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Winter War Time Romance PTII

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WWII vintage illustration couple kissing

Vintage ad WWII Woodbury Soap 1944

Moonlight Becomes You

“The breathless night. The moon burning on its billion watt radiance. Multiplying mystery, quickening the pulse. Stirring up a suddenly sweet tumult. Heady stuff this.

To look into his eyes and know that you were never lovelier. To hear him say the words that match the music in your heart, The guardian of your beauty…a Woodbury facial cocktail clears your complexion for the moonglow look of romance.”

Just like all the sappy soap ads that ran in the magazines, Betty was convinced the evening would reek of romance.

“Be the Thrill in his Furlough”, she hummed to herself as she got ready for her big date with Stanley, the Marine she met on the train to Miami. “Your loveliness can make that furlough a –never-to- be forgotten thrill.”

vintage illustration romantic couples soap ad 1940s

Betty knew that when a gals skin is soft and fresh, romance is at its beck and call. Ask any man for his definition of physical beauty and he will most certainly mention a radiant satin-smooth complexion.

Now that perfume was scarce due to wartime alcohol shortage, Betty was glad she used her favorite Cashmere Bouquet, the soap with the fragrance men loved.

“Popular girls today and for 75 romantic years bathe with Cashmere Bouquet soap, the ads declared. “You’re the song in my heart” Want to hear him whisper those words in the “I Care” manner? Let your skin whisper the fragrance of Cashmere Bouquet soap. The bouquet of this beloved soap is irresistible to men-it’s the fragrance men love.

All Wrapped Up In A Bow

vintage illustration jon whitcomb

(L) Vintage Palmolive Soap ad illustration Jon Whitcomb (R) Vintage illustration Jon Whitcomb

Sizing herself up in the mirror  Betty was glad she had taken  Mitzi Maguire’s “Charm and Grooming” class offered to freshmen girls in college. Internationally known socialite, and one of the worlds loveliest women, she promised to share the secrets of the stars and famous beauties “which could be put to work to make you more beautiful and exciting to men.”

“Personality and charm can make for a great many physical flaws,” Betty had learned in the class, “but they are even more appealing if they come in a pretty package!”

Mirror Mirror On The Wall

Mitzi was firm in her belief that every man likes an all around girl. “One that is as attractive from the back as from the front., she would say. “To rate a backward glance from him, you’d better give yourself one first!

“A quick head-on collision with your compact mirror as you frantically dab a little powder on your nose and repair your lipstick is not enough,” Mitzi had firmly told the eager class.

“Neither is a last-minute glance in the hallway mirror to make sure your slip isn’t showing when the doorbell rings. You have to give yourself a good head to toe survey in a full length mirror.”

“Grab a pen and pencil and paper and list your assets as well as your liabilities-the pros and cons,” Mitzi instructed. “It’s better to recognize your defects before everyone else does.”

If you don’t watch your figure men won’t either!”

Now Betty looked at herself quietly in the full length mirror.

It was unbelievable. She had never looked like this before, had never even hoped to look like this. The black dress, its boned bodice melted to the lines in her body, flared at the hips to a froth of net. Five years ago she wouldn’t have had a dress like this.

He’s A-1 in the Army and He’s A 1 in my heart!

“This is for you,” Stanley had said giving her the corsage box.

And now in the powder room of the Roney Plaza Hotel, she lifted the box, parted the white tissues gently and uncovered the flowers. Twin camellias, deep pink, cool, perfect.

No one had ever given her camellias before.

At college she had gotten gardenias, roses, an orchid now and again but never camellias. She lifted them carefully out of the box. They would go in her hair, natch, she couldn’t trust them on her dress. Not, certainly this strapless job.

Love is in the Air

WWII vintage illustration soldier kissing girl 1940s

As Betty stood waiting for Stanley to waltz back in to the room, she knew this was her night of nights. She was walking on cloud nine.

Never before had she felt so completely happy or looked so immaculately fresh and sweet and dainty. Indeed that springtime freshness was one of Betty’s charms, thanks to Listerine. It was something she strove for, recognizing it almost as a passport to the popularity she had known since her teens.

Could others, she thought, say so much for themselves?

He slid an arm around her waist and swung her onto the floor. The black net swirled around her ankles, the room fell away as his arm tightened around her waist.

While sharing a conga line together, the sizzling rhythms, the drums and maracas filling her mind, Betty remembered all the articles she had read, all the movies she had seen, all the songs she had heard, and it all help confirm what she knew in her heart to be true.

It all added up…the starry eyes…the fireworks in the bloodstream…this was what the songs sing about…this is what little girls are made for…this is what she washed religiously with Cashmere Bouquet for!

This was indeed love!

Copyright (©) 2014 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

 

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Smoking- Just What the Doctor Ordered

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 vintage ad featuring doctors smoking and illustration smoking mother and baby

RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company ran a long series of ads (R) in which they claimed that according to a nationwide survey “More doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette.” Clearly if doctors are smoking this brand it must be safe (L) Vintage Philip Morris ad touts how gentle their cigarettes are

In mid-century America more doctors may have smoked camels, but pregnant women preferred Philip Morris.

At least as far as my own baby-bound mother was concerned.

In 1954  it would be a good tens years before the Surgeon General’s landmark report concluded that there was a link between lung cancer and cigarette smoking, so until then my mother blissfully puffed away while pregnant with me.

Panicky Pregnancy

Besides which, my second time Mom had first hand knowledge on pregnancy. She knew frequent cigarette breaks came in mighty handy to quiet pregnancy jitters.

Two years earlier in 1952 while pregnant with my older brother, my first time mother Betty was a bundle of nerves.

Like many moms-to-be, she had a good case of the impending-mother jitters. Not only could she feel overwhelmed at the thought of being a mother, her head was filled with stories of everything that could go wrong for her and her unborn baby.

But lucky for Betty her obstetrician was there to gently help dispel all her concerns.

smoking doctors

In her second trimester, Mom had gone for her usual monthly set of maternal x-rays at the obstetrician office. Before she even had a chance to share her anxieties with the doctor, he  noticed she had a mild cough.

Padding over to his tall steel medical cabinet Dr Orenstein pulled out a pack of Philip Morris cigarettes. Along with tinctures, ointments, and penicillin, the painted cabinet was well stocked with dozens of cigarette cartons, tokens of appreciation  received at medical conventions over the years courtesy of Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds.

Handing her the familiar gold pack, he assured her, “You can kiss your cough goodbye Betty. You’ll soon feel better because you’ll be smoking the cigarette recommended by eminent nose and throat specialists to patients who smoke.”

“You’ll feel better,”  continued the doctor, pausing to light up a Camel for himself, “because in case after case coughs due to smoking disappear, parched throats clear up…that stale smoked out feeling vanishes. Tests showed 3 out of every case of smokers cough cleared on changing to Phillip Morris.”

“And,” he added smiling broadly,  “it was the same brand comedienne Lucille Ball smoked…and a pregnant Lucy at that!”

Mom loved Lucy.

smoking philip Morris Lucy Baby

An unprecedented pairing of fictional pregnancy with real life pregnancy occurred on I Love Lucy episode Lucy Goes to the hospital By pure coincidence and good luck the episode dealing with the birth of fictional Little Ricky was scheduled for Jan 19, 1953 which proved to be the day when the actress gave birth to her real son. Desi Arnaz Jr
When the episode premiered 72% of all American homes with TV sets tuned in receiving the higher ratings than the inauguration of President Eisenhower
The news made headlines. By the end of the second season it was Desi Arnaz Jr who graced the cover of the first issue of TV Guide. On Feb 18, 1953 a month after the birth of little Ricky the Arnazes signed a new 2 1/2 year 8 million dollar contract with Philip Morris

Everyone knew the popular Monday night show I Love Lucy was sponsored by cigarette giant Phillip Morris.

The animated titles that opened the show even featured stick figures of Lucy and Desi climbing a giant pack of Philip Morris Cigarettes interacting with Johnny Roventini the diminutive bellboy who for nearly 2 decades had been belting out the Philip Morris slogan “Cal-l-l for Phil-lip Mor-ray-sss!”

Medical Authorities

Although Mom had been a loyal  Lucky Strike smoker for years, everyone was familiar with the Philip Morris ads that ran for years.

Featuring the four-foot  bellhop who happily made health claims stating that “medical authorities  recognize that  Philip Morris proved less irritating to the smokers nose and throat.”

smoking philip Moris drs

Promising research conducted by physicians , the ads assured the reader that after prescribing Phillip Morris brand cigarettes to patients with irritated throats “every case of irritation cleared completely or definitely improved”

Naturally other cigarettes made similar health claims always supported by scientific  research and glowing doctors endorsements.

Chesterfield for example boldly announced the results of a ten month scientific study in one ad: “Nose throat and accessory organs not adversely affected by smoking Chesterfield,” while Camels could claim that “noted throat specialists concluded that not one case of throat irritation was due to smoking Camels.” No mention was made on its effect on the subjects  lungs!

Vintage Chesterfield Cigarette Ads 1950s Arthur Godfrey

Chesterfield proudly announced the results of their 10 months scientific study- the ” First such report ever published about any cigarette,” they boasted. “A responsible consulting organization has reported the results of a continuing study by a competent medical specialist and his staff on the effects of smoking Chesterfield’s. After 6 months the medical specialist after a thorough examination of the test group stated: “It is my opinion that the ears, nose throat and accessory organs of all participating subjects were not adversely affected in the 6 month period by smoking Chesterfields.”


Smoke Screen

Opening up the current issue of Journal of the American Medical Association  Dr Orenstein pointed out an advertisement to Mom which  showed a physician writing on a prescription pad: “For your patients with sore throats and cough, Phillip Morris cigarettes.”

Of course buried deep in those same pages of the medical journal, tucked between ads for cigarettes were early reports suggesting a plausible relationship between smoking and lung cancer.

In fact, in May 27 1950 JAMA published the first major study linking smoking to lung cancer and after 1953 the medical journal  would no longer accept adverting from tobacco companies.

smoking camels drs baby

Many doctors still doubted there was a wide spread connection between smoking and disease. Instead it was believed that only certain individuals health was affected by smoking so it was a case by case situation.


Let Up and Light Up!

Besides the benefits to her throat , her doctor stressed out how beneficial cigarettes were for rattled  nerves.

“Don’t be such a brooder Betty,” he smiled at my mother offering a light for her cigarette.  She drew deeply of the fragrant smoke,  the cool mildness of the tobacco tars  a treat to her throat.

“Relax!” the doctor advised.  Modern pregnancy he assured her was a modern miracle. No Fuss no muss.

Gently patting my mother’s hand he tried to calm my fretting mother. “Nowadays pregnancy is a breeze.”

To help her achieve piece of mind, he assured her she’d be on her way  to a calm and collected  motherhood if she’d  relax and prepare. “Just as a healthy dose of arsenate of lead mixed in the soil before planting would produce a fine healthy lawn, you’ll have a fine healthy baby if you relax and prepare.” Nothing was more important than steady nerves.

And nothing would help you relax like a soothing  cigarette.

“Cigarettes contain not just one but a combination of medically proven active ingredients to sooth frayed nerves,” explained the doctor.  He promised it would “restore her flow of healthful energy , …a quick and delightful energizing effect!”

“Quit being a worry wort, Betty, ‘laughter,” he said referencing the famous Readers Digest section “was the best medicine’ and smoking was like a doctor’s prescription for relaxation.”

Mom tossed the pack into her purse, and with a new lilt in her walk, happily anticipated the birth of her new baby, and a great tasting new cigarette.

“Let up and light up and laugh,” he advised Mom shooing her out of the office.

The Last Laugh

Vintage Camel Cigarette Ads woman smoking cigarette dr smoking cigarette

Just what the doctor ordered…It feels so good to relax!

 In May, Mom had delivered a whopping 4 pound premature baby boy, and now and now she had her hands full.

This mothering business was tuckering poor Mom out and  she could be dog tired in the evening .That was just one of the many, many times during the day when she wanted to “Let up and light up.”

By December her diaper decorated world kept her too busy for words.

She barely had spare time to flip through a magazine, open a newspaper or even keep up with the news! With so  many new things to learn and discover about one tiny bit of humanity, she said sighing, that there doesn’t seem to be time to catch up with the rest.

But Monday nights at 9pm were  set aside as her half hour of  relaxation all week, when along with 40 million other viewer she looked forward to watching “I Love Lucy.”

With the dinner dishes washed, laundry folded, and baby bottles sterilizing in the electric sterilizer, patiently awaiting refill of tomorrow’s formula, all was finally quiet. Mom could sit back and give my brother his evening feeding. Shaking the baby bottle the milk felt pleasantly warm on Mom’s writs as she settled in with a soothing cigarette, in one hand, baby bottle in the other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rpAUhbARY

While she waited for Lucy to begin she flipped through the current issue of Reader Digest turning to her favorite features first.  After chuckling at the heartwarming humor of “Life in These United States” and giggling over the gags provided by  “Laughter is the Best Medicine,” a more serious   article caught her attention.

It was anything but laughable.

