The main, tentative theme of the blog is Movies That Have Women In Them, but there may be occasional divergences into other territories and subjects i.e. Books That Have Women In Them, or Movies That Have Only Men In Them. Or cognitive science. Or pretty much whatever I want.
In the spirit of the blog being about whatever I want, my first post is about soap commercials. One of the first things I bought when I first moved into my own apartment was a bar of Camay Soap from the 99 cent store, and Camay Soap commercials from the '70s are the reason why.
I don't really have a lot to say about the first commercial except to observe how blatantly pornographic it is. Like the first commercial, the second one treats the soap lather like sort of a cum substitute, but the characters' sexual rapport is so guileless and heartfelt that it just makes you want to sit on the couch and watch Golden Age porno for 9 hours while snuggling. This is literally my favorite commercial of all time. The only thing I hate about it is that it's a soap commercial, and not the teaser intro to the world's most adorable 40-minute hardcore sequence.
Disturbingly, commercials for Ivory from the same period have a skin-crawly, Aryan obsession with women being "pure" and "healthy." They also express a weird, misanthropic perspective on women wanting to be more than just averagely attractive, and seem balefully preoccupied with the idea that women might ever try to do anything outside the watchful and approving gaze of males.
I'm trying to find this other one I saw a long time ago where the girl's boyfriend tells her she looks beautiful and she corrects him and says, "No, I look healthy," but I can't find that one, sorry.
I guess you could argue that the Ivory commercials are progressive because they de-emphasize physical beauty in a culture where women are constantly being told they need to look beautiful to have value etc, but they aren't really about women being empowered so much as they're about women hunkering down into socially proscribed roles and avoiding any attempt to be distinctive because they don't want to make anybody else uncomfortable by drawing attention to themselves. But that's just my interpretation.
In conclusion, I leave you with this intensely moving and well-edited Dove commercial from about five years ago, which likewise invokes the darkest and most perverse malingerings of a world obsessed with the degradation and dehumanization of females in order to get you to buy soap.
The soap will probably also make you feel very creamy.
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