Long before Crew Cuts was the name of J. Crews adorable line of clothing for boys and girls, it was mid- century summers must have hair cut for boys of all ages.

Also known affectionately as a butch cut, a buzz cut and a flat top, it was, along with baseball, camping, and Good Humor, an essential part of summer’s ritual. Getting your hair shorn was a rite of passage for the boys of summer.

Although it appeared to be a care-free- no-fuss-no-muss hairstyle, keeping it up or keeping it down required maintenance with a mid-century product called Butch Wax. One manufacturer of the paste-like substance promised to help keep your hair as evenly “as the bristles of a new brush”.

There was not just one size fits all crew cuts…the variations were exacting and numerous according to these Max Factor vintage ads from 1961.

The Standard Crew Cut

This was the most popular of all short-hair cuts. “It is trained to stand upright in front and on top, with the sides cut close to the shape of the head. It’s length is about an inch and a half at front to an inch at the crown and !/2 inch at back.

The Short Pomp

“This haircut looks like the regular crew cut in shape but it is slightly longer in length so that the hair begins to lie down a bit and cover the scalp when combed back. The top front length is about 2 inches, an inch and a half at crown and an inch at the back.”

The Flat-Top-Boogie

This haircut is getting more and more popular, The flat-topboogie has long sides which must be kept carefully trained to look neat. The sides are combed back and upward, pulling the longer strands around the back of the head in a semi ducktail.

The West Pointer

This is the official haircut of the US Military Academy. All hair on sides and back is kept clipped down to the skin. hair above forehead is rounded to shape of the skull with a maximum length of an eight of an inch for plebes and 1 inch for upper classmen.

Copyright (©) 20012 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

In the fall of 1944 my mother Betty was a college freshman who had more on her mind than musty old history dates; it was dates of another sort that troubled her.

However due to the war, she and the other coeds founds themselves in the midst of a genuine man shortage. The absence of an entire generation of men between the ages of 17 and 30 left a lonely void during WWII.

Sometimes she got he feeling that Uncle Sam and the Office of price Administration was personally sabotaging her chances of attracting what few men there were left.

She had to learn plenty of angles not found in geometry books so she could boost her Eye Q and attract whatever able gables she could find.

Thank goodness the government didn’t go completely bananas and ration cosmetics.! After all keeping herself attractive was her patriotic duty.

As Uncle Sam rightly put it “Beauty is Miss Americas badge of courage.”

Patriotic Pedicure

As any other sassy co-ed in-the-know could tell you, it was a bone a fide fact that girls who want to make more than a passing grade with their appearances know that untinted fingernails have just about as much appeal as the dead languages and are never, ever elective!

Luckily Cutex came out with new line of military right nail polish.

Patriotically painting her tootsies, Betty co-ed could choose between dozens of popular shades such as On Duty, At Ease, Honor Bright or Off Duty.

 That ought to have made some lucky young man stand at attention!

Lip Service

Luckily Betty’s luscious lips wouldn’t have to go bare either; she could pucker up with confidence thanks to Ponds.

With their new Beau Bait lipstick, in the wartime scarcer than scarce metal case, a gal  could “hook him every time”.

It was perfect for evenings because thanks to wartime research it promises wouldn’t bleach out under electric lights.

“Bait your line with Beau Bait and the poor man is a goner!

Sally’s Pretty and Sally’s Smart

Would you dare risk the shame of “Cosmetic skin?”

Sure you’re careful, never risking offending with  halitosis, avoiding housewife- hips, pink toothbrush, B.O. and other ailments of the Depression era 1930’s.

But unless you wash as thoroughly as the Hollywood way, shame could be knocking on your door.

But not Sally

She’s one sharp cookie! Not only pretty, but… gasp…. smart too!

Like most modern gals and Hollywood stars, our heroine in this 1934  Lux soap ad wouldn’t be caught dead going out without a touch of rouge and powder when putting on her face.