Nestled between “The real meaning of Xmas’ and “We’re selling America Short” was an article entitled “ Cancer by the Carton.” Ominously linking smoking and lung cancer, it was the first widely read article that brought attention to the public about the dangers of smoking.

Brushing the magazine aside, she looked up at the TV screen just as the familiar stick figures of Lucy and Desi made their weekly climb up  the giant pack of Philip Morris Cigarettes.

Though the widely read Readers Digest article would eventually provoke a  lot of talk, in 1952 my mother  could never imagine a time when  “Life in These United States” would be smoke free.

As if squirreling the article’s information away for a rainy day, Mom let up, lit up and laughed.

It was just what the doctor ordered!

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Tomorrow:

Smoking and Pregnant- Just What the Doctor Ordered Pt II The tobacco industry goes on the offensive

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Under the Weather? How About a Smoke?


Smoking and Pregnant – Just What the Doctor Ordered PtII

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illustration of fetus vintage smoking couple illustration

(R) Vintage Winston Cigarette Ad 1954

 

1954 was a good year for smokers and an even better one for the big tobacco companies.

For a baby in utero…not so much.

After the previous years blistering reports on the dangers of cigarettes,  1954 new years resolutions to quit smoking could now be forgotten ,  thanks to the January report of the Tobacco Institute Research Committee which gave the green light to smoking.

Everyone was encouraged to let up and light up.

It was still tens years before the Surgeon General’s landmark report concluded that there was a link between lung cancer and cigarette smoking, so until then my modern-thinking mother blissfully puffed away while pregnant with me.

Pregnancy Pro

My second time Mom had first hand knowledge on pregnancy and smoking. She knew frequent cigarette breaks came in mighty handy to quiet pregnancy jitters.

Having successfully delivered a whopping four pound baby boy 2 years earlier, my baby-bound mother Betty was now a seasoned pro when it came to pregnancy and was happy to share her experiences with the nervous first-time mothers in the neighborhood.

illustration sleeping baby and woman smoking

(L) Vintage ad North Star Blanket (R) Vintage Lucky Strike Cigarette Ad

“It was really a pity,” she commented to Dad over breakfast one November morning, “when you consider how many young women still continued to enter pregnancy without first learning the real truth about being pregnant.”

Now 5 months pregnant with me, Mom couldn’t wait to offer her wisdom to the gaggle of pregnant gals who would soon descend on our suburban home  for their weekly Kaffee Klatch.

Lighting her usual post breakfast cigarette, Mom carefully measured out the Chock Full of Nuts coffee in her Mirro Matic percolator. Knowing how coffee was a great little picker upper for expectant mothers when they get that tired draggy feeling, she put up a big pot.

Experience told her that there was  nothing more welcome to a gal in-the-family-way, than to put her feet up, have a cup or two of piping hot coffee with plenty o’ sugar for extra pep, and relax with a soothing cigarette. Mmmm! Heaven!

Pregnancy on Parade

By noon, a bevy of bellies in all stages of protrusions waddled into our kitchen.

Decked out in an assortment of generously cut maternity separates that kept pace with modern times, these chatty women proved there was no need to be frumpy while pregnant

smoking baby T Zone

Gathered around the cheery, yellow Formica kitchen dinette set in our kitchen the fretful first timers were overwhelmed with questions.

Like so many ladies-in-waiting, they were suffering from f impending motherhood jitters, compounded by recent news concerning the hazards of smoking.

“There seemed to be so many things to be afraid of nowadays,” voiced our neighbor Bunny echoing the concerns of the others who were nodding in agreement “Yesterday it was the H bomb, today it’s cigarette smoke that looms over us like a dreadful mushroom cloud.”

In the past year, headlines about smoking and lung cancer had been getting bigger and scarier and naturally the baby-bound  women were bothered .

When a scientific report by 2 doctors found that painting cigarette tar on the back of mice created cancer, a bombshell had been dropped. Audible gasps could be heard over smokers hacks coast to coast.

The next salvo fired was when another doctor delivered a headline making speech in NYC  warning “the male population of the US would be decimated if cigarette smoking increases as it has in the past unless some steps are taken to remove the cancer-producing factor from cigarettes.”

In late November 1953  Time Magazine declared that the the first definitive link between cancer and smoking “was proved beyond any doubt.”

But doubt still remained.

Ads movie stars  endorcements Movie stars smoke, athletes endorced it even society ladies lit up.

You Can Take Your Doctors Word For It

smoking pregnancy drs

(L) A stylist lady-in-waiting circa 1954 (R) Vintage Camels ad  “What cigarette do you smoke doctor? When asked what cigarette they smoked the answers came in by the thousands..from general physicians, diagnosticians, surgeons, -yes, and nose and throat specialists too. The most named brand was Camels.”

Now the apprehensive girls were all ears to what Mom had to say

Fresh from her obstetricians appointment in the city, my mother was anxious to share what she had learned from her Park Avenue doctor.

Mom went all misty eyed talking about Dr Orenstein.  All the girls felt that way about their own doctors and Mom understood why.

No one was more trustworthy, more knowledgeable and more important in a pregnant gal’s life than her doctor.

Lighting up another  Parliament, Mom began.

“Despite all the worries,” she said assuredly “we girls were living in the best of times.”

“Back in the pre-historic days,” she explained, “when their own mother’s were pregnant, a baby-bound lady had to pace herself with the number of smokes she could have.”

“Doctors strictly advised limiting expectant mothers to only four cigarettes a day, to help wih digestion and soothe their pre-natal nerves . Pregnant women were advised to take it easy…. stick to AMA approved activities like reading cheerful books, knitting or chatting, but, heaven- forbid- nothing too controversial please!”

But now thanks to modern research  “there was little need to alter the lifestyle of “today’s modern- thinking young mothers”…including smoking!

Just What the Doctor Ordered Medical Authorities

Smoke Without Fear Book vintage ad doctor smoking

“Smoking Without Fear” by Don Cooley published in Sept. 1954 claimed you didn’t have to give up smoking. The 48 page low priced book sold at newsstands, appeared courtesy of the tobacco industry and it’s public relations firm Hill & Knowlton shortly after the first medical reports emerged saying cigarette smoking caused cancer. (R) Vintage Camels ad “More Doctors Smoke Camels”

“Along with many of you, I was concerned about the possible injurious effect of smoking on my health after reading all the alarmist reports filled with scientific gobbledegook  pointing to the health hazards of cigarettes,” she said thoughtfully.

“So I asked my doctor straight out if I should quit smoking!”

“My doctor is a thoughtful man,” Mom  gushed,  “and after a little deliberation he said: ‘I think smoking does you more good than harm and I wouldn’t suggest that you quit.”

Quoting from an article by a popular medical writer in Harpers Magazine he said “that the case against cigarettes is by no means proved and that cigarette has little or nothing to do with cancer of the lung.”

smoking camels john wayne 30 years

These vintage ads from 1954 offer Testimonials from smokers who have smoked Camels for 35-40 years prove you can smoke and grow old! Even John Wayne boasts of 24 years of pleasurable smoking. Sadly this American icon would develop lung cancer in just 10 years time, dying of stomach cancer in 1979. He would eventually acknowledge his lung cancer was a result of his 6 pack a day cigarette habit.

“Maybe its the mice who should quit smoking,” he said chuckling.

Band of Brothers- Tobacco Institute Research Committee

Stepping up to dispel the alarmist rumors was the Tobacco Institute Research Committee and their research.

Handing Betty a booklet the group  had published entitled  “A Scientific Perspective on the Cigarette Controversy” the  doctor was sure it would put Moms mind at ease.

To put Moms mind at ease, he handed Betty a booklet the group  had published entitled  “A Scientific Perspective on the Cigarette Controversy

The authoritative booklet ( written with the help of committees  PR firm ), distributed widely to the media and health practitioners all over the country ,  quoted 36 scientists questioning smoking’s link to health problems.

vintage illustration doctor examining patient

Quoting 36 scientists  questioning smoking’s link to health problems, the authoritative booklet ( written with the help of committees  PR firm ) was  distributed widely to the media and health practitioners all over the country.

Mom relayed the good news to the gals.

The latest information from the Tobacco Industry Research Committee Report confirmed the obvious “that there was no proof that cigarette smoking is a cause of lung cancer”

smoking reearch drs 900SWScan01019

Of course years later we would find out the Tobacco Industry Research Committee was set up as a shield for the industry, their real  mission being  to deliberately confuse the public about the risks of smoking and spread doubt over strong scientific evidence and the public wouldn’t know what to believe.

Dr Orenstein explained to Mom  that the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, made up of esteemed scientists, university researchers  and notable physicians  was formed last December by the tobacco companies  who had banded together to look into the  health allegations.

Their mission explained the doctor, was to reassure the public that the industry could responsibly investigate smoking and health issues.

Science For Sale

Mom recalled the large ad that ran in the paper in early January announcing the  the formation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee.”

Headlined “A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers” the 2 page ad  was placed in 448 newspapers.

“Recent reports on experiments with mice have given wide publicity to a theory that cigarette smoking is in some way linked with lung cancer in human beings.”

 “Although conducted by doctors of professional standing these experiments are not regarded as conclusive in the field of cancer research.”

vintage illustration businessmen smoking

Exactly 10 years before the January 1964 publication of the surgeon generals report , in January 1954 the tobacco industry banded together and announced in a double page ad “the formation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. “
Growing concern among the public of dangers of smoking caused the tobacco companies to join forces when the realized their industry was in trouble.

 Distinguished authorities point out:

 1. There is no agreement among authorities regarding what the cause of lung cancer is

2. That there is no proof that cigarette smoking is one of the causes.

3. That statistics purporting to link cigarette smoking with the disease could apply with equal force to any one of many aspects of modern life.

 We believe the products we make are not injurious to health.

vintage illustration men in office

The Tobacco Industry Research Committee was a brilliant counter offensive by the Tobacco industry that left both doctors and the public unsure how dangerous smoking really was,

 “For more than 300 years tobacco has given solace relaxation and enjoyment to mankind.

At one time or another during those years critics have held it responsible for practically every disease of the human body. One by one these charges have been abandoned for lack of evidence.”

The Proof is in the Smoking

Dr Orenstein went on to tell Mom  that there was a beneficial side of smoking that is provable while tobacco has not been proven a killer.

smoking pregnancy camels disposition

“Hows your disposition today” asks this Vintage Camels ad from 1955. “It’s only human to feel edgy when little annoyances pie up-thats why its wise to choose Camels”

“It’s a fact  that moms to-be go through all sorts of mood swings…just ask any poor dad-to-be,” laughed the doctor. ” The fluctuations of  hormones make you moody and upset. That’s only natural. And because it was a psychological fact that smoking helps your disposition,” he continued, “everyday pleasures like smoking are so important.”

“You see cigarettes are like a doctors prescription for calming nerves and fighting fatigue,”  Mom explained to the group

Oh, Baby

smoking baby camels dr child

A healthy start is so important. Without a hint of irony, this vintage Camels ad (part of the More Drs Smoke Camels” campaign) on the (R) boasts how this little 5 year old girl might live to 100 “due to the amazing strides of medical science that have added years to life expectancy. Not only the expectancy of a longer life but a life far healthier. Thank medical science for that. Thank your doctor for that and thousands like him…” (L) Philip Morris claims their cigarette is as gentle as a baby

And naturally it goes to reason what’s good for you is good for the baby!

“So you see, it was important to educate yourself if you have concerns and worries,” Mom told the relieved gals. “Learning facts can help dispel some of the fears based on inaccurate information.”

Reading aloud from her dog-eared copy of Pregnancy and You, the invaluable book her doctor had given her 2 years before, she explained

Smoking during pregnancy is no more or less injurious for the mother than smoking when not pregnant. We are not so sure about the fetus. It is known that some substance from the tobacco smoke, probably nicotine, passes from the mother’s blood stream to the infant’s via the placenta. The result is a temporary and harmless speeding up of the baby’s heart rate.”

So relax and enjoy!

Folks everywhere, including mothers-to-be could feel free to light up.

My sugar coated kodacolor childhood would be be spent through a constant blue haze of cigarette smoke.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Smoking Just What the Doctor Ordered Pt I


Republican’s and the Retro Working Girl

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collage by Sally Edelstein artwork

Collage by Sally Edelstein

Calling gender pay gap an embarrassment in 2014, President Obama said in his State of the Union address that ” it’s time to end workplace policies that belong in a Mad Men episode.”

The Republican’s agenda would drag women back to the ’50s on everything from health care to workplace.

Their  antiquated views of women in the workplace  are laughable if they weren’t so serious. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, claimed presidential hopeful Mitt Romney “talked down to the women of this country.” He further commented that “if you’re going to have women in the workforce” as if  having women in the workplace was still open for debate.

The Paycheck Fairness Act which would add additional protection against the gender wage gap has stalled in Congress.

Perhaps Republican’s would like to go back to the times when the retro gal eagerly scoured the want ads, which like public restrooms were still squarely divided between Male and Female. Separate but not very equal.

Kinda like still earning 77 cents on the male dollar.

