Swiffer apologized on Wednesday for a new advertising campaign for their Steamboost product, after consumers called the marketing approach one of the most sexist in the recent past.
The ad shows today's Rosie the Riveter: a blonde woman in a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up, wearing a red polka dotted headband, standing authoritatively with a Swiffer steamer, an I-dare-you-to-try-me smirk plastered on her porcelain face.
Those that opposed the advertisement said that it was blatantly sexist, dumbing down Rosie's original representation of female independence during World War II to a mere housewife whose lot in life is to Swiffer the floors.
But Swiffer is definitely not the first to use sex for sale; sexism permeates many advertisements and the profession is practically mounted upon gender, racial and socioeconomic stereotypes.
Here are five advertisements that are more sexist than Swiffer's modern-day Rosie the Riveter-and no one ever apologized for these.
1. This Burger King ad
Generally, sex does sell, it's true (how do you think Rihanna got to her current superstar fame status? Certainly not by staying in her "Pon de Replay" days). Almost all professions that are peddling a product of any kind must allude to sex in some capacity. That's what the public wants, right?
But BK took it a bit too far when they published the advert shown above, in which a blonde woman performs mock fellatio on a Burger King Super Seven Incher.
2. These, er, contrasting American Apparel ads.
This is how men are to wear American Apparel flannels.
And, of course, the most sexist of all sexist ads, for Chase and Sanborn Coffee.