Just ask lovely Loretta Young, glamorous Twentieth Century Star who concurs with smart Sally.

After all, screen stars are wise in the ways of loveliness. And thousands of clever girls all over the country are adopting Hollywood’s beauty care to guard against unattractive Cosmetic Skin- keep their complexion exquisite.

And just what is this Hollywood secret?

A good old bar of soap and water!

Staying Depression -Dainty Fresh

In case you were unaware, the ad lists the tell tale signs of this awful, socially unacceptable ailment: “Have you seen warning signals of this distressing modern complexion- enlarged pores, tiny blemishes, dullness-“ and the worst of it all “blackheads perhaps? No need to worry!”

In a pre- penicillin time when diseases like scarlet fever, whooping cough, and polio struck with a regular vengeance, when unemployment was rampant, and homes were being foreclosed, black heads would be the worst of your troubles.

Luckily the dangers of cosmetics could be rendered harmless with a simple bar of Lux soap.

If only washing away all your worries were as easy as that.

Like most women growing up in the 1950s and 1960s I was fed a generous serving of sugar-coated media stereotypes of happy homemakers who were as frozen and neatly packaged as the processed foods they served their cold war families.

The Feminine Mistake 1960

In the years before I went to Kindergarten, I shadowed my mother Betty  everywhere she went.

Within her suburban sphere of influence I was a contented little satellite, spinning in her orbit.

Whether shopping or schlepping, picking up or dropping off, I would follow in her footsteps…literally. The task I enjoyed tagging along with the most was her weekly appointment at the Glam-A-Rama Beauty Parlor.

Glam-A- Rama Beauty Parlor

The beauty parlor was a unique universe unlike any place else, where unfamiliar, strange-looking equipment was being used by familiar neighborhood women looking strange.

All dressed alike, their ordinary clothes replaced by identical leopard print smocks, it was a universe with its own uniform.

A universe where gossip was as hot and swift as the air blowing through the missile shaped hairdryers, a world where I was privy to carefully guarded grown up secrets.

Strange intimacies grew between women who organized carpools and now found themselves sitting, captive under pink hair dryers.

These conversations were unlike the hurried confidences exchanged as Friday’s schedule was switched with Tuesdays, pick-ups and deliveries reversed, or when a tired mother deposits the last child and stayed for a quick cup of instant coffee.

It was over the roar of the dryers in the afternoons while casseroles simmered in automatic ovens back home that these women gave full voice to secret whispering fears. Somehow dread words could be spoken and reassurances offered.

In the shadow of the hairdryers, as nails were polished, calluses scraped and hair teased, dread words could be safely spoken.

Post War Periodicals

(R) Ladies Home Journal 5/52 illustration Al Parker

Sinking into a padded turquoise swivel styling chair, I sat next to Mom, carefully watching as Miss Blanche the hairdresser, combed and teased, bombarding Mom with hairspray.

This was truly a space age hair-do with its propulsion accomplished by strenuous backcombing.

Mom would sit in the hydraulic  chair reading 2 month old, dog-eared copies of McCalls and Good Housekeeping, while  Miss Blanche maintaining a steady flow of mindless chatter as she worked.

Magazine Madness

Tucked within those pages, the periodicals promised the modern mid-century housewife would find exactly the right information and products that would give her the knowledge to excel in her role as wife and mother.

Glancing at her favorite magazines at the Glama-Rama only seemed to confirm what Mom knew in her heart to be true- that love, marriage, and children is The career for women.

“Yes,” she would read, nodding in agreement “for today’s homemaker her home is her castle.”

“Snug within it she basks in the warmth of a good mans love…glories in the laughter of healthy children…glows with pride in every new acquisition that adds color or comfort pleasure or leisure to her family’s life.”

“And, she’s always there! She’s an up to date modern American homemaker.”