A reminder of the workplace of the retro working girl:

vintage illustration 1950s office

Vintage Ad Pitney Bowes Postage meters 1952

vintage illustration 1950s sexist office

Sexist Vintage Pitney Bowes Postage meter advertisement

1950s typewriter

Vintage ad 1957 Underwood Typewriter

sexist Scan_Pic0067

vintage illustration secretary blindfolded

Blind to the Facts -Vintage ad Moore Business papers 1952

vintage illustration secretary as mummy

All Tied Up- Vintage ad 1953 Moore Business Papers

vintage illustration secretary

Copyright (©) 2014 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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Velveeta for Victory in WWII

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vintage WWII ad soldier and photo of nachos velveeta

(L) Vintage ad WWII Nash Kelvinator 1944

The cheesepocalypse is upon us and we are approaching ground zero!

Shell shocked Americans are going through a meltdown over the shortage of velveeta endangering the very lifeblood of their Superbowl nachos.

Jonesing for their liquid gold, it’s all out war as a deprived public frantically fumble in search of alternative recipes in time for the big game.

Time out!

We might want to hit the pause button and rewind to a time when food shortages, sacrifices and disruptions were a part of everyday life and not just an inconvenience for the Superbowl.

food Velveeta WWII war workers eating

“If you’re packing daily lunch for one of Americas defense workers be sure to note that Velveeta was rich in muscle building protein and milk calcium.”
(L) Vintage Photo Sealtest Booklet 1943 (R) Vintage ad Velveeta cheese 1944

During WWII Velveeta along with meat, sugar, dairy  and coffee had gone off to war.

And when it was available Velveeta was not a mere snack, food but a vital source of sound nutrition.

The depression had introduced Velveeta as a thrifty convenient food source, but it was during the shortages and rationing of WWII  that helped catapult this gooey cheese into the  hearts of Americans.

Food Fights For Freedom

WWII Food Fights For Freedom vintage ads

Two 1943 Vintage ads from Armour and Company offering suggestions to how to share precious food and conserve the vital food supply. “All of us must do all we can to protect the food supply and keep our home front healthy and strong. You have a responsibility in your own home. By careful buying, by efficient, thrifty use of your ration points, you can help make sure there will be enough meat and other necessary foods for everyone.”

Each of us on the home-front, was a vital part of the war effort. It was everyone’s job to conserve, avoid waste, play square and starve the black markets.

“Food fights for freedom” was the motto and American food  would be a big factor in winning the war

“Today food is one of Americas most important weapons. It’s the fuel of our fighting men and our fighting allies. It helps keep our home front healthy and strong. So all of us must do all we can to protect the food supply.”

vintage ad wwii soldiers unloading food supplies

“Twice as much food is going to the fighting fronts this year….because there are twice as many men to feed.”
“Even at that, we civilians here at home are still getting 3 out of every 4 plates of food we produce. And the men in our Armed forces are the best fed fighters in the world.”
vintage ad Crosley Corp. 1944

Uncle Sam had a big job to do to feeding our boys in the armed forces and supplying our Allies too.

Rationing was the only way the government could see to it that civilians got a fair share of food. Every man, woman and child got a ration book containing coupons with point values for different types of food. The one thing there wasn’t a shortage of was advertising explaining the importance of sacrifice.

“We folks on the home-front are still getting 75% of all the food in America,” explained one war worker in an ad promoting health for victory  “I know it takes a lot of chow for the boys in the service…but who rates it more!” Another thing, I’m all for shipping food to our allies and liberated countries because it saves a lot of lives. Shortages? They’re tough…but my wife’s learned to do with the foods she can get is okay by me.

“That’s the stout-hearted spirit that makes Food Fight For Freedom. There’s enough food in this country for everyone, if we learn to use it properly.”

Shortages and Rationing

vintage WWII ad Elsie the Cow illustration

In this 1943 ad, Elsie the Borden’s cow tries to explain to her husband Elmo the reason for shortages and rationing. Much of the milk Bordens produced went to our armed forces and our allies. And the milk must be used to make other concentrated dairy products like cheese.
Exhibiting good old American optimism, Elsie goes on to say: “Think of the things we have to cheer about. This year may not have been a picnic but it hasn’t been so bad. We’ve had enough to wear and we’ve had enough to eat.”

Cheese was one of the first to be drafted into service because of the government’s huge requirements of cheddar cheese.

Thousands of farmers and dairy hands had gone off to war making it hard to increase production and so there was a shortage. Men in the service drank more milk and ate more cheese than they did in civilian life.

“Great quantities of it were needed for our boys,”  cheese manufacturers like Kraft and Bordens  told us,  “ because cheese was such a grand and  easy way to feed milk nourishment to fighting men.”

In May 1942 sugar was rationed, followed by coffee , processed food, meat and dairy products making it a wartime challenge keeping a home-front family well nourished.

Women’s Double Duty

WWII food rations SWScan01587 - Copy

Home front Housewives deserved a heap of credit .In addition to devoting millions of extra hours to vital new work in factories and volunteer organizations they were doing a grand job in the kitchen…saving food points and not scrimping on nutrition

It was much harder to feed a family during wartime but housewives like Blanche Channing knew it could be done with careful planning and thoughtful shopping.

Before the war, budget conscious Blanche had counted on Velveeta for nutritious economical meals on a budget. Now besides her money, she had to count her ration points and budget her time.

Like most other home front housewives Blanche was doing double duty.

In addition to devoting extra hours to the Red Cross, Civilian Defense  and the USO  she had become a soldier of the kitchen. Her first order from Uncle sam  was to provide her family with foods that build strong bodies, steady nerves, and high morals

WWII Vintage Nutrition propaganda

Uncle Sam needed us strong so it wasn’t long before Health-For-Victory clubs sprang up across the country. Monthly meetings conducted by able home economists of local power companies distributing meal planning guides for point thrifty meals and giving women practical help on health building meals in spite of rationing.
To help folks eat the kind of food that keeps them healthy, Uncle Sam set up 7 basic food groups that everybody needed every day And milk and milk products was one of them.

It was our duty to stay healthy.

Taking on those extra shifts at the war plant and visiting the blood bank regularly was no problem for her husky husband Jim.

“That man of mine hasn’t lost a days work in 7 months,  she boasted. “Eating right and staying healthy pays off in our house even stepped up pace of war work can’t keep my husband down!”

Food Velveeta WWII Defense Plant

A home front soldier like Jim deserved something special when he got home! And Blanche saw that he got it!

The Channings may finally have been able to afford a juicy steak but there were no steaks to be had. Alternatives to those mouth-watering roasts that Jim hankered for had to be found.

It was the home front housewives  duty to be flexible and clever, to plan balanced menus that spread rationed foods thin. The trick was to make ration shrunk meals seem bountiful and appetizing and magazine articles were abuzz with ways to gussy up those plain meals.

Kraft along with nearly every major food company pitched in printing wartime pamphlets suggesting how their product could help the homemaker skimp on precious food like meat, sugar and fat and coffee

Ladies listen, A food shortage is no excuse for dull meals- not while Kraft cheeses are around

Despite there being a cheese shortage, eagle-eyed  Blanche could still find Velveeta on her grocers shelves from time to time. She was certain the processed cheese food would brighten up rationed meals!

 Victory Velveeta

Food Velveeta WWII vegetables ads illutration housewife 40s

Mrs Housewife has learned about food alternatives, how to stretch ration points and pack a lunch with plenty of pick up.
Time must be rationed by Americas Double duty woman
(L) Vintage ad 1942 (R) Vintage Velveeta ad 1944

V for victory Velveeta suggested plenty of ways to keep the mealtime eye and taste appeal and satisfy cravings and appetites while holding down the costs. T

Their colorful  ads all offered “plenty of luscious nourishing dishes to surprise the folks on days when meat is off the list. Put the joy of eating into rationed meals with cheese soufflés, omlettes rarebits sauces with cheese”

Because it was important to prepare balanced meals and keep America’s stamina up, Blanche could count on protein rich Velveeta to offer up wholesome hurry up snacks for kids and He-Man sandwiches for Jim’s  lunch box.

food velveeta 46 SWScan00970

“If you’re packing a daily lunch for one of America’s defense workers, one Velveeta advised,” be sure to note that Velveeta was rich in muscle-building protein, in milk calcium and vitamin A and G. “

“School lunches should have these protective food elements. So slice Velveeta or spread its golden goodness thick for those important away from home meals”

Waste Not Want Not -Velveeta to the Rescue

WWII Food Fights For Freedom Velveeta don't waste it save it

If you will save as little as a spoonful of food a day you will help shorten this war. Unless we stop the needless, careless waste in our homes, American won’t have enough food to go around!

In these vital times when food was so precious Blanche would never dream of wasting a spoonful of food or letting leftovers spoil in her refrigerator or her  pantry shelf. Every bit of food that came into her home was carefully used.

Admonished to not waste food, Velveeta promised to give new life to leftovers -any dish could be turned from plain to fancy with a gloppy cheese sauce

“Here’s way to squeeze extra nutrition out of your food points, make leftovers new and important and give your family better eating. Dress up your second day foods with Velveeta”

vintage ads food WWII

“Of course Kraft cheeses are rationed!” explained one ad.”The government wants everyone to get their fair share of these fine nourishing foods. So step up and insist on your share…put the joy of eating into rationed meals with Velveeta souffles, omlettes, rarebits and sauces with cheese”

Velveeta a “wonderful “buys” for your points and pennies” became the perfect dish for war-time nutrition, providing fine protein and concentrated nourishment.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Crisco and Kosher Kitchen Culture

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vintage illustrations housewives cooking Crisco 1915

Vintage advertisement Crisco 1915

 Once upon a time to a transfixed nation, trans fats were not the troublesome substance we now view them as but were the very symbol of scientific progress.

If the FDA has their way about it, bad-for-you- hydrogenated oils, i.e. trans fats, will soon be banned from the American diet.

Hard to Swallow

It may be hard to digest but there was a time when vegetable shortening made from hydrogenated oil  like Crisco was a smart, wholesome choice. Labor saving and economical this cooking fat was a wonder for the harried, health conscious  housewife.

Nowhere was the transformative power of trans fats felt more than in the Jewish household.

Miracle in the Kitchen

The introduction in 1911 of Crisco-the king of hydrogenated oils- was a  life altering  game changer for kosher housewives, for whom strict dietary laws forbade the mixture of dairy and meat at the same meal.

All vegetable shortening Crisco proudly promoted itself as a Kosher food, one that behaved like creamy butter but could be used freely with meat.

As if it were the appearance of the messiah, Crisco boldly announced “it was the miracle for which the Jews have waited 4,000 years for.”

Crisco’s entry into Kosher Kitchen culture would make kosher cooking easier for generations

For observant Jewish immigrants like my Great Grandmother, it was nothing short of a miracle.

She along with millions would be transfixed by trans fats.

 Food Beliefs

2 vintage illustrations mother and children and scientists

Vintage advertisements 1918

At the beginning of the last century, my Great Grandmother Rebekah like most folks at the time believed certain foods were good and others dangerous but there was no proven scientific basis to it.

There was no concern about high protein, low carb foods because food itself hadn’t even been classified as such.

You knew you had  a healthy child if she was chubby, pink and fleshy.

By the time of the Great War, food was entering a modern scientific age and with it developed new products new attitudes and new rules towards eating, and cooking.

But in an Orthodox Jewish household like my Great Grandmothers, the only important rule- one that was non negotiable was the time-honored rule of Kashruth,  keeping kosher.

We Answer to a Higher Authority

vintage illustration housewife cooling pie in window

Returning home from school late one cold winter afternoon in 1917, my then teenage grandmother  Sadie found her mother standing at the coal cook stove in the spotless, onion scented kitchen, rendering chicken fat (schmaltz) in the “fleyshik” (meat) frying pan, and frying cheese blintzes in the milkhik (dairy) pan, never ever confusing one cast iron pan for the other.

The heat of the kitchen warmed Sadie’s chilled bones as she peeled off layer after woolen layer of winter clothing.

The rambling house in Williamsburg Brooklyn was alive with the odors of burning carrots, frying onions, cooking cabbage and fermenting sauerkraut. Without even looking up from the stove, Rebekah handed Sadie a piece of challah, schmeered with schmaltz, – a nosh before dinner.

Food is Love

“Love and bread make the cheeks red,” Rebekah would often say.

Her hand would touch her heart to indicate the source of the food- herself. Food really was love in Great Grandma’s home, a bestowal of the purest affection.

Hungrily biting into the fresh bread, Sadie was bursting at the seams to tell her mother what she had learned in her Home Economics class.

Domestic Science

Vintage illustration ad woman

A true American girl of tomorrow, 18-year-old Sadie was among the first girls in her school to take a class in the new field of Home Economics.

In 1918, it was the ambition of every Brooklyn girl after graduating from public school to attend the prestigious Girls High School, the very model of a 20th century school building, where she could enjoy the advantages of advanced education.

And no subject was as cutting edge as Domestic Science.

The no-nonsense class was run with the efficiency expected of a future household engineer. Donning her crisp, sanitary white apron and starched white cap, Sadie quickly absorbed the most current information explaining the new and efficient ways to think about diet, digestion and hygiene.

vintage photo 2 women baking cakes

Vintage advertisement Royal Baking Powder 1917

Her Home Economics teacher, Miss Hattie Patton was a stern looking woman, with salt and pepper  hair pulled tightly in a bun, her features as sharp and angular as the wooden ruler she wielded.

