um, what?
(click ad, via) If so, shouldn't he buy her the seamless stockings "for pretty's sake" first, then drink the poison because, otherwise, he's gonna have to shop very quickly? If you can make this 1959 Hanes ad make 100% lucid sense in the comments, I will hate you a little bit less than I do. Something about the phrase "drink the poison?"Previous retro ad puzzles:
• Girdle ad riddle.
• a most disturbing dishwasher ad.
• Why is the Marlboro Man in gay Pari?
posted by copyranter @ 9:00 AM
5 Comments:
Seamless stockings = unsexy - and he prefers his women looking like whores. Thus contemplating suicide since his female wants seamless stockings.
Yeah, the fifties make no sense.
Wouldn't it be "all she wants from me ARE seamless stockings." ?
Dunno - but the ad is obvious. A woman who wants seamless stockings is going to look hot as hell in them. And she hasn't been interested in looking hot since after the third child was born and her dad moved into the basement when his wife died. For her to be interested in looking hot in seamless stockings means she's got a man on the side. Also, all she wants are stockings, which aren't that expensive, as opposed to say, jewelry or a trip to Paris. She's sensible about money, and this is just one more subtle way that she tells him, "You don't earn enough money, loser!" So, this gentleman has chosen the suicide route.
Duh.
I guess you're right, Åsk. "The lack of seam line on a leg was associated with bare legs. Bare legs in the 40s and 50s were considered undignified and common."
So, he will kill himself.
Now I get it.
OK ranter, here's my 59.9% proof explanation:
Dumfounding and morbidly curious to all except for the young, impressionable Stephen Geller.
He later recounted of feeling severe pain and shivers of revulsion on first viewing. His immediate recognition of the underlying message of 'sociopathy' implied in the copy, all based on familial experiences, hit him like the proverbial house on fire.
Out of this trauma though, Geller was able to parlay it into a minor literary work 'She Let Him Continue' and later made into a film:
'Pretty Poison'
Pretty Poison (1968) is a thriller film directed by Noel Black, starring Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld, about an ex-convict and high school cheerleader who commit a series of crimes.
While not generally considered an example of neo-noir, the film does include certain elements of the genre, including a femme fatale, a character trapped into circumstances beyond his control, criminal protagonists and, of course, murder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Poison (film)
Old 56 year old man must answer your question: His wife/girfriend want the stockings, so he has to drink the poison by subjecting himself to the mortification of going to the ladies stocking department to buy them.....shhesh you kids today....
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