Breathing in deeply of the beauty parlor air heavy with the cloying sweetness of perfume diluted by the acrid smell of singed hair, Mom sighed contently.

Home Work

Of course, the gals all agreed, some poor mothers had to work to provide for their families.

The big talk that day that set tongues wagging concerned Shirley Birnbaum who was pregnant and planned to go back to work as a teacher after she had a baby!

“But the ones I’d like to talk about,” our neighbor Estelle Wolfson said between puffs of her Parliament  pointing to an article in one magazine, “are those who feel that household and community activities are for “squares.”

The curler clad ladies nodded in unison.

Can This Marriage Be Saved

By the fall of 1960 there had began to appear some quiet rumblings among some unhappy housewives across the country.

Now and again Mom would read an article, usually in the Can This Marriage be Saved column, about those few unfortunate women who felt stifled and lonely in their marriage.

“Feminists” or anyone who couldn’t find fulfillment in the Lady Clairol colorful cold war world of carpools, cookouts, cream of mushroom soup casseroles, and catering to contented children and happy-go-lucky husbands, were disturbed.

Flipping through one magazine, she noticed that September’s Redbook offered a $500 prize for the best essay on “Why Young Mothers Feel Trapped.”

It triggered an unexpectedly large response 24,000 entries.

Another magazine, Good Housekeeping   also tapped into this vein of unhappiness with a September article of its own. “I Say: Women Are People Too.”

The article caught Moms eye.

It noted “a strange stirring, a dissatisfied groping, a yearning” by American women, a sense that there must be more to life than raising children and maintaining a clean comfortable home.

The magazine urged its readers to overcome their malaise by taking charge of their lives. “She can’t live through her husband and children.” It said of the typical housewife. “They are separate selves. She has to find her own fulfillment first.”

The author of the Good Housekeeping article was by another Betty, Betty Friedan, a 39-year-old freelance writer from NY suburbs

Friedan was asked to assemble a booklet for her Smith college class 15^th reunion in 1957. She sent out questionnaires expecting to be inundated with cheerful stories about successful careers and young families. Many classmates responded with tales of depression and frustration. It was Friedans first clue than many thousands of women shared her own dissatisfaction.

The Smith questionnaire inspired her to undertake a detailed examination of what she called “the problem that has no name” interviewing hundreds of women in NY Chicago and Boston.

The Good Housekeeping piece sprang from this research. She had started a book manuscript by Oct 1960.

The book entitled The Feminine Mystique wouldn’t be published until 1963.

Duz She or Duzn’t  She

Mom dismissed these grumblings and put down the magazine.

She never felt constrained.

She saw her life as full of choices after all she as free to choose- automobiles, clothes appliances and supermarkets.

Freedom was all around her.

Suddenly she was carefree with her automatic dishwasher, there was freedom from brushing between meals with Gleem toothpaste, you could relax if its Arnel with new ease of care, sofas covered with Velon plastic, meant she was no longer a slave to delicate upholstery, even her waist whittling calorie curve cuttin’ Playtex girdle promised her new freedom.

And best of all there was freedom to choose from a dazzling assortment at the supermarkets.

Thinking the Unthinkable

Patting her lush brown bouffant coif floating like a gentle cloud above her head, Mom left the beauty parlor happy. With a new recipe for cheese Fondue clutched in her hands and a sure-fire solution for removing ring around the collar, Mom was content. For now my mother Betty would follow in the footprints of another Betty, Betty Crocker, satisfied in her role as housewife and mother. 

The problem that had no name was so unfathomable no one even thought they had a problem. It was buried as deeply as our missiles underground, and would cause the same explosion when they were released.

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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Want a more youthful vibrant expression?

Chew on this!

Forget expensive cosmetic wrinkle fillers and injectables like Botox. For a true non surgical age reversing technique-good ol’ American chewing gum not only doubles your pleasure, but makes you doubly delightful to look at too!

And this advise comes straight from one of retro Hollywood’s loveliest stars Miss Claudette Colbert!