Wearing pince nez and an immaculate white smock, the domestic dominatrix, would explain to the class how men of  science had devised rules of nutrition which would not only prevent illness but encourage a long life.

“Girls today,” she emphasized, “are taking hold of the feeding job with intelligence.”

Cooking, like mothering, could no longer depend on instinct, but on scientifically determined exact formulas.

Sadie learned that although it was  a German Scientist who had come up with the new idea of classifying foods into proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and water, the “new nutrients,” it was, naturally, American know-how and industry that was putting it to good use.

Science to the Rescue

1918 science food housewife

(L) Vintage Ad Armour Lard 1915 (R) Vintage illustration food laboratories

“You don’t have to trust guesswork anymore. Science has selected for you,” her teacher informed  them proudly. And you didn’t have to take just anyone’s say so. The sanitary testing kitchens of both manufacturers and government were all working overtime to put their knowledge at m’lady’s disposal.

“Who could provide more authoritative judgment about a food product than the esteemed directors of Home economics in the many corporate manufacturers of fine food?”

Science was constantly coming up with new and better products for the American dinner table; new ways to lighten the load of the housewife.

Scientific Discovery

vintage illustration housewife ad Crisco 1918

Preparing doughnuts for the doughboys using patriotic Crisco No wheat flour, no sugar, neither butter nor lard
Vintage ad for Crisco 1918

And so it was that one day Miss Patton explained  a recent scientific discovery the  miracle of Crisco.

Progressive housewives Miss Patton explained  were ridding their kitchens of old-fashioned lard and expensive butter for new wholesome factory fresh Crisco. Which would also be the only fat used in the schools cooking class. Many HS having Domestic Science departments use Crisco

“It seems strange to many that there can be anything better than butter or cooking or of greater use than lard,” she continued, and “the advent of Crisco  has been a shock to the older generation born in an age less progressive era than our own.”

Crisco was clean pure and wholesome. Nothing artificial about it, it was concocted in a lab by trained scientists.

“There is nothing more important to the American housewife than the preparation of wholesome delicate and dainty foods for her family,” Miss Patton  stated firmly.

“Indeed the purity and wholesomeness of foods have become subjects of national interest. More and more people now realize that by intelligent eating not only can they avoid such common ailments as headache and indigestion but can do much to make good health their normal condition ( A future of Type II diabetes and clogged arteries would come decades later )

Fully endorsed by doctors and renowned dietitians Crisco was a product that would make for more digestible food.

Crisco she further explained,  had taken the place of butter and lard in a number of hospitals where purity and digestibility are of vital importance.

Crisco is being used in an increasing number of better class hotels, clubs restaurants dining cars and ocean liners.

A Country at War

Vintage WWI ad for Crisco 1918

Food Will Win the War- Don’t Waste it !
Vintage WWI ad for Crisco 1918

Not only was it economical and  digestible it was patriotic.

Now that we were at war patriotic housewives were asked to conserve food. We were  admonished to save wheat, use less sugar, and  use no butter. Use of Crisco would contribute to the war effort.

All the girls marveled at this new product not only economical it was…Uncle Sam approved!

Crisco is Kosher

Miss Patton held on to the most tantalizing tidbit for last.

Crisco was kosher.

This rich wholesome cream of nutritious food oils was rabbinically certified!

Smiling, Miss Patton  read from The Story of Crisco a copy of which was given to each student.

“Rabbi Margolies of N.Y said that the Hebrew race has been waiting 4,000 years for Crisco. Crisco can be used with both milkhik and fleyshik milk and flesh foods. Special Kosher packages bearing the seals of Rabbi Margolies of N.Y. and Rabbi Lifsitz of Cincinnati are sold to the Jews.”

Whether baking challah or pastries Jewish housewives could avail themselves of Crisco

So the modern woman is glad to stop cooking with expensive butter and lard and step up and let science show them how.

Sadie couldn’t wait to share this with her mother.

Kosher Kitchen Kulture

vintage illustration Mother serving daighter dinner

Sitting at the oilcloth covered kitchen table nibbling on the rich, greasy, bread, Sadie excitedly explained to her mother how scientists had devised new rules of nutrition and  were now telling folks what was good for them to eat based on the foods recently discover chemical make up. Not only that, she emphasized,  it took special products, special equipment, and special knowledge to do the job of feeding a family right.

Gingerly, she pointed out to her mother, that many of her traditional kosher recipes, measured by these modern scientific cooking, fell short.

Sadie read aloud from her schoolbook: “To the modern wide awake twentieth century woman, efficiency in household matters is quite as much a problem as efficiency in business is to captains of industry.”

 “The progressive homemaker, my teacher says, walks right up to science and says :”You tell me how.”

Stirring the tzimis, on the stove Rebecca didn’t need this tsoris from her own daughter, no less.

She needed a scientist to tell her about food, like she needed “a hole in the head”.

Rebecca had already walked up to her own higher authority, the laws of Kashruth, the ancient Jewish Dietary laws and asked them to show her how.

 Separate But Equal

1918 book Jewish Cookery

Jewish Cookery (L) Vintage Cookbook (R) Vintage illustration Housewife

 Kashruth- keeping kosher, was an elaborate system of rules that dictated the kinds of foods  that were permissible to eat  and even the way the foods are prepared.

Only fish with fins and scales can be eaten and only animals that chew their cud and have cloven hooves are allowed. Animals have to be killed in a certain way, so the blood drains out. Dairy dishes must be kept a respectable distance from meat dishes and never the two can mix.

This was a divine commandment that was given to Jews on Mt Sinai, she reminded Sadie, from learned rabbis,  “not from some know-it-all domestic scientist.”

“You expect me to follow these rules!” Great Grandma said increduously. “Hoo- Ha! Proteins shmoteins- the only ‘food groups’ you should care about is whether a food is Milkhik ( dairy), Fleyshik,(meat) Pareve,( neutral) or treif (not permitted).”

“You want order, precision, efficiency, try keeping a kosher home,” she scolded Sadie, “then you’ll see what rules are all about. You cook your meat in a vegetable pot and you can forget about it, the meat becomes practically milkhik!’ … separate dishes, separate pots, utensils. So tell me, who is more efficient than a Jew?”

But Sadie knew one items would interest her mother and saved it for last.

Crisco and the Jewish Housewife

Vintage ad for Crisco 1915

Vintage ad for Crisco 1915

 

Gently she slid a booklet across the table in her mothers direction. Entitled Crisco Recipes for the Jewish Housewife it was printed in both English and Yiddish.

Crisco was whole new food neither butter or lard it was pure vegetable oil Sadie explained tp her doubtful mother.

Crisco promised there was absolutely no animal matter in it as shown by the fact it is guaranteed under the National Pure Food Law. If it contained fat it would come under the Government Meat Inspection law.

1918 illustration Jewish symbols and woman cooking

Crisco is absolutely kosher, that is in keeping with the Mosaic Dietary laws.

“New preparations of old foods are continually coming before the public but Crisco is an absolutely new heretofore unknown food product,” Sadie read out loud.

“To illustrate its importance the American head of the Jewish religion, after a thorough examination of Crisco, certifies that Crisco is absolutely kosher, that is in keeping with the Mosaic Dietary laws. The most orthodox have adopted it and it is used by Jews who for years have paid forty cents a pound for chicken fat, rather than use products have been considered unclean.”

But a new product would alter that 4,000 year old practice. With Crisco kosher cooking would be made easier.

Game Changer

She continued reading from the Crisco Cookbook, “it conforms to the strict dietary laws of Jews and is what is known in the Hebrew language as a ‘parva’ or neutral food. Crisco could be used with both milk and meat.”

Great Grandma looked up from her cooking, and never looked back!

The  mason jar filled with schmatz -pure rendered chicken fat- so long a fixture in the icebox ready to mix into chopped liver or frying or spread hot on bread, would be nudged aside for a can of wholesome, white Crisco.

The familiar blue and white package would have a place of honor for generations.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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The Frigid Woman in the Cold War

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vintage illustration Frigid Housewife Cold war freezer

American husbands were getting the frigid-aire from their spouses. According to experts the mid-century American woman was as frosty and frigid as the polar vortex.

The cold war was a chilly time to be an American woman.

A big chill had crept into the well-appointed bedrooms all across the nation and it would appear that the American housewife’s libido was in the deep freeze.

An epidemic was ravishing the nation  …frigidity. According to the medical community the mid-century American woman was as frosty and frigid as the polar vortex.

American husbands were getting the frigid-aire from their spouses.

Happy Homemaker?

vintage image housewife, and  ice cube maker

The most envied woman in the world was the post war American homemaker…smart yet easy-going with never you mind freedom… this was the new Mrs America.

Her judgement and taste helped make Americas standard of living the highest in the world. It was a life of comfort and convenience, no rubbing, no scrubbing, no waiting no fuss no muss a world that was  flameless, frost-free, filled with touch tone push button ease, and oh, it was … passionless.

Apparently the happy homemaker’s  ability to orgasm was not achieved with push button ease, nor was it as automatic as her fully loaded kitchen.

Ironically the modern problem of “frigidity” had little to do with a woman’s actual enjoyment of sex. No longer did frigidity only mean disinterest in or ignorance of sex. It now included the woman who was sexually responsive, even taking pleasure in sex but did not meet the new criteria

According to mid-century psychiatrists and gynecologists frigidity was now defined as a woman’s inability to have a “proper” orgasm with her husband, the lack of which  could result in the breakdown of the contemporary marriage.

The only cure for defrosting the frigid woman was to achieve a “mature” climax, a vaginal orgasm, the only AMA approved kind of orgasm.

The Big Chill

vintage images of happy Housewife

How Happy Was the Happy Homemaker?
(L) Vintage Ad Maytag 1960 (R) Vintage illustration by Jon Whitcomb for Pin It 1958

 To the outside world Betsy Bland’s life in 1960 was bewitchingly magical.

In her smartly tailored shirtwaist dress and Playtex living cross your heart bra  she was living the new American Dream- a lady Clairol colorful cold war world of carpools, cookouts, and cream of mushroom soup casseroles, catering to contented children and happy-go-lucky husbands.

But to Betsy everything seemed drab, a dull routine….even sex.

Not that she would ever let her husband Randy know how she felt. She prided herself on never denying him his rights.

“This was one wife,” she would boast,“who never said no.” Betsy had promised herself a long time ago that she would never shirk from her wifely duty.

But the once pleasurable sex act had become a ho-hum chore. In the dark of night Betsy wondered if there something wrong with her?

The Cold Woman

vintage illustration Housewife

One brisk October morning as the laundry tumbled in the Kenmore dryer, and the roast cooked in the automatic oven Betsy flipped through the morning paper.

With the presidential election a few weeks away the race was heating up. The press loved Senator Kennedy and the paper was filled with flattering pictures of the handsome, smiling candidate. Betsy glanced approvingly.

Checking out the TV listings, one ad caught her eye: “This afternoon NBC will air “The Cold Woman: A study of Sexual Frigidity.” The show was described as: “A frank account of a problem affecting millions of American women today.”

Betsy blushed deeply.

Wash in Cold Water Only

vintage illustration housewives laundry Oxydall

Airing Dirty Laundry
Vintage illustration from Oxydall advertisement

Like most housewives, she was familiar with the popular Purex Specials for Women.

Decades before Oprah’s daily airing of America’s dirty laundry became the norm, this highly acclaimed  series of soapy pseudo docudramas geared to the housewife dealt with intimate topics rarely talked about on television.

Running  on certain afternoons the award-winning  show  dramatized such now all too familiar topics as “The Trapped Housewife,” “The Single Woman,” “The Glamor Trap,” “The Problems of the Working Mother,” “The Change of Life,” and this afternoons offering “The Cold Woman.”

The intimate topic came as no surprise to Betsy.

Checking Under the Beds

vintage ad illustration doctors and mattress

Mid century doctors and gynecologists had joined forces with psychiatrists and put the American bedroom under the microscope.
Vintage ad Sealy Mattress 1955

In recent years the American Woman had come under close scrutiny in the media especially when it came to her sexuality.

Kinsey wasn’t the only one peeking into the private  lives of Americans.  Mid century doctors and gynecologists had joined forces with psychiatrists and put the American bedroom under the microscope.

When authorities weren’t checking under the bed for Communists, they  were looking between the sheets for signs of frigidity,

What they purported to find was chilling.

Frost Bitten

Frigidity in women was so widespread a problem that some psychiatrists claimed “it is the emotional plague.”

In the words of psychiatrist Marie N Robinson, whose 1959 book on women’s sexual frigidity “The Power of Sexual Surrender” sold over a million copies, “no other health problem of our time even approaches this magnitude .” (With polio recently eradicated, they obviously were seeking some other health problem to challenge.)

Concern over woman’s sexual frigidity so consumed mainstream gynecology and psychiatry during the 1940′s through the early 1960’s  that even the well-respected  Journal of American Medical Association published an article in 1950 which began with the claim:

”Frigidity is one of the most common problems in gynecology. Gynecologists and psychiatrists especially are aware that perhaps 75% of all women derive little or no pleasure from the sexual act.”

