Ian Crouch traces the history of Father’s Day, noting that its early iterations downplayed the commercial aspects of the holiday, given that men’s “comparative economic autonomy created a kind of anxiety about gift-giving” – an anxiety ad men would seize upon:
Father’s Day got a significant boost, and a final push toward general recognition, in the early thirties, when the Associated Men’s Wear Retailers, a New York trade group, formed a Father’s Day Committee and débuted a new slogan, “Give Dad Something to Wear.” In 1938, the trade group redoubled its efforts, forming the National Council for the Formation of Father’s Day and hiring a retired adman, Alvin Austin, to marshall its promotion. This is the holiday’s other origin story, and it is a plainly commercial one: Father’s Day would become what Schmidt identifies as a “second Christmas” for men’s retailers. In 1972, Father’s Day was made official, signed into law by Richard Nixon, who wrote, grandly, “In fatherhood we know the elemental magic and joy of humanity.”
The custom of buying Dad a necktie (or another manly present, such as tobacco, cologne, or, later, power tools and gadgets), aided by yearly ad blitzes, became the midcentury’s middle-class standard, with mothers taking their kids to the department store to pick out a tie, a razor, or a bottle of Old Spice. They were rather gloomy offerings, and symbols of the white-collar dad’s professional life: his routine, his absence, and his almost generic unknowability.
Commenting on the Dove commercial seen above, Crouch points to the changing images of fathers it’s responding to:
The Dove commercial, however, is a celebration of the value of the soccer dad—and of the dad who changes diapers and kisses his children. From a brand perspective, it makes sense: buying your father moisturizer anticipates closeness; skin-care products are, in large part, about the value of softness and intimacy. It may not be revolutionary, but its sincerity stands out compared to another high-profile Father’s Day campaign from this year, which continues to emphasize fatherhood as a fraught and unsettled emotional enterprise. The American Greetings card company has produced a response ad to its own Mother’s Day commercial, called “World’s Toughest Job,” which showed women taking part in mock job interviews that emphasized the daunting nature of motherhood. In “World’s Toughest Job-Dad Casting,” actors bumble through scenes of domestic conflict, flubbing their lines, revealing themselves to be clueless, emotionally stunted, and largely bewildered by the customs of middle-class American parenthood. At the end, the moment of sincerity is simply that they are there to listen—“I’m here for you”—like dumb sounding boards, holding down the fort until Mom gets home from work to sort things out. These dads are goofballs, and probably, at best, deserve another necktie.
The Dish 