That is according to Wrigleys, in this 1938 advertisement for Double Mint Gum

“Masculine hearts skip a beat when a lovely woman flashes an enchanting smile,” exclaims Wrigleys in their ad. “And refreshing Double Mint gum does wonders for your smile. Women of discrimination choose this popular double-lasting, delicious-tasting gum.”

Beauty On A Budget

Now here’s the science behind the beauty enhancing wonders of Wrigleys

“The daily chewing helps beautify by waking up sleepy face muscles, stimulating beneficial circulation in your gums and brightening your teeth natures way. So your face and smile gain a lovely new radiance everyone admires.”

Looking renewed and refreshed, admiring friends will wonder whether it was a new hair-do or a relaxing cruise that contributed to your radiant countenance. Who would ever guess it was a mere stick of gum.

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

The ad doubles the sales pitch as well by hawking Claudette Colbert’s next big movie and a Hollywood fashion designer.

“What you wear and how you wear it also enters the picture as exemplified by Hollywood’s beautiful and fascinating star Claudette Colbert and proven again in her next big Paramount screen success “Midnight.”

“The becoming suit dress Miss Colbert models so smartly for you,” the reader is informed, “ is by Hollywood’s great fashion creator Travis Banton- designed by Double Mint gum’s request since smart clothes as well as an attractive face means charm. Mr Banton’s fashions are noted for curves concealed just enough and for that expensive slim hipped look always associated with Claudette Colbert.” And since healthful delicious double mint gum is a satisfying non fattening sweet, it keeps you slim hipped too

“You yourself can make this flattering suit dress in any color or material most becoming to you by purchasing Simplicity pattern 2902 at nearly all good department, dry goods or variety stores.”

“All women want smart clothes and know they set off smile and loveliness of face. Millions already know delicious Double Mint gum helps bring extra attractiveness to your smile, making your whole face doubly lovely. Begin today.”

As a young child in the late 1950′s, I shadowed my mother everywhere she went.

 I was her Baba Looey to her Quick Draw McGraw, Boo Boo to her Yogi Bear, Tonto to her Lone Ranger.Within her sphere of influence I was a contented little satellite, spinning in her orbit wherever she went.

 Whether shopping or schlepping, picking up or dropping off, I would follow in her footsteps in the seemingly endless tasks of doing for others. The errand I enjoyed tagging along with the most was her weekly appointment at the Girls-Only-Glam-A-Rama Beauty Parlor, the one thing she did all week just for her.

 Glam-A- Rama-Beauty Parlor

A unique universe unlike any place else, where unfamiliar, strange-looking equipment was being used by familiar neighborhood women looking strange, all dressed alike, their ordinary clothes replaced by identical leopard print smocks.

 A universe with its own uniform. A universe where gossip was as hot and swift as the air blowing through the missile shaped hairdryers, where I was privy to carefully guarded grown up secrets.

 Strange intimacies grew between women who organized carpools and now found themselves sitting, captive under pink hair dryers. It was over the roar of the dryers in the afternoons while casseroles simmered in automatic ovens back home that these women gave full voice to secret whispering fears. Somehow dread words could be spoken and reassurances offered. In the shadow of the hairdryers, as nails were polished, calluses scraped and hair teased, dread words could be safely spoken.

Does She or Doesn’t She?

(L) Vintage Ad Miss Clairol 1962 (R) Vintage Ad 1958 Pin It Home Permanent illustration by Jon Whitcomb

 Despite the fact that the sight of women in pink plastic curlers was becoming more and more common a sight in public and not discounting the legion of devotees of Miss Clairol and Toni Home permanents, beauty parlors were busier than ever.

 This was due in part to the popularity of the most asked for hair ‘do of the year- the bouffant. The perfect ‘do for the world of tomorrow, one in which man is ever striving for new, ever higher horizons. Despite its French origins, it was a concoction that showed Americas might with its height, and was protected by inpenetrateable layers of lacquer.