The Deep Freeze

vintage ad kitchen freezer housewife

Deep Freeze Heart of the Home
Vintage ad 1953 Crosley Shelvador Freezer

Frigidity wasn’t new; it was the definition that changed.

In the 1920′s and ‘30s Female Sexual Anesthesia as frigidity  was called, was all too common. Though physicians may have seen women’s sexual frigidity as a serious threat to the stability of families, forcing husbands to seek sex outside marriage which could lead to VD and the break up of the home, the problem was considered normal as “nice” women were considered less hot-blooded than men.

Good girls were  told :“Nice men with marriage on their minds do not like girls to discuss sex, to go out all on the subject. Nice girls do not discuss sex, tell off-color jokes. Common sense and  good taste forbid this. A man cannot become romantically interested in a girl who dwells on the subject.”

But the term frigidity itself had taken on a new meaning in the more enlightened post-war years.

No longer did frigidity only mean indifference to sex.

Oh Come On!

Frigid Woman Cold War Pushbutton Ease

Apparently the happy homemaker’s ability to orgasm was not achieved with push button ease,

Now the diagnosis of frigidity  included the woman who feels sexually responsive, who was aroused “who enjoys some phases of coitus, even reaching clitoral orgasm during manipulation.”

But that was woefully inadequate.

The new definition classified every woman as frigid if she was incapable of reaching vaginal orgasm during sex. Anything else was second-rate.

Along with her dollies and teddy bears the grown up mature woman was to abandon all childhood attachments including the girlish clitoris in favor of the womanly vaginal orgasm.

A wife’s inability to experience the requisite “mature” climax was a neurotic with “deep rooted psychological problems” that could only be cured with counseling and psychiatrists.

The husband’s skill was not to be blamed.

Defrosting the Frigid Woman

marriage sex atomic blast

After Glow
In the nuclear age, the only way to defrost the frigid woman was for hr to achieve an orgasm of nuclear proportion.

When it came to sexual dysfunction Purex struck a nerve with the “Cold War Woman.”

With great interest Betsy continued reading the article on the show.

Starring a hot Kim Hunter as a frigid woman with Jack Klugman as the husband, the actors  “ portray a married couple deeply troubled by the most personal of emotional problems in a dramatization based on case histories, professional reports and taped interviews…today despite the American woman’s privileged status, her club memberships, college degree and kitchen full of appliances a great number of her kind is in distress.”

“The complexities of her new situation, in many cases, have only added to her anxieties. And she may reach a point where she becomes a problem for society-perhaps in a divorce court, a magistrate’s office or an alcoholic ward.”

After Glow

Fumbling through her purse, Betsy found the crumpled piece of paper with the phone number  her gynecologist had given her.

Before she too ended up in divorce court or a hospital ward, Betsy would go see a psychiatrist.

Who was to blame for this epidemic of sexual frigidity?  And what could be done about it?

The answer tomorrow.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Matriculating Into Mid Century Matrimony

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vintage illustration vintage ad bride and groom 1950s, illustration of college graduation 1960

The graduating class of 1960 was forever enshrined in the vintage illustration on the right that appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in Sept. 1960. Depicting Smith College graduation the accompanying commentary points out that marriage is likely in the future to these smart young cover misses.

June is the month-long associated with graduates and brides and it wasn’t that long ago that they were often one and the same thing.

If  author Susan Patton has her way, female graduates would do well to follow that same course.

The controversial “Princeton Mom” has returned with a new book Marry Smart: Advice for finding THE ONE a rehash of the same old fairy tale girls have been told for generations: that it s more productive to devote energy to husband hunting than focusing on their careers.

This advise is as antiquated as the notion once held that girls went to college to get their MRS degree.

Fractured Fairy Tales

vintage illustration college students on campus 1947

Husband Hunting on the college quad

Once upon a time, most young women in the 1950’s and early 1960’s were convinced that the basic occupation of virtually every girl was choosing a man to marry, and college courses were set up to help Betty Coed in her mission to snaring a proper mate.

In the spring of 1956, my Aunt Rhonda was a college senior searching for Love and Marriage. Convinced that the basic occupation of virtually every girl was choosing a man to marry, a smart cookie had a keen sense of her market value: her looks, personality and virginity.

vintage illustration college students in class 1940s

Which College Senior Will You Be Watching on Graduation Day?
Vintage ad Hamilton Watches 1947

Pretty and popular, Rhonda was voted the college senior with the likeliest future for matrimony. It would be 7 long years before Betty Friedan wrote about a problem that had no name, and another 10  before the founding of National Organization of Women.

So for now, Rhonda and her classmates  visualized marriage automatically at 21 along with voting and legal drinking, never doubting for a moment  that the sound of Handel’s  Wedding March would follow directly after “Pomp and Circumstance.”

Women’s Studies Retro Style

vintage fashion ads illustration of college girls 1940s & 1950s

Vintage fashion ads featuring college girls offer some helpful hints.
The ad on the left with the comely co-ed wowing her profs is for Orlon Fabric “which teaches new fall fashions to keep their figure in the wash.” The ad on the right for Pacific Fabrics with the headline “Well briefed” promises an A+ in fashion for the Miss 5’4″ or less, and judging by the ogling male student she’s scored a good grade.

One of the first National Merit Scholarship winners, Rhonda knew brains were not enough and in fact could prove a booby trap without that right shade of lipstick and that perfectly turned out casserole.

On the ball, she enrolled in the newly developed Marriage Arts Dept.  of  Syracuse University, which promised  to help her with her makeover from a Brain from Main to a regular girl.

It was a far cry from today’s women’s study curriculum but they did offer clever, useful courses such as house planning and family living, providing her with useful training designed to mold an attractive coed into an ideal wife, enhancing her marital resume.

Only a few years earlier in a speech to business and professional women the Dean of Women at Syracuse University announced that feminism was outdated. Luckily, Rhonda thought with a shudder, women had passed through that stage.

Set You Chefs Cap for a Man

vintage illustration cartoon proffesor on a raft 1950s

Illustration by Jim Newhall from the book “Date Bait -The Younger Sets Picture Cook Book” by Robert Loeb Jr, 1952

Home Economic  classes emphasized Man pleasing menus.

By the end of the course, Rhonda would learn “how to set her chefs cap for a man.”

As her teacher Miss Higgins pointed out: “Don’t you dress, make-up to please a man? Cook with the same idea in mind. You’ll discover tempting menus and tempting men.”

They were, she assured the class, “the kind of menus that would make the pampered gentlemen of the evening rise up in gratitude!”

“Knowing how to cook will give you a very agreeable sense of accomplishment”, Miss Higgins  promised. “Nowadays, it’s smart to cook. You don’t hear so many gals say they can’t boil water. And that first casserole brings a thrill!”

vintage illustration of 1940s family Thanksgiving illustration Douglass Crockwell, 1940s woman in bed reading book What every bride Should know

Courses  on making a home were most informative. “Your home,” Miss Higgins told the note-taking girls,  “is the setting for both you and your husband in the eyes of the world. It is your background. It represents your taste, your experience, and your knowledge of how things are done.”

“People who wonder what sort of person you are, see your home and know.”

In this way it was a very important factor in your husbands career.

“Men especially, are very shrewd at judging other men by the women they marry and the homes those women run,” she told the class somberly.

“A New York Financier once told me,” she explained to the class, “that his home presided over by an able gracious and clever wife, had been one of the greatest helps to him. Your home, then, with you as its mistress must provide the right kind of backing for a man.”

A  Head For Figures

There were informative courses in vital matters like decorating, shopping and clothes selection. and the all important grooming clinics taught by Madam Yvonne  trained at the Helena Institute de Beaute in Paris.

vintage fashion illustration art &advertising college girl fashions 1950s

Unlike the matronly Miss Higgins, Madame Yvonne was the epitome of chic and with her swirling feminine dress 12 inches from the floor, tiny waist and pointed bosom the picture of French chic that was revolutionizing fashion.

Catching your hero with an eyeful of smooth fashion was one thing, holding him was another. Bored with your bookings? the class was asked. “A different coiffure may help snag a new stag.”

By the end of the semester, Rhonda’s brain was tuckered out with all this date-data.

The Graduate and the Good Wife

vintage illustration of girl graduate 1950s, 1950s housewife in her many roles as chef nurse, chauffeur and maid

The Bell telephone ad on the right declares “This is the pretty girl you married. She’s the family chef. And the nurse. And the chauffeur and maid.And when she’s all dressed up for an evening out- doesn’t she look wonderful? How does she do it?”

As graduation neared, Rhonda was growing concerned as there was no engagement ring in sight.

She bemoaned her predicament-“I’m sick of playing solitaire…I want to wear one”. What with those pesky Russians building their arsenal of nuclear weapons and  President Eisenhower sending boys all over the globe,  there was no telling how many eligible men would be around.

The government put out a pamphlet called “You can Survive” to help with those Nuclear Bomb Jitters. Sure Rhonda thought, she could survive all right, but not as a spinster, thank you!

With her newly sheered bangs to hide her intellectual forehead, her “beau-catching” curls caught the eye of   a dreamy senior and it was not long before she was calling him her fiancé.

Her hard work had paid off handsomely, as she accepted both the diploma and her glittering ring.

That degree in Sociology would end  up tucked away safely in her Lane Cedar Hope Chest along with all her cherished keepsakes.

Her real work was about to begin.

Copyright (©) 20014 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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Sex and the Happy Homemaker

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Vntage photo 1950s houswife in bed

Vintage Photo from Simmons Mattress Ad 1951

The Frigid Woman in the Cold War PtII

When it came to sex, just how happy was the proverbial happy homemaker?

Not so much.

An epidemic was ravishing cold war America …frigidity. According to the medical community the mid-century American woman was as frosty and frigid as the polar vortex.

Doctors  and gynecologists joined forces with psychiatrists and put the bedroom under the microscope with alarming results.

The Big Chill

vintage photo 1950s marrried couple in seperate beds

Vintage Advertisement Beauty Rest Mattress 1948

A big chill had crept into the well-appointed bedrooms all across the nation and it would appear that the American housewife’s libido was in the deep freeze.

Regardless of her enjoyment of sex, frigidity was defined by a wifes inability to experience the requisite “mature” vaginal climax, the only AMA approved climax. Cast as a neurotic with “deep rooted psychological problems” a housewife’s only hope of a cure was with counseling and psychiatrists.

Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Vintage Magazine Medical Confessions 1960

Vintage Magazine 1960 “Medical Confessions”

Which was how in the fall of 1960  suburban housewife Betsy Bland found herself sitting nervously in the waiting room of a West End Avenue psychiatrist.

The dour faced doctor did not overlook the awkward manner in which the anxious faced brunette with the soft Toni Home Perm, slid gingerly into the chair facing him.

He made no comment.

Betsy was an up to date mid-century American housewife and helpmate, pretty and perky dressed in a becoming Bobbie Brookes tailored suit and a fresh coat of pretty in pink lipstick.

Gently Dr Otto Hesse spoke, asking what brought her here, though he knew only too well.

The only unanswered question facing the good doctor was the precise nature of the problem, the forces that would convert a good wife into a troubled one.

All the x-rays and thyroid pills and sex manuals in the world that this unhappy woman had been prescribed had no power to exorcise so subtle a disease, he thought to himself.

Betsy’s voice broke and she reached in her bag for a hankie. Offering her a cigarette, the doctor  lit one for himself. She sighed contently exhaling the smoke.

Dr Hesse had stressed that completeness and frankness was the first rule.

Biting hard on her freshly painted lips, she tried to explain.

vintage illustrations couple in bed and frost in freezer

The plight of the frigid housewife

Speaking as softly as a child, the attractive housewife confessed that she did not feel overpowering desire in response to her husbands advances admitting that she sometimes needed stimulation to be made to be excited.

With tears welling up in her eyes, Betsy concluded with the question, “Is something the matter with me doctor ?

The doctor grew thoughtful and removed his glasses. He came right to the point.

His answer was an unequivocal “Yes”.

If he’d heard this story once he’d heard it a thousand times.

photos man and woman in Kitchen ice cubes Servel refrigerator

Vintage ad Servel Refrigerator Freezer 1955

The portly psychiatrist informed her that she was suffering from frigidity an affliction affecting millions of American women. “No other health problem of our time even approaches this magnitude,” he explained somberly.

And who was to blame for this epidemic? For once it was something that could not be blamed on the Russians. Or an inept husband. The blame was the modern woman herself.

Medical experts were convinced that America was suffering from an epidemic of “unwomanliness” the root cause of their sexual dysfunction.

vintage ads woman and housewife serving coffee

An acceptance of the inherent passivity of woman was key to a happy marriage.
“There were too many women who want to do or to get something for themselves rather than merely reflect the achievement of their husbands. These women show their resistance to their lot in their inability to have vaginal orgasms.”

Conventional wisdom placed the blame for the frigid woman squarely on her own immaturity: “ the normal woman accepts the “passive” receptivity of the vagina.”

“The neurotic woman suffering from an inability to experience vaginal orgasms finds a typical scapegoat-man.” stated sex experts Edmund Bergler & Kroger from their 1954 book Kinseys Myth of Female Sexuality.

