Civic artifact speech draft

Men how would you like to have a leg up on women in every aspect as possible, sounds tempting right? Unfortunately this offer has expired almost 50 years ago. My artifact from the 1950s displays the unjust status men held over women in the home and outside environment. Surrounding this era, sexism was the norm, which excused mens behaviors and there were myriads of advertisements that put women down. There is a hierarchical placement depicted here inferring that women must be submissive to household needs. In this advertisement by Mr.Leggs, they are advertising a pair of men’s work slacks to be worn for work and daily activities. The advertisement evidently shows the bottom half of a man with his foot on top of a women’s head, but the rest of her body is replaced by an animal skin rug and the caption claiming “It’s nice to have a girl around the house”. This advertisement is prevalent in civic life and engagement because it is persuading both men to go to work and women to not engage in the labor force and fulfill household duties.

Although Mr. Leggs tried to convey to their audience that they were just selling a pair of pants, they were also selling the idea that women can be easily captured and placed right in the home as a worker and and object of display. The commonplace I analyzed from this advertisement the superiority men hold over women. The message Mr. Leggs was trying to pass onto their audience was that women are wild and must be tamed by men and placed in the cage of a home to be able to answer to any beckon and calls her husband has. The advertisement was successful in getting its message across but only benefitted one part of the audience. The message was strong enough to keep women out of the labor force and in the home for another 10-12 years before there was a rise in the number of women who participated in the labor force; this was a setback for women but a leg up for the men’s egos (no pun intended). Rhetorical tools were firmly utilized here such as ethos and pathos. From the ethos standpoint, a men’s slack company does not have the proper entitlement for conveying the masses of women that they are inferior to men. They do not hold the proper expertise or right to tell men to treat women as pieces of meat. From the pathos standpoint, it is evident that this advertisement can provoke a strong feeling of anger and frustration for women. They might feel they are stuck in their roles and there is no escape of this toxic environment. They will feel the complete opposite of what the woman is depicted as, with a grin slapped on her face.

As I mentioned before the message connected to this advertisement was successful but in a negative way. The advertisement was successful in achieving a kairotic moment, the timing of the release of this advertisement was impeccable. When this advertisement was presented to the public, it was roughly a little bit after the end of World War Two and during this historical event many women were active in the labor force to help the war effort and keep their families on their feet. But after the war women were faced with an immense pressure to either stay with their factory jobs or fully return to their roles of household and spousal duties. The advertisement achieved the goal of keeping majority of women stagnant, trapped in housewife roles because about 75% of women returned to these roles after the war. It was not til about 10-15 years later that women became more present in the labor force. This advertisement and many others released during this time were responsible for pressuring women to not go against gender roles and remain locked in their homes.

It is important to recognize the difference in treatment that women received back then and now, evaluating how much they have overcome. This Mr. Leggs advertisement would not be socially acceptable in present day civic life and if it was circulated through contemporary media, there certainly would be a massive outbreak led by women. Due to the second and third wave feminist waves, women have established a dominant roles for themselves in society, especially in labor and political settings. These two waves are responsible for breaking the norms of the minority of women allowed in the labor force and having a much louder voice in society. There are still many boundaries that need to be broken in order to create a totally equivalent society between males and females but they have most definitely come a long way. What I would like to leave my fellow peers with is, how does this advertisement for subtly advertising a brand of mens slacks turn so quickly to reinforce women’s position compared to mens?