72 Ads From The Past That Would Be Banned Today

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“If your wife can’t cook, don’t divorce her—keep her for a pet and eat at our place.” – Public Service Announcement

Etsy

A wife’s inability to cook must have been grounds for divorce at the time this ad was created. Since the wife’s main occupation involved cooking, cleaning, maintaining the house, and caring for the children, if she failed to do one of her roles, then her husband can simply “fire” her.

However, this ad says that there’s no need to divorce your wife if she cannot prepare a decent meal. While it gives men an option to eat elsewhere, its suggestion to keep women for a pet is completely offensive.

Even though this public service announcement was perhaps an effort to discourage divorce in a supposedly funny ad, it’s extremely sexist and insulting in the manner it relegated women—wives—to the level of household pets.