“Ignorant of the fact that her own neurotic difficulties is responsible for her frigidity, she places the blame on mans technique…(But) a healthy and experienced man is helpless when confronted with a frigid woman. The frigid woman’s scapegoat theory is by no means harmless. It poisons a marriage and frequently leads to extramarital affairs and divorce.”

Always Ask a Man

Vintage book cover lways Ask a Man Key to Femininity by Arlene Dah picture of Arlene Dahl l

Hollywood’s glamorous Arlene Dahl, “internationally known film star and one of the worlds loveliest women” spills the secrets of developing your femininity, in her 1965 book “Always Ask a Man Arlene Dahl’s Key to Femininity”

Dr Hesse knew it all boiled down to the basic question….was  Betsy Blane  rejecting her femininity?

Pulling a well-thumbed through book down from the shelf, he began reading a passage out loud from “Psychoanalysis and Female Sexuality.” In the introduction  to the anthology a Dr Hendrik Ruitenbeek’s  stated:

“There were too many women who want to do or to get something for themselves rather than merely reflect the achievement of their husbands. These women show their resistance to their lot in their inability to have vaginal orgasms.”

Betsy blushed deeply

The path to healthy adult femininity, Doctor Hesse explained, “was paved with sacrifices”. For women sex was to be an exercise in happy self-denial.

Psychoanalytic theory presented the necessary steps to achieve true womanliness.

“First as she outgrew her girlhood a woman had to renounce the pleasures of the clitoris in an attempt to transfer feelings to the more “womanly” vagina. When a woman accomplished that task of abandoning the clitoris she symbolically set aside all masculine striving and accepted a life of passivity.”

Deep Freeze

sexist ad wife, daughter and husband

Along with the media, psychiatrists were steering women toward appropriate fulfillment by reminding them of the joy of subservient home life.
Vintage image from Honewell heating Ad 1951

Frigidity was a symptom of a bigger social problem-modern woman’s rejection of her femininity.

Along with the media, psychiatrists were steering women toward appropriate fulfillment by reminding them of the joy of subservient home life. “Women with other ambitions, “ the doctor continued  “were  likely malcontents and neurotic in her inability to accept her passive role.”

“You all know women who lack warmth tenderness delicacy and sweetness…” one psychiatrist advised a NY lecture audience. “They do not want to be homemakers they do not want to be mothers. They want to become presiding judges of the Supreme Court…’” Such women could suffer “total sexual frigidity or homosexuality,” he cautioned, and even worse than that, this psychosis could result in a woman “separating herself from all that is considered womanly such as cooking, making a home…”

“The greatest Casanova is helpless against frigidity,” Dr Hesse concluded smiling. “It is not to be cured by tricks or special art of lovemaking.”

housewife happy  self defrost

An acceptance of the inherent passivity of woman was key to a happy marriage.

The best advise for the frigid woman was to put her ambitions in the deep freeze.

With that acceptance, the doctor  reassured Betsy she would soon be  back home reveling in her job as wife and mother. Snug within the warmth of a good man’s love she would once again glory in the laughter of her healthy children and glow with pride with every acquisition.”

So Betsy along with millions of other frustrated housewives took matters into her own hand. Learning how to “self defrost”- that’s what would make the happy homemaker happy once and for all.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Matriculating into Marriage Pt II

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Vintage ad college graduate and bride 1940s

Vintage ad 1948 Cavalier Cedar Chests -Perfect to pack away all your lovely things for your new married life.

Looks like the gal graduate in this ad was one smart cookie and not just because she earned a college diploma.

Betty Coed knew college was the best place to snare a man to marry. Maybe the Princeton Mom was onto something.

Of course this ad ran in 1948, only confirming that Susan Patton’s silly advise to husband hunt in college is as antiquated as the notion once held that girls went to college to get their MRS degree.

 

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014.

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Occupation: 1960 Housewife


The Great American Slip Up

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Vintage Illustration suprised girl

Vintage Illustration 1951

Americans seem to love the opportunity to embarrass themselves…almost as much as we love to watch ‘em.

And if there is money involved so much the better.

Between the internet and reality TV the possibilities for voluntary public humiliation are endless, satisfying an insatiable audience salivating for some slip up.

But long before the existence of these platforms for disgrace, the mid-century masochist longing for public mortification had ample opportunity to air their shortcomings to the world.

Thanks to the mad men of Madison Avenue there were no shortages of cringe-worthy, shame based ads.

Social Slip Up

One need look no further than a series of true confessional ads run by Mary Barron Slips in the late 1940’s and early 1950′s entitled “When a slip becomes a social error.”

You could make a fool of yourself and win 50 bucks to boot just by submitting your most embarrassing “slip” moment to the lingerie company.

The lucky winner would have her cringe-worthy story printed in one of its ads so that everyone could chuckle at her major gaffe.

 

vintage illustration girl walking dog

Vintage Illustration Coby Whitmore Ivory Snow ad 1946

Once upon a time nothing mortified a lady more than hearing those 4 dreaded words: “Your slip is showing.” Like a slap in the face, it was enough to make you want to hide your head in shame.

The Mary Barron ads were cautionary tales from regular gals from all across the country and there was no shortage of woeful stories recounting embarrassing moments.

vintage illustration man and woman dancing 1951

Ominous headlines such as “Don’t Risk Slip Skid,” told the tale of a tragic young lady whose social faux pas made her the laughing-stock of a party. The humiliated miss from Harrisburg Pa. learned the hard way that an exposed slip “could take you from belle to burlesque in one uneasy moment.” That is until she wised up and bought a Mary Barron slip which would keep her safe from undergarment  twists and slips.

Danger Lurks

Apparently without the proper fitting slip the world was a dangerous place full of potential cringe-worthy slip ups. Innocently exiting a bus, seated at a lunch counter, even posing for a snapshot were fraught with potential awkwardness for the unsuspecting gal.

There was the  goof  shared by a girl from Gary having her photo taken when “W-w-h-h-h-sh –came the breeze…c-l-i-c-k went the shutter- up went eyebrows ( and our pretty model’s color) for a too revealing photograph. Now she knows about and wears a Mary Barron biastraigt slip guaranteed to stay in place.”

 

Lingerie ad slips Mary Barron 48

Vintage Ad Mary Barron Slips 1948

 

This ad from 1948 was based on the embarrassing episode submitted by one pitiful Miss Jean Williams. The perky coed from Lambert Mississippi shares her tale of woe- how the glory of being crowned Home coming Queen could be totally ruined when she experienced the slip up of a lifetime.

The cautionary tale of her social error goes like this:

The jeering section saw the slip up. So did the captain and the student body. Not even the Queens crown could offset poor jeans embarrassment. As she knelt, her slip climbed above her knees.

Impossible we learn, if she were only wearing a Mary Barron slip!

 

photo vintage woman holding money

Image from Vintage ad Old Dutch Cleanser

Hopefully with her $50 prize money red-faced Miss Williams will dash out immediately to her local dress shop and purchase a new Mary Barron slip

Made from that new combination miracle fabric Nylon Rayon Radium…it was the perfect material for any Atomic Age Miss.

It seems sharing a humiliating story for money is timeless…I guess there’s no shame in that!

 

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

 

 

 

 


Learning to Count – Equal Pay Day

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Vintage schoolbook illustrations

Vintage Schoolbook Illustrations

While learning how to count in elementary school …we also learned who counted.

Instructions in arithmetic, the school books informed the reader, were geared “to help the pupil appreciate the ways in which numbers function in the activities of daily life” and the authors of these mid-century elementary schoolbooks hoped “to give pupils real life problems to solve, problems they would encounter in real life.

Uneven Division

The real problem was the discrepancies between the sexes just didn’t add up.

While Bobby earned $1 for a days work, poor Betsy earned only 77 cents.

Learning to Count

 

vintage schoolbook illustrations

Vintage School Book Illustration “Arithmetic We Need” 1955

Today is officially Equal Pay Day

The idea of a gender based wage gap today seems as antiquated as these vintage arithmetic school book illustrations.

April 8 is the day that the average woman’s wages finally catch up to the average mans earning from the year before. Women have to work 3 extra months into 2014 before wages were as much as mens were at the close of 2013.

 

More or Less

 

 

vintage schoolbooks illustrations

Vintage Schoolbook Illustrations “Study Arithmetic” 1947

Hard to imagine Women today still get paid less for the same job men

Lets Compare

 

vintage schoolbook illustration

Vintage Schoolbook Illustration “Learning Numbers” 1952

On average women today still earn just 77 cents for every dollar that men earn- a mere 17 cents on the dollar increase since the Equal Pay Act was enacted over 50 years ago in 1963.

vintage schoolbook illustrations

Vintage schoolbook Illustration

The figures are more dismal for women of color. An African-American woman is paid 64 cents and Latinas only 54 cents as compared to white men.

Changing Numbers Around

 

vintage schoolbook illustration

Vintage Schoolbook Illustration “Arithmetic We Need” 1955

Despite the figures, he Republicans continue to downplay and debate the idea of an income inequality.

 

Making Equal Parts

 

Vintage schoolbook illustrations

Vintage Schoolbook Illustration “Study Arithmetic” 1947

Today when President Obama calls on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act these images are surely dated but no more so than the fact that a gender wage gap still exists in 2014.

Vintage schoolbook illustration

Vintage Schoolbook Illustration “Arithmetic We Need” 1955

 

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

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You’ve Come a Long Way Peggy Olson

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Peggy Mad Men Comic career girl

Mad Men’s Peggy Olson Big Time Career Girl (R) Vintage DC Comics
“This is the big chance I’ve been waiting for! I mustn’t fail this time! Not love or anything else is going to keep me from success!”

We have watched with pride as Mad Men’s Peggy Olson has risen from the ranks of treading water in the secretarial pool to swimming with the big fishes on Madison Avenue.

As the Mad Men at Sterling Cooper & Partners implode all around her, Peggy’s star is rising.  Last seen in season 6 sitting behind Don Draper’s vacant desk, one wonders, who’s wearing the polyester pant suit now?

You’ve come a long way, Peggy Olson, from Miss Deaver’s Secretarial School to  head copywriter at  SP & Partners. and now with Don’s absence poised to become Creative Director.

You’ve Come A Long Way Baby?

In season 5 when Peggy became the new chief copywriter at a rival Madison Avenue agency after leaving Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in the dust, she was handed Phillip Morris’s latest offering to the world of smoking -a cigarette especially for  m’lady.

It was a top, secret as yet unnamed women’s cigarette which of course we all know would be  the Virginia Slims Cigarette account. These new cigarettes were slimmer than the fat cigarettes men smoke, and were tailored slim to fit a lady’s hand, her lips, and her purse.

Vintage Virginia Slims Ad 1968

This Nov 1968 ad for Virginia Slims with its picture of a turn of the century woman sneaking a smoke, presents the following scenario; “In 1915, Mrs. Cynthia Robinson was caught smoking in the cellar behind the preserves. Although she was 34, her husband sent her straight to her room.”

This was the beginning of Madison Avenue attempt to pander to the “New Woman.”

Mirroring the burgeoning women’s liberation movement , the early campaign themes of feminism and women’s lib carried the slogan “You’ve come a long way baby.”

Vintage Virginia Slims Cigarette Ad 1968

This September 1968 vintage advertisement for Virginia Slims explains just what this extra long cigarette for women is. The text for the vintage photo of early 20th century women is as follows: “1. Mrs Violet Anderson claims to have smoked her first cigarette on May 19, 1910…in the attic of her grandfathers farmhouse. 2.Cynthia Irene Bell smoked her first cigarette behind the old barn out back on Jan. 4, 1912. It was cold. 3. Myrna F. Phillips confesses she smoked March 4 or 5, 1911 out in the country where only a squirrel and a bird could see her. The others offered ‘no comment.’ You’ve come a long way.”

The formulaic ads followed the same theme-bold images of a glamorous, fashionably dressed liberated woman contrasting with pictures of early 20th century women being reprimanded for being caught smoking by their husband or some other men.

Since it was marketed for the young professional gal, who better to manage this up and coming account than up and comer young professional Peggy Olson, who being single would be willing to work weekends, evenings and holidays.

Vixen by Night

Peggy in the drivers seat

Peggy’s In the Drivers Seat! (R) Vintage ad Body Bu Fisher 1968

But it wasn’t all work for single career girls like Peggy.

Making the scene in groovy go-togethers, her eyes smudged as if with crayolas in iridescent jewel tones of turquoise and sea green, her Yardley slickered lips wet and wild, we got a glimpse this season of Peggy Olson as Vixen by Night. It was clear she was ready to get uninhibited, get liberated and go –go completely Mad!

Coming Attractions 1969

vintage playboy cartoon 1960s

“My place, or yours? Or right here?”
Playboy Magazine Cartoon by John Dempsy

Fast forward to the final season of Mad Men.

It will be 1969 and the sexual revolution was about to get into full swing. Romance and motherhood would become so so passé. You’ve come a long way baby…and babies were definitely not in the picture.

Wake up sister, there was a whole new world out there.

