Photographer Eli Rezkallah has created an amusing twist on sexist vintage advertising in a series called Parallel Universe. I’m sure a lot of my readers will have encountered his inspiration material in articles like this one. It’s classic clickbait, guaranteed to both amuse, appall and make you marvel how far the world has moved on. He’s taken specific original ads and reshot them with a gender reverse.
I like the idea, but can’t help feeling that there’s a missed opportunity for the companies here. A lot of them are still around. For example, you can still buy Chase & Sanborn coffee, creators of the original ad below. They should reshoot their ad themselves with the gender reverse (or use just Eli’s version) and issue it as a new ad. They could claim it was a both a joke and an implicit acknowledgement of their past mistakes. It’d get loads of publicity and generate social media controversy – both of which appear to be the primary goals of modern advertising.
