Controversy sells, as does conflict. "Your husband is an idiot, we all know it, purchase this mop to overcome his stupidity." Which, really, pales in comparison to "all women are pieces of meat to objectify, eat our burgers."

My grandmother scrapbooked. This was not known to me until I became the keeper of the albums. Her remodeling ideas? Her "pinterest?" a book of advertising lovingly and carefully put together after she graduated Radcliffe in '37. You want ads, I got ads. It's easy to find the jaw-droppingly terrible ones because Tumblr regurgitates that shit like a momma bird but even the inoffensive shit speaks pretty broadly to institutionalized marginalization.

It's interesting - back when introduced, Mr. Clean actually lifted a finger or two.

Six years later, P&G veered flagrantly into infantilization, but at least they made room for the possibility that a man might at some point actually have to do something about a mess.

Six years after that, there's no cleaning - just an ecstatic, orgasmic, lemon-fueled acid trip:

Six more years, and we're at least showing that cleaning might be the goal... but the Mr. of the house is still absent:

Six more years, and the extent of Mr. Clean's involvement in your chores is to beefcake it up. Worth pointing out - at least the ad passes the Bechdel test:

Now it's '91 and holy shit, we actually have a family (a lilly-white, WASP-ey college-bound family, but still) cleaning together, dad included:

By '97 we're banking on nostalgia and the family is gone. I am woman, hear me roar into the emptiness.

And now, per the ads you found, P&G are clearly still banking on nostalgia and brand recognition, showing a bunch of lily-white women doing lily-white women things. I mean, you could go the other way...

Realistically speaking, you've got a 50-year-old relic of the Golden Age of Advertising anchoring your brand, and he looks like he just stepped out of the Bally Total Fitness in Sand Point, Idaho. There's only so much Mr. Clean can do before he starts reminding people that he's the Ubermensch. Frankly, standing by and letting women do their thing is about the least controversial thing he could do. And at least he's no longer asking overly-probing questions.