Suddenly it was a liberated world of New Freedom and Peggy would be ready to dive right in to the swinging world of singles. Busting out of her cocoon, and swinging in a butterfly sleeved-A lined mini skirt, Peggy would have her pick from the plethora of dimly lit, Tiffany lamped, singles bars that lined Second and First Avenue on the Upper East side of NY,  foregoing the watering holes of the  wild, wild west of her own Upper West Side neighborhood.

You’ve come a long way from Bay Ridge Brooklyn, Peggy.

Liberated Ladies

Romance comics

Vintage DC Romance Comics

These new liberated ladies were shedding their inhibitions as quickly as they shed their polyester clothes.

There was no place for  squares- virginal Sleeping Beauties were a thing of the past. Gone was the bad girl the one who went all the way and wrecked her whole life. Suddenly it seemed it was a Cold War world of Cosmo girls ready to shake your world, a strange new world of pills and panaceas, of living together, of vibrations and of sexual openness.

Magazines Cosmo Sensuous NY

(L) Cover Cosmopolitan Magazine model Samantha Jones shot by Francesco Scavullo Dec. 1968 (R) Book- The Sensuous New Yorker by Bernhardt Hurwood Award Books

Uninhibited, stepping out in a leggy little Mary Quant slick and shiny vinyl miniskirts these chicks were girdle-free-garter-free-free-to be you-and-me: they were part of the new freedom generation, a beltless, pinless, fussless generation.

Puffing on her pretty as a picture New Eve cigarettes ( like Virginia Slims, cancer made especially for the ladies) the liberated lady lit her own cigarettes and opened her own doors.

On the go, these sensuous women had no time for pregnancy and no time for cramps. With their birth control pills in one hand, their Midol in the other, these grooving chicks in eye-catching EZ care Quiana polyester in get-him-and-keep-him colors were ready for anything in their quest looking for Mr Goodbar in any of the dozens of crowded single bars that sprouted up in cities everywhere

 Women’s New Freedom

Newsweek Feminism Feminine Hygiene spary ad

Women’s Liberation (L) Cover Newsweek Magazine March 1970 “Women in Revolt”
(R) Vintage ad for Massengil Feminine Deodorant Spray “Freedom Now! The ad claimed their product was the better way to be free to enjoy being a woman.” You like freedom don’t you?” they asked.

It didn’t take long before companies began creating products and marketing strategies that exploited the idea of the liberated “new woman.”

A seasoned copywriter and smart cookie like Peggy would likely snag onto the hottest new products being marketed to the liberated lady in 1969.  Feminine Hygiene Products. The newly liberated Cosmo Girl could come on strong.

Sexual freedom came at a price.

The drug and cosmetic industry expanded from the underarm deodorant to a more private part of the body. The most “girl part” as they described it. The problem that had no name only 5 years earlier now had a slew on products to help a liberated gal feel confident and feminine.

Feminism and Femininity

Feminine Hygiene FDS ad romance comics

(L) Vintage ad for FDS 1969 “This new product will be as essential to you as your toothbrush” (R) DC Romance Comics

By 1969 being confidently close was never nicer. “It’s a freer, more natural, more out in the open world and we’re on you’re side,” the makers of new Feminine Hygiene sprays assured women.

In the body to body environment of the singles scene, competition was fierce.”We know it’s a rough race. And we want you to win!” promised another Feminine spray ad. “Lets face up to the problem like it is. The days of hush-hush are over. Today single and married women have been liberated-in their attire…in their attitudes…in their relationships”

Feminine Hygiene Married Women

(L) New answer for the intimate embarrassing problems married women face- Vintage 1966 ad for Norforms tiny germicidal suppositories to keep the Mrs. fresh as a daisy

The age-old problem of “intimate embarrassing odor problems” once faced only by married women whose husbands wanted their wife to be feminine…in every sense of the word, was now the sexually active liberated ladies dilemma too.

This was the dawning of the age of FDS.

A welcome new addition to the world of feminine freshness, was this personal deodorant for the ultimate social security. It was, manufacturers were hoping, to become as essential to the new woman’s daily life as a bath and shower.

“Today’s young woman…committed to total femininity is entitled to total confidence,” the ads stated boldly. “With the creation of FDS a whole new era of feminine confidence begins”

Why take a chance Make this your passport to popularity…and to your peace of mind about being a girl. An attractive, nice-to- be- with girl.”

Feminine Hygiene Feminique

(L) Vintage Ad 1969 Feminique Feminine Hygiene Spray (R) Vintage ad White Horse 1968

Making the scene with FDS was Feminique. Their full-page ad announced provocatively: “ Five years ago most women would have been too embarrassed to read this page”.

“This is a page that will tell you about an external vaginal deodorant spray. A product that would have made your grandmother faint and your mother blush. All it should do to you is make you happy. Very happy.”

“Because now that ‘The Pill’ has freed you from worry, The Spray will help make all that freedom worthwhile.”

“The spray is called Feminique. The name is feminine which is precisely what this product will make you. Feminine in every sense of the word.”

Woman’s New Freedom-Pristeen Is Part Of It

Feminine Hygiene Pristeen Ads

Vintage Pristeen Ads 1969

No one marketed Feminine Hygiene Sprays more aggressively than Pristeen made by Warner Lambert pharmaceuticals.

In 1969 they ran a series of bold ads for the little lady with the headline “Unfortunately the trickiest problem a girl has isn’t under her pretty little arms”.

The text continues: “That was solved a long time ago. The real problem, as you may very well know, is how to keep the most girl part of you- the vaginal area- fresh and free of any worry-making odors.”

“Now finally there is a way. It’s called Pristeen. A brand new vaginal spray deodorant that’s been especially developed to cope with the problem. “(Or create a problem when none really existed)

feminine Hygiene Pristeen  ad judith Crist

Vintage Pristeen Ads 1970 Judith Crist talks about woman’s new freedom

The following year in 1970 Pristeen enlisted highly respected movie critic Judith Crist  to talk about “woman’s new freedom” and naturally Pristeen is a part of it. As Ms. Crist espouses on the portrayal of the new woman in films, the ad somehow manages to fit Pristeen into the picture with a starring role. “Now that women have the ‘courage’  to look a little different” to behave a bit more honestly”, they want products to do just that…products that didn’t exist even 5 years ago”

By 1970 there were 30 brands of feminine deodorant sprays on the market and Americans were spending well over $67 million annually in an attempt to be more “feminine”.

Copyright (©) 20014 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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Salute to Secretary’s Day

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vintage ad IBM typewriter secretary at desk

Vintage ad 1953 IBM Electric Typewriter “Typing all day is easy and effortless. At 5 o’clock you’ll look fresh and free from fatigue”

 

Who can forget the halcyon days when Administrative Professional Day was called National Secretary’s Day ? When a working woman was a working girl.

Lovingly called “the girl” by her boss whether a secretary, receptionist or file clerk, she was happy to oblige when the boss said “my girl will call your girl.”

Starting in 1952 the office girls were recognized for their hard work and got a holiday filled with flowers and chocolates. Promotions, not so much.

Just like the girls on Mad Men, I’m sure Administrative assistants would have preferred recognition and growth opportunities over flower, candy or lunch.

 

 

Take a Letter

vintage illustration Business secretary typewriter

Vintage ad John Hancock Life Insurance 1953 A Tribute to the Secretary

A year after the establishment of National Secretary’s Week a love letter to the ladies of the secretarial pool from John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company ran as an ad.

Even a hard-working girl can’t get away from housekeeping as the headline suggests: “She Keeps House for a Nations Business.”

 

office dictation photo boss at desk secretary

 

“You make a phone call, and its her voice that answers,” begins the ad.

“You dictate a letter, and it’s she who writes it down.”

“You need a speech that somebody made 2 or 3 years ago..or was it four?…or was it a magazine article? You can’t recall but she can and has it on your desk in twenty minutes.”

secretary at adding machine 1950s

Vintage ad National Cash Register 1954

“Who is this girl who turns up wherever business is done, remembering what you forget, doing what you haven’t time to do making the nations office as bright and orderly as a well-kept kitchen?”

“The personnel cards say she’s Miss Jones, secretary; Mrs Brown receptionist, Miss Perry file clerk; Miss Hoyt accounting machine operator. They tell you she’s 21 or 43, that she’s worked here and there that she went to this or that school.”

“Maybe the cards should tell you more.”

“Perhaps they should mention that Miss Jones has an invalid mother, and never lets her problem show in the face you see from 9 to 5.”

Perhaps they should say that Mrs Brown is supporting a son in college that Miss Perry practices shorthand during her lunch hours, that Miss Hoyt, bringing some softening touch of life into the places where jobs are done?”

illustration boss and typist secretary

“Take a letter Miss Jones.” the copy continues.

“To whom it may concern:thanks for your help.”

“Thanks for spelling better than I do, and for knowing what I don’t.”

“Thanks for remembering when a collective noun takes a singular verb, and for wearing a flower on rainy mornings and for being cheerful when I’m not, and for knowing how to work hard and still be human.”

sexist office cartoon

Vintage cartoon Esquire Magazine 1951

“Thanks for being everywhere that a bright mind, a willing hand, and a pleasant way are needed.”

“Mail it to yourself Miss Jones. Sign it, “Very sincerely yours.”

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Like Mother, Like Daughter

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mother daughter cooking 1950s kitchen

Vintage ad Reynolds Wrap 1954

Mid century mothers and daughters were clearly tied together not only by their apron strings but the same set of cultural expectations.  Not only did they share darling matching outfits but the same sunny enthusiasm for household chores.

And why not?

vintage picture Mom with crown refrigerator kitchen 1960

If Mom was queen, sis was certainly the princess! Vintage Frigidaire Refrigerator Ad 1960

The post war homemaker’s life was a breeze full of carefree living, going about her household tasks smiling as if she hadn’t a care in the world. It was a life of self polishing ease, a wash n wear world of no scrubbing no stooping no bending and absolutely …..no complaining.

illustration mother daughter laundry 1960s

Vintage Ad GE Washer 1962

With everything so automatic, it was automatically assumed that like mother like daughter she’d seamlessly follow in moms domestic high-heeled footsteps.

Ladies Be Seated

vintage illustration mother daughter ironing

Life was a breeze, sitting while ironing . Rhythmic restful automatic ironing. Now ends homes last drudgery. Forget the hand ironing Fold up your ironing board ladies and push it out of sight forever. The sensational automatic ironing, a wonderful willing servant irons everything while your seated! Half the time and effort” Vintage ad US Steel 1947

The message was clear- Girls would be cut from the same cloth as their Mothers

The Pattern is Set

illustration mother daughter sewing pattern 1949

From McCall’s 1949. “A pair of pinafores with fly away shoulders is an inspired gift. These look a likes for mother and small daughter are pretty in pastel chambray.”

Department stores featured Mother Daughter clothing departments but the handy housewife could whip up a new outfit for Mom and sis on her singer sewing machine in a jiff .

mother daughter dress patterns

Simplicity Patterns Mother Daughter Aprons

Simplicity began to issue many Mother daughter patterns beginning in the 1940’s, and women’s magazines regularly  ran features for sewing patterns.

illustration mother daughter fashion patterns 1948

A pattern for Mother Daughter play dress in Good Housekeeping Magazine 1948. The Simplicity pattern cost 15 cents

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illustration mother daughter fashion 1950s

Vintage Ad Mother Daughter Dresses 1952 Westway Sportswear

 “Prissy Missy-an irresistible picture….Mother and daughter dress alike in our Prissy Missy by Westway in fine wale piques…little waists and full skirts. So practical to launder!”

These images were indeed cut on the bias

Mothers Little Helpmate

These sugar-coated stereotypes of contented mothers and their copy-cat domesticated daughters seem as frozen and neatly packaged by Madison Avenue as the processed foods these happy homemakers served their families.

 

Mother Daughter Campbells  in kitchen 1942

Vintage Ad Campbell’s Tomato Juice 1942

 

 

illustration mothers daughters vacuum cleaning

Vintage Hoover Vacuum Cleaner Ad 1945

 

 

Mother and daughter washing dishes in kitchen 1940s

Vintage Ad US Steel 1946

 

illustration mother daughter doing laundry 1940s

Vintage Rinso Ad 1948

 

 

mother daughter doing  laundry Rinso

Vintage Rinso Ad 1949

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vintage picture mother daughter doing laundry

Vintage Rinso Ad 1950

In these images filled with matching frilly aprons and starched shirtwaist dresses it was clear who would wear the pants in the family…not the girls!

 

 

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

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Dubious Diets- The Bread Diet

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vintage photo woman in lingerie 1930s

Dubious diets are as American as…well…. all-you-can-eat apple pie.

Relying on fad diets to shed a few pounds has been handed down from gullible generation to gullible generation willing to swallow anything promising a trim figure.

In 1938 The American Institute of Baking served up white bread as a “proper part of modern reducing diets” in its authoritative booklet “The Right Way to Right Weight.”

Let’s take a look at how one 1930’s gal went from gloomy to giddy and found her slender self with the help of a loaf of bread.

A Glutton for Gluten

vintage illustration girl eating bread

Vintage Sunbeam Bread advertisement

Like most Americans, Gertie Gottlieb was a glutton for gluten. Whether bread, biscuits or Parker House rolls, Gertie gobbled ‘em up with gusto.

