Aunt Jemima's male counterpart was the Tom, a simple, cheerful, and ambition-free butler and cook. In the South, the mammy and the Tom reflected a nostalgia for the days of slavery and served as an implicit argument for segregation: If it's so bad, why are these people so happy, huh? In the North, these characters were presented as the epitome of hospitality and were designed to make potential buyers feel pampered and privileged. It was a sales pitch that advertisers apparently couldn't resist. One study of national magazines in the '20s—the beginning of the Tom's heyday—found that fully half of all ads that featured a black man depicted him as a servant. Like Ben, many were given the honorific "Uncle," a word favored by Southerners who wanted to express respect in a society where calling a black man "Mister" was out of the question.