In today's age of the slick, subtle and often subliminal advertisement, it can be hard to stomach the more brash, in-your-face, Victor Kiam-style, "I bought the company" hard sell. The relentless "Cos I'm worth it" TV ads of a well-known beauty products company have forced me to pre-record my favourite programmes so I can whiz past those overpaid TV stars who claim that they dye their own hair out of a box and are really worth somewhere in the region of between £4 and £8.
But that was until I came across a 1903 Irish Times advertisement for Mother's Seigel's Syrup which makes the Jennifer Aniston et al ads seem like a high and rarefied art form. It begins: "Attractive girls are not all made in one pattern. Oh no, their charms are as varied as their faces, and the particular grace and charm that captivates one man leaves his brother untouched. But most men will agree that the languid, dejected, sallow-faced girls whose every movement and action betokens indigestion, constipation, or anaemia, is less attractive than her more favoured and beautiful sister . . . so it is that the Seigel girl is always admired for her beauty, vivacity and buoyant healthfulness".
Messages
Drink Mother's Seigel's syrup and you will radiate beauty, men will be running after you in droves and you will have a happy life. Don't and you will probably end up constipated and alone. In those days advertisers had no truck with underlying or subliminal messages - it was a case of telling it like it is in the days when political correctness meant minding your manners in parliament.
If this powerful syrup was around today, instead of bludgeoning the point home with unsavoury mention of bowel movements and predatory males, a beaming Jennifer Aniston would probably tell us that she's a Seigel girl and she's worth it or Andie McDowell would say that it prevents constipation, not that she ever had any.
"And here's the science bit . . ." Today we are blinded with science when it comes to cosmetics. If we are honest, many of us don't know our Ceramide-Rs from our ProRetinol As but maybe somewhere deep down we believe that if it has an enigmatic name, its got to be doing us some good. Early 20th century advertisers were less abstract and readers were treated to all the gory details.
A 1922 ad for Lavona hair tonic for "crisp and curly" hair tells us how the product works. "First destroy the dandruff germ and give nature a second chance; second feed and stimulate the scalp so that a strong, vigorous flow of rich red nourishing blood will be applied to the starved hair roots." Today Courteney Cox-Arquette spares us the bloody particulars and solves the dandruff problem simply by getting some hunk into the shower with a bottle of her favourite shampoo.
Question
"What I must do to be lovely?" asks a 1926 ad for Elizabeth Arden cosmetics. The answer lay at Messrs Forrest and Sons Ltd on Grafton Street where Miss Arden's expert assistant from Old Bond Street was appearing for 12 days only so that women could ask "personal questions" about "oily skin, coarse pores and wrinkles". The ad gives a quick blast of the impressive but graphic science bit - "Learn to care for your skin scientifically, to keep it young and naturally lovely...quicken the circulation that carries off poisons and brings fresh colour to the cheeks." Using actresses to plug products isn't a new concept. Amami shampoos in 1926 used Binnie Hale, the "vivacious attractive lead in No, No Nanette, the big London success". At 6d per sachet, it left her hair "softer and glossier than when washed by any other preparation . . . I use Amami". And no doubt she felt she was worth every one of those six pennies.
In 1946, an advertisement for Dr Williams Pink Pills tells us that the girl who gets there is the girl with the radiant glow of health that comes from taking Dr Williams Pink Pills. Where she gets exactly is not really explained but we can probably take it they are not referring to the girl who gets to break through the corporate glass ceiling.
Problems
Not that using your glowing complexion to get ahead is going to get you too far in the long run. Nearly 30 years after the Dr Williams ad, an Irish Times article warns of a syndrome repugnant to women's liberation where women base their self-esteem on their good looks, personality characteristics and their ability to attract men. A Dr Ella Lasky warns that "emotional problems can result when people rely on their attractiveness instead of developing as a complete individual. I've had patients who flirted their way through schools and into jobs. Their problems came when they realised they didn't know they could have graduated or gotten jobs without beauty".
With this kind of sobering awareness prevalent, advertisers have been under pressure to clean up their act. Ads have largely become streamlined, and sanitised, full of sub-text and undercurrent. Our sophisticated antennae can now spot a hard-sell at 50 paces and our delicate constitutions are not up to blow by blow accounts of bowel movements or bloody scalps.
Nevertheless, strip even the most obscure and arty ad down to its fundamentals and you realise that nothing much has really changed. The basic message of beauty advertising is the same as it was 100 years ago: Buy this product and you will be happy and successful and men will flock to your side. It's just that back then you didn't have to call a spade an earth-displacing implement. Today, it's more a case of, as the satirical magazine Punch once quipped, "If it's absolutely necessary to call a spade a spade then it must be done in a whisper".