But like most gals, Gertie longed for a slender silhouette.

All the romance she got was out of magazines. And she had plenty of time to read them too.

A wee bit stout, she craved the right contours, eyeing with envy all the smart spring fashions pictured in the women’s magazines.

Flirtatious fashions, tailored for trimness. Fashions that called for a slim, youthful figure…”the lovely silhouette every woman so eagerly desires.”

1930s womens  fashion illustration

Vintage Women’s Fashion Illustration 1934 “McCall’s Magazine” “Flirtation Fashions- Tailored into Trimness. The waistline is dreamily defined; Molded along modern lines for debutantes who crave the right contours.”

A Weigh We Go

Heaven knows, Gertie tried her hand at reducing.

“Being the modern common sense way to diet,” she knew enough to “reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.”

“Light a Lucky Strike,” the cigarette ads advised. “When fattening sweets tempt and you dread extra weight, light a Lucky instead. The sensible and sane way of reducing, just a common sense method of retaining a slender figure.”

vintage Lucky Strike ad and Fashion illustration 1930s

At the end of the 1920′s a new slogan for Lucky Strikes appeared everywhere, advising to “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet,” suggesting smoking as common sense way of reducing. Celebrity endorsements, both male and female offered their personal testimony, such as the 1929 ad (L) featuring Grace Hay Drummond-Hay who was the first woman to travel around the world by air. The slim silhouette so in demand (L) Vintage ad Lucky Strike Cigarettes – “Smoke a Lucky instead of sweets” (R) Vintage Women’s Fashion Illustration 1934

But instead of a slim figure she ended up with smokers hack.

Gertie gobbled fat-reducing gum drops, chewed Slends Fat-Reducing Gum, and devoured so many grapefruits on the Hollywood Diet that she darn near felt she deserved a star of her own in front of Graumanns Chinese Theater.

The famous fat-busting banana and skim milk diet went bust, as did the bathtub filled with reducing bath salts with names like Lesser Slim Figure Bath and Everywoman’s Flesh Reducer which may have worked for every woman, but not for poor Gertie.

And speaking of bathtubs, she even tried her hand at washing away the fat with Fat-O-No soap hoping to lather up to slim down. And don’t get her started on all those thyroid pills, even if all the screen stars swore by them.

All she ended up with was a bad case of the jitters. But nothing a hot buttered bun wouldn’t fix!

A Diet Fit for Loafers

Down in the dumps, Gertie  worried if she was doomed to go through life feeling awkward and uncomfortable.

She had just about given up when her pal Mitzi told her about an amazing diet that was sweeping the nation. All Gertie needed was the proper guidance.

Gertie’s eyes glazed over at the thought of yet another diet till she heard the magic words: Bread.

For this gluten-loving gal it was a godsend.

vintage Diet  ad   womens fashion 1930s

The Bread Diet gives you delicious, satisfying meals- takes off weight without fatigue or nervous strain. (L) 1939 Ad Bread Diet, American Institute of Baking (R) 1934s Fashion Illustration McCall’s Magazine

The Bread Diet promised m’lady that in a few short weeks the pounds would just melt away all while enjoying your fill of the staff of life.

Authorized by the American Institute of Baking, their ads promised “To gain alluring slimness don’t think you have to starve yourself. Take the safe way to slenderness. Go on the Bread Diet.”

A registered nurse, Mitzi confirmed to Gertie that this diet was no gimmick. but  based on the most up to date, verifiable nutritional knowledge. “The bread diet is a scientific well-balanced diet based on years of research in leading universities and laboratories,” Mitzi informed her friend, handing her the advertisement.

1930s women

Mitzi explained: “ Important in this diet is the amount of bread- 2 slices with each meal. Far reaching scientific tests have proved bread can be an important aid in reducing. It is a valuable combination of carbohydrates and proteins. In this reducing diet, bread helps you burn up more completely the fat you are losing. Excess weight is converted into energy.”

 

1930s woman climbing stairs

Vintage Bread Diet Ad 1939

Who could be more trustworthy than a doctor who by the way endorsed this program.

Reading further she pointed out a fact progressive doctors and nutritionists have long known: “Bread gives your body more than energy. It is a valuable source of muscle-building protein. Actually we get more proteins from bread and other wheat products than from any other class of food. Bread in this reducing diet helps keep muscles firm and strong!”

 

Vintage ad The Bread Diet 1939

Vintage ad The Bread Diet 1939

The reason it was so successful was simple:

“Unlike so many reducing diets that cut down too much on needed food and often exhaust the system, the diet explained, the Bread Diet supplies the food elements the body needs. “

vintage photo woman ironing 1930s

Vintage Bread Diet Ad 1939

The diet came with a warning to avoid the most dangerous pitfalls of most fad diets: “If you are reducing, take care not to rob your body of the food fuel it need. Then the fat that you lose is not burned up properly…a harmful residue is left in the system often causing fatigue irritability and lowered resistance.”

You could avoid these dangers by following the bread diet.

So if you’re dieting don’t think you have to give up bread. By following the safe easy Bread diet you can enjoy 6 slices of bread every day and lose weight!

Gertie was in good-for-you gluten heaven. Ain’t life grand!

 

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014.

 

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Nuclear Family Meltdown

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sallyedelstein collage vintage appropriated images art

Detail of Collage by Sally Edelstein “And They Lived Happily Ever After” Appropriated vintage images. The end of Camelot saw our own fantasy’s begin to crack

The nuclear family was once as American as the nuclear bomb. But by the end of the 1960′s the nuclear family detonated along with our notion of marriage and motherhood.

Parenting and partnering were not a priority for the newly liberated lady…..just ask Mad Men’s Peggy Olson.

And They Lived Happily Ever After…

As the decade drew to a close, the New Frontier years of Camelot came to a crashing halt and turned out to be just one more fairy tale.

It wasn’t long before the spell was broken and we realized not everyone would live happily ever after like Cinderella.

The only shining white knight coming to the housewives rescue would be the Ajax White Knight galloping into her suburban neighborhood destroying dirt in his path with his magic lance.

Love and Marriage

sallyedelsteincollage Men in Chargemothers

Only 10 years earlier, the family’s outlook had never been brighter.

McCall’s Magazine even created a term for this Togetherness.

Along with the rest of the media, the real mad men of Madison Avenue painted the same glowing picture of the American family emphatic in their belief that the family was the center of your living and if it wasn’t you’ve gone astray… or you’re a communist!

Some magazine articles even went so far as to imply that a woman’s failure to bear children was a quasi perversion and just plain unnatural. Nothing was more patriotic than having children and like the steel industry, mothering was running at close to 100% capacity.

Waxy Yellow Build Up

sallyedelsteincollage art work appropriated images of vintage women

Detail of Collage by Sally Edelstein “White Wash” Appropriated vintage illustrations of American Housewives from the 1950s and 1960s

With their gleaming Ipana smiles, happy homemakers asked nothing more of others than to refrain from scuffing up the shine on her freshly Glo coated floor.

In a world rampant with wars , rioting and male entitlement, these happy housewives may have been smiling but more than likely they were numb from Miltown or Valium.

Like underground nuclear testing anger was to be buried beneath the surface, but the fall out would soon appear. Before the decade was out women would become as agitated as their miracle 2 agitator washers.

But by the late 1960’s happy housewives with their smiling faces  dressed in harmonized shades  to match their carefree kitchen appliances, were, like those same retro appliances replaced for a newer model.

Nuclear Family Meltdown

collage by  sally edelstein art appropriated vintage  images 1950s

Detail of collage by Sally Edelstein “Always Ask a Man” An amalgam of mass media stereotypes of women from the 1950′s and 60′s . A reshuffling of clichés about popular cultures representation of female choices.

With the bewitching speed and ease of Samantha Stevens twitching her nose the job a generation of women had trained for was suddenly obsolete by 1970. Along with their bras, women libbers threw out the American housewife and June Cleaver got kicked to the curb.

The single gal exploded on the scene knocking the married lady off her pedestal. Ads proclaimed: “It’s your time to shine baby and we don’t mean pots and pans!”

As if hit by a strong dose of radiation, the familiar 1950’s nuclear family in the media had mutated into monstrous families as June and Ward Cleaver were replaced by Lilli and Herman Munster.

 

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

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Identity Art Exhibit

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collage of vintage appropriated images agein women

Detail of Collage “How Old is Old” by Sally Edelstein part of Identity Exhibit at the gallery nine5 . The Collage is composed of hundreds of appropriated images of medias representation of women and aging

In a world dominated by pop culture, society and the media – how is identity defined?

I am pleased to be a part of an  important international exhibition of 25 works from 21 female artists   entitled Identity and I invite you all to visit if you are in the NY area.

 

 Identity

Identity seeks to expose the extremism of a consumer culture dominated by Western notions of beauty and the pursuit of idealized feminine perfection by exploring themes of power, representation and objectification. Female artists, in particular, face the challenge of identifying themselves amidst a society determined to do it for them.

The artists featured in Identity attempt to manipulate the boundaries of authority and dominance and explore deeper themes of control. The viewer is challenged to confront his or her own gaze on the body and reflect on the psychological aspects of the female persona. Drawing from a feminist perspective, the selected works aim to define gender and identity through the artist’s terms, whether through accepting or rejecting society’s view, and voicing their individual definitions of the powerful feminine.

Please join us for the opening reception on Saturday, May 31st from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Performance Art by Megan Mantia and Leone Anne Reeves: GIRL WORLD OUR WORLD OUR BRAINS WE LIVE HERE AND WE LOVE IT: An Erotic Memoir on May 31 at 4:30 p.m.

 

 

gallery nine5
24 Spring Street
New York, NY
212-965-9995

www.gallerynine5.com

Exhibition runs from May 31 to June 22, 2014

The artists in the exhibition at gallery nine5 are Shonagh Adelman, Chan & Mann, Sally Edelstein, Claire Joyce, Lauren Kalman, Beth Lakamp, Jessica Lichtenstein, Jessica Maria Manley, Meghan Mantia and Leone Reeves, Sarah Maple, Ellen Deitell Newman, Samantha Persons, Mei Xian QIu, Jennifer Reeder, Phyllis Rosser, Sonal Shah, Erin Sparler, Joanne Ungar, Cristina Velazquez, and Meghan Willis.

 

 


Women Pull No Punches

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housewife winking 1950s

Trading her ladylike gloves for a pair of Everlast a short evolution of women’s progress as seen through boxing.

Housewife’s Hook

 

housewife boxing lux

 Working Girl-No Contender

vintage illustration secretary with boxing gloves

Executive Sparring

 

Jill Abramson Boxing NY Times

And Still the Champ…. Instagram photo of Jill Abramson as posted by her daughter

Did the NY Times  below the belt when they unceremoniously fired Executive Editor Jill Abramson for her”aggressive behavior?”

 

 

 

 

 

 


The Most Sexist Ad Ever

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Vintage sexist ad illustration man and woman office 1940s

When it comes to misogyny in advertising,  1947′s Pitney Bowes Postage Meter ad easily ranks in the top ten.

And that’s saying a lot in a culture that was prolific in sexist advertising.

In the ad we learn Pete Jones, has spent 6 months convincing the home office to finally purchase a Pitney Bowes Postage Meter for the office. But he hits a wall when the only stenographer he has, a redhead named Miss Morissey balks at using it. Pete tells his story:

“‘I’ve no mechanical aptitude. Machines mix me up, kind of,” she says. “As if we asked her to fly a P-80. I almost blow my top,” he recalls, clearly in need of anger management training.

He attempts to explain this modern efficient machine to the ditzy dame, explaining that  “it’s practically heaven’s gift to the working girl…and so on. But with the Morissey, no soap.”

Mr. Jones continues his story:

“I try diplomacy. ‘Miss Morissey, I want you to personally try it for two weeks. If you don’t like it then-back it goes to the factory! Okay?’…She acts like an early Christian about to be lunch for a lion, but gives in.”

“So help me- two weeks later she has a big pink bow on the handle of the postage meter-like it was an orchid or something. I give it the gape.”

“‘Kinda cute, ain’t it,” says Miss Morissey. ‘But a very efficient machine, Mr Jones. Now the mail is out early enough so I get to the girl’s room in time to hear all of the dirt’.”

Exasperated Pete wonders finally :”Is it always illegal to kill a woman!”

 

Audacity

vintage sexist ad

Vintage 1949 Ad Van Heusen Shirts

 

These ads may cause a snicker but they are powerful enforcers of suffocating stereotypes and underlying assumptions of a culture that continues to reinforce traditional alpha masculinity and submissive femininity.

Truth or Consequences

sexist 46 SWScan03966 - Copy

What do these ads tell us about the culture that produced them and the people that consumed them. Vintage ad 1946

The vile misogynist manifesto written by the madmen who killed 6 innocent people in California has inspired the #YesAllWomen twitter movement to draw attention against violence to women at the hands of men.

Elliot Rodger’s rants may seem as antiquated as these sexist vintage ads but his attitudes continue to permeate our culture in subtle ways with devastating consequences.

 

Copyright (©) 20014 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved


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