Late last week, I talked about how, even as a guy, I know that ads for women's hygiene products are silly. Now, I'm going to talk about an advertiser that hasn't been very fair to the fairer sex for decades: Folgers.

We've written about the supermarket coffee brand's saccharine-sweet advertising before. But one thing we haven't explored with their "playing to middle America" series of ads is how poorly women come off in most of them.

Take this ad that debuted late in 2009 and has been airing incessantly ever since:



At first, it looks like a sweet and kind of old-fashioned spot, with a well-meaning if slightly over-protective dad telling his little girl that her new fiance went to him for his blessing to take her hand in marriage. But one line in the ad drives me batty: After the dad says to his daughter that she was out late the night before, she holds out the ring and says "well, you're not gonna have to worry about that anymore."

Gah. I'm no feminist, but I am someone who thinks anyone, regardless of gender, can achieve anything if that person puts his or her mind to it. I just don't think anyone should be dependent on anyone else unless that person chooses to raise children at home and can rely on the other parent (even then, you never know what might happen).

This is why the line "you're not gonna have to worry about that anymore" rankles so much. What it says to me is: "I don't need my daddy to take care of me anymore because I found a man to take care of me." Ugh. Just hearing the line makes my lunch come up a little bit. It sounds like an ad that was created in 1962 instead of 2009, or in a current advertising office where the 85-year-old version of Don Draper is toiling away, bitching about not being able to smoke in the office while sipping whiskey from a diner coffee cup.

As I was trying to find the video to this ad, I saw a post at the female-centric website The Frisky that denounced it, much for the same reasons why I hated it. What surprised me was the reader response to the post. "Must we be offended by everything?" said one reader. "So now family values are offensive?" questioned another. Most of the readers took the ad's side, calling it "sweet" and "old-fashioned."

Those people were missing the point, though. What wasn't offensive was the fact that the dad was worried about his daughter. Dads are genetically programmed to worry about their daughters, no matter how old they are. And even the fact that he and the fiance discussed the engagement behind her back wasn't annoying, even though it sounded like they were negotiating a dowry for her as if she was property.

Nope, it was merely the woman -- who looked like she was in her early twenties -- telling her dad that the responsibility for her care has passed from him to her husband-to-be. I just didn't think people behaved or thought that way in 2010.

If this ad aired in the 'olden' days, though, it would have even been given a second look. In the sixties and early seventies, ads that tied up a woman's worth in how she made coffee for her husband were SOP, but it seemed that Folgers was especially adept at making wives look like scullery maids. This ad, where a husband is driven to near-violence because his wife just can't manage a percolator, is a good example:



So, who do you think Folgers was marketing this ad to? Even in the vast majority of the nation, the area we on the coasts like to snobbishly call "flyover country," women can't feel like they need a man to take care of them at this point, can they? With every self-help book, website, and TV show telling them that they can take care of themselves? Heck, between Oprah and Dr. Phil, you'd think the message would have been delivered to about 95% of the country.

Or do the folks who make Folgers (which is owned by Smucker's, by the way) know something we don't?