A Beehive of Activity

 Entering the Beauty Parlor, the Saturday before Mothers Day, you could feel the excitement in the air. A beehive of activity, a festive feeling had been added to the usual rhythmic pulse, as women pampered themselves for their big day.

 Decorated to reflect the miracle of spring time, the room was showered with an assortment of plastic flower arrangements gracing walls and counters. These Forever-Flowers imported all the way from exotic Hong Kong and purchased from the nearby Fancy Goods department at Woolworths would be given to each lucky lady as a final parting gift for Mothers Day.

 The air bristling with Mothers Day plans, was heavy with the cloying sweetness of perfume diluted by the acrid smell of singed hair, nose burning acetone, ammonia, and other chemical combustibles.

A Haze Of Hairspray

1950′s Vintage Ads for Helene Curtis Hair Spray (R) Now even little girls could benefit from the wonders of hair spray in seen in this 1956 ad from Helene Curtis

 Thick with cigarette smoke, the haze of hairspray alone was enough to create its own hole in the ozone layer. Hairspray was a modern-day wonder. Articles marveled at its might: “Not since the invention of the permanent wave had any hair product done so much for so many as todays near miracle-working hairsprays.”

 The sound of “What a Difference a Day Makes” playing on the radio was nearly  drowned out by the constant hum of hairdryers and the constant chattering among the ladies. Even Dinah Washington’s fervent voice was no match for these yentas.

 It was under those missile shaped dryers that sizzling party recipes were hotly debated and exchanged; fondues were scrutinized, zippy dips and dunks dissected, chex party mix gone over with a fine tooth comb and potato chips pondered-with or without ridges. Heavy trading went on, swapping a cherished Kraft TV Theatre clam dip recipe, for a new twist on Rumaki.

 Musical Chairs

Like a game of musical chairs, the rows of turquoise hydraulic styling chairs filled  with chain-smoking Moms, remained stationary with the gals themselves moving slowly from chair to chair progressing from one stage of metamorphosis to the next.

A seamless transition that would have pleased Henry Ford.

One row of post-shampoo ladies, looked like a pack of wet poodles, puffing on their Parliaments, having their nails done as they patiently bided their time for the next step of transformation .

Vintage Ads (L) Du Barry Push Button Hair Color 1963 (R) Miss Clairol Champagne Blonde Hair Color 1957

 Further down the assembly line, another group of adventurous gals- gals who wouldn’t take dull for an answer-sported freshly shorn locks slathered with gobs of goo and eye burning glop, that would turn them into glamorous if-I’ve-only-one- life- to- lead- let –me- live- it –as- a -Blonde.

 Just the thing for the upcoming summer scene, Clairol had popped the cork on new Champagne blondes, vintage 1960. In between, eyebrows were plucked, and lips waxed, until finally scalps were tortured with clips, and curlers, and subjected to searing blasts of heat while seated under hair dryers.

Was it really true Blondes had more fun?

 Sinking into a padded swivel styling chair, I sat next to Mom carefully watching as Miss Blanche, combed and teased, bombarding Mom with hairspray. This was truly a space age hair do with its propulsion accomplished by strenuous backcombing. The ‘do was composed of three major assemblies, the set with curlers, the thrust, or tease, and the fusing device of heavy hair spray. “There isn’t a head of hair that can’t profit in prettiness and manageability from spray,” Miss Blanche was fond of saying.

 Mom would have a party hair do all week-long. It was a hair do with a future

 “Going to the moon, or just getting back?” Dad would smile at Moms hair, the shape of a space helmet.

 The petite, bespeckled, hairdresser wobbled precariously on spindly Lucite spiked heels, her own massively teased confection of taffy colored hair towered over us all, tempting fate and physics that its enormity wouldn’t tip her over.

 It was truly aero dynamic.

