The good olds days (of misogyny)

[Bzalthek]

I've read two accounts neither of which sound legit but I'm sharing anyway.

1) around 1897 which is when this shit rolled out, people were supposedly making their own soap and, well, buying pears soap was better than having an accident where the child is doused in lye (yeah, total bullshit)

2) There were some other ads where the general gist was 'the kid won't like taking a bath until he gets in (and experiences the soap)', so an accident in which he can no longer bathe with the super awesome soap is going to make him cry.

[Khaldun]

Home soap-making mostly stopped in the UK and US in cities before the 1850s or so except in very poor households, partly a consequence of the use of kerosene or other oils for lighting and heating (ashes from wood fires were an important ingredient in home soaps) plus soap was one of the first industrially-produced goods to be commonly available in Western Europe and the US. Plus also Westerners didn't actually wash that often prior to the early 19th Century--it was thought to be bad for your health.  (East Asian peoples were totally blown away by the foul stench of Europeans in the early modern period.)

Pears' soap ads were in general pretty mind-boggling in their use of racial imagery, though some other early British soap companies did the same. (There's a 19th C. Gossage's Soap ad that's totally  showing a face half-white and half-black.)

[Ruvaldt]

Like this?

Yeah, Pears' was advertised to the British public as a fundamental aspect of the civilizing process.  Though the ads depict brown people becoming white in a literal sense it was also meant figuratively.

Another example:

Pears' Soap is widely considered the first modern "brand."

[Paelos]

I'm sure it has something to do with not throwing the baby out with the bath water, but how or why, I don't know. 

I had not considered that particular aphorism related to the picture. Now it makes a sort of sense, but it's still a sick and twisted sense. 

[Murgos]

I'm not sure what problem there is with the safety razor ad.  Hey, use our razor and have baby smooth skin!

So, what?

[Merusk]

Overly protective people shocked that they'd advertise a baby holding a razor blade.  That baby could have cut it's throat!  Never mind it's a drawing and not a photo, it's the IDEA that's bad and must be pointed out as such, even though there was no victim or harm done.

[Ironwood]

Um.  No.

It's saying explicitly that the safety razor is now so safe you can give it to the kid.

Don't be retarded.

[Merusk]

No, I get that.  He wanted to know why it was on the site as a bad/ inappropriate ad that wouldn't be run today.