ask me, “vitamins” is housewife code for crack. That woman is scary happy to be waving that feather duster around, especially when her man is allegedly tuckered out.
And that last one . . . my mouth is still open. She should grab that stupid tie and crank it into the postage machine.
Why Hag, according to the noise over some pictures of Jennifer love Hewitt, wearing a size 2 is not good enough if you happen to have “some cellulite” anywhere in your exposed flesh.
Amazing, hmmm?
GRRRR, azteclady. Just…GRRRRR.