We begin with breakfast. Or in this case, Post Grape-Nuts. And because this clearly delighted woman has been sticking to her delicious low-fat cereal, she CAN buy the floral summer dress, while the poor, overweight frump in the background looks on with envy and disapproval.

Of course, this sort of advertising still continues in the 21st century, except it's rather more sophisticated these days. Slim and pretty women always sell more clothes than plain or dumpy ones.

What did American advertisers think women wanted in the 1950s? More financial independence? Pay equality with men? A European holiday? Better orgasms or birth control? What they really wanted was a better soap powder.

Tide's got what women want! The crudity of the message, some 60 years on, is breathtaking.

Plenty of other brands, of course, had been busy promoting cleanliness for several decades beforehand. One new soap was Dove, a novel brand back in 1957. "One quarter cleansing cream - ordinary soap dries your skin but Dove creams your skin while you wash."

Predictably women were the target while men were groomed by marketeers to worry about hair (buy XYZ hair tonic for added confidence). Women were also gagging for softer loo roll. "New soft toilet tissue brings comfort women long for".

Men, it seems, couldn't care less how abrasive the experience was (and not a lot seems to have changed).

While detergent and food manufacturers attempted to focus the minds of many females on the home, motor manufacturers were also zeroing in on women, though often only as back seat passengers, as this Ford ad makes clear.

However the Independent Electric Light & Power company had other ideas. Not only were women in the driving seat in this company's futurisistic vision of the future, they had also taken to the air and were piloting their own craft too. But the flight was only to the shopping mall (note the stacked grocery bag) followed by the school run.

At least Independent Electric Light & Power had the presence of mind to predict roof solar heating panels (at least they look like solar water heating panels on the house roof in this depicted ad).

Of course, many women didn't have any kind of life in the week at all, so busy were they with cleaning, cooking and blending in with the ironing board. But every Friday night they had a chance to see LIFE.

"For five days a week," simpered this women's story advert, "she was a housewife; at the weekends a lady of leisure. It was the sort of thing that led to a split personality."

Really? It didn't lead to a bored, frustrated and rebellious personality instead? How much, then, has changed, would you say?