Sexist Vintage Ad: Pitney-Bowes- Is it always illegal to kill a woman?

I love browsing through old ads and recipes. Vintage ads give insight into the culture of the past. Vintage recipes…well, many of them I hope nobody made them!

This advertisement is by Pitney-Bowes and was published in 1947. It’s tagline is “Is it always illegal to kill a woman?” It’s been impossible to track down an original source for this ad. Original source as in someone who claims they are the one who photographed or scanned it and then uploaded it to the internet.

However, since there a few different images wandering around (you can tell the difference by slight stains, etc.), I’m leaning towards believing this is a legitimate sexist vintage ad.

[vc_separator_2 style=”line_symbol” icon_type=”typicons” color_line=”#24003f” color_symbol=”#480030″ padding_top=”5″ padding_bottom=”5″ sep_width=”full” icon_typicons=”typcn typcn-star-outline”]

The most reputable source for this ad is “Envisioning the American Dreams,” which is affiliated with Sally Edelstein. I have never found a picture on her site that I haven’t been able to validate.

The text reads:

Is it always illegal to kill a woman?

 

For six months I bend the ears of the home office to get a postage meter. I win . . . Then the only good, fast, dependable, honest-to-Gregg stenographer I got, this redhead Morissey, balks at a postage meter!

 

“I have no mechanical aptitude. Machines mix me up, kind of’” she says. As if we asked her to fly a P-80.  I almost blow my top.

 

This postage meter, I explain, is modern, more efficient, a time saver . . . No more adhesive stamps. No stamp box, and who’s got the key? No running out of stamps you need. No scrounging. No stamp sticking. Just set the lever for any kind of stamp you want, for any kind of mail, and the meter prints the stamp right on the envelope with a dated postmark – and it seals the flap at the same time. Faster than mailing by hand. Prints stamps on tape for parcel post. Even keeps its own records!

 

And metered mail doesn’t have to be postmarked and cancelled in the post office, gets going earlier. It is practically heaven’s gift to the working girl . . . and so on. But with the Morissey, no soap.

 

I try diplomacy, “Miss Morissey, I want you person’lly to try it for two weeks. If you don’t like it then – back it goes to the factory! I depend on your judgment implicitly. Okay?” . . . She acts like an early Christian about to be lunch for a lion, but gives in.

 

So help me – two weeks later she has a big pink bow on the handle of the postage meter – like it was an orchid or something. I give it the gape.

 

“Kinda cute, ain’t it,” says Miss Morissey. “But a very efficient machine, Mr Jones. Now the mail is out early enough so I get to the girls’ room in time to hear all the dirt” . . . I wonder is it always illegal to kill a woman!

(Source of text: “Bytes Daily“…thanks because I could have squinted and read the text, but this was easier.)

This image of same ad doesn’t show the slight stains of the one above, a good sign it’s from a different source. While the blog has little to no information about author, “The Visual Primer of Advertising Cliches,” has a lot of vintage ads. It’s also not monetized…so I can’t see why the author would be making up ads to traffic.

The ad has shown up in a few different places, but most trace the ad back to “Bored Panda.”