Best in show | Advertisement for Bovril, 1930s, Museum of Brands, London

“I like this advertisement because of the mix of messages it sends. It shows a beautiful woman in an elaborate athletic pose, reflecting the time when people were flocking to join in with the new craze of ice skating, thanks to the young Princess Elizabeth having learned how to do it. 

Meanwhile, the ‘hockey-sticks’ language of the period intriguingly reveals that Bovril was being sold as a health drink. In other Bovril ads from around the time, women prepared to fly planes, played golf and swam while being sustained by the beefy extract. 

It’s easy to think of women being solely depicted doing chores or merely appearing as decoration, so it’s fascinating to see adverts from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s when they were actually active outdoors or busy in the workplace.  

That completely changed in the 1950s and 60s, however, when they were found at home, about to become mothers again and marvelling at a new fridge in adverts that reassured female readers that everything was going to be all right. 

Our exhibition, Ad Women: 100 Years of Women in Advertising – created in partnership with the History of Advertising Trust – looks back over a century of how women have not only been portrayed, but also how they have driven advertising. 

It’s not the one-way street you might imagine of men deciding what images of women might sell products best. It’s also a story of women talking to other women about their lives. 

An accompanying advertising reel in the gallery provides quite an emotional ride through the progress that has been made. Hopefully, the show will prompt conversations along the lines of ‘yes, things have changed, but how much more can we change?’. People might start looking at advertising a little differently. 

As you might expect, there’s quite a lot of imagery that could be called ‘provocative’ or ‘challenging’, especially when we get to the 1970s, when some of it was overtly sexual and explicit in some ways. Think of the woman eating a famous chocolate bar while taking a bath, for example. 

I’ve got a young set of interns working with me and they couldn’t believe that something many of them felt was borderline pornography featured in the mainstream press and on television. 

One of the challenges of putting the show together has been the paucity of more-recent material, in our digital media age. There simply isn’t as much physical ephemera and people haven’t been saving files, so things from 15 or 20 years ago have vanished. 

It’s interesting to look back at the advertising women with their gleaming smiles and even brighter kitchens and believe things have moved on considerably. 

Some of the themes, however, are still around today. Those flawless homes and lifestyles are the sort of things people are now obsessed with on Instagram.” 

Interview by John Holt. Ad Women: 100 Years of Women in Advertising is at the Museum of Brands, London, until 28 April