 A true artiste‘, Miss Blanche would always try for the exact balance so the coiffure would frame the clients face just right.

 Stepping back from her work like Picasso, she squinted thoughtfully through her iridescent, greenish gold cat- eyes frame glasses, at Moms face in the mirror, as if she were following the progress of a painting. Of course my own myopic Mom stripped of her own blue and silver specs, would squint right back at her.

With the skillful use of fluorescent lighting, the unqualified, belief in hairspray, this world of tomorrow was a world of beauty.

 Holding her hands in front of her, drying on her nails was a fresh coat of frantic red. Because it was Mothers Day Mom treated herself to a professional manicure unlike her normal dash of polish 20 minutes before party guests came.

 Patting her lush brown bouffant coif floating like a gentle cloud above her head, Mom left happy, with a new recipe for cheese Fondue clutched in her hands, a sure-fire ( probably highly flammable) solution for removing stains, and clutching her Mothers Day bouquet of forever your pink plastic flowers, bendable and moveable to arrange just as you like.

Vintage Mothers Day Card to Betty Edelstein

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

 The lyrical sound of Ding Dong… Avon Calling was music to my mid-century mother’s ears. 

 My father may have said he wanted to be a hands on kinda Dad but it was my Mother who had her hands filled especially the year I was born.

 Moms diaper decorated world kept her too busy for words.

 There was no time to flip through a magazine, talk on the phone or even open a newspaper to keep up with the news, let alone get her hair done, or shop.

 Spare time with a new baby in the house? And a toddler? Fuhgeddaboudit!

 Sometimes, she joked, she felt like a contestant on the $64,000 Question, sequestered in one of those isolation booths, cut off from the world.

 Which is why those visits from the Avon Lady were a welcome relief.

Vintage Avon Advertisement 1955

 Time Out For Beauty

 It was Monday morning in early October 1955 and Dawn Logan our Avon Representative was due at our suburban home around 10.

 Glancing up at the small clock on the electric wall oven, Mom noticed she was right on schedule setting up for Dawn who would soon be knocking on the door.

 After doing a quick run of the Bissel carpet sweeper through the house, she put up a big pot of Chock full of nuts in her chrome Mirro-Matic percolator. She knew from experience there was nothing more welcome to a traveling Avon Lady than to have a cup or 2 of piping hot coffee, with plenty of sugar for extra pep, and relax with a soothing cigarette while going over samples.

 Striding into the kitchen briefcase in hand Dad tousled my brother Andy’s hair who was busily engaged on 2 fronts attacking a bowl of sugar smacks with spoon and hands, happily putting as much on the floor as in his mouth while at the same time spreading jelly on a piece of toast, ketchup on another and putting cereal between them. Sitting in my high chair I surveying the scene from a safe distance.

 Dad noted that Mom was as giddy and glowing as he had seen her in a while. The gay floral design on her apron seemed to match the new scrubbable wallpaper perfectly. She hadn’t missed her lipstick either, he noted.

 Snuggling up behind her as she popped a standing rib roast in the wall oven he murmured “hey Good Lookin’…whatcha got cookin?’ patting her backside playfully.

 Mom shooed him out handing him his hat; now that Dad was a Dashing Dan he had to catch the morning train. She turned back to the kitchen, wiped up the trail of milk on the floor drank 2 more cups of coffee and did the dishes laying them on the frosty pink rubber dish drain.

From Housewife to Beauty

Keeping Up Appearances

 Earlier that morning as Mom clipped on the small pearl earrings, she gazed disconsolately into the bathroom mirror. The face was as pretty as ever, she supposed, with the clear ivory skin, but the large baby blue eyes now bloodshot revealed just how very tire she was.

Eyeing a tube of red lipstick, she knew it would be just the ticket to brighten her up.

“French Spice-a plum-luscious scarlet with a lick in it,” was how Dawn had deliciously described the new Avon lipstick a year ago June when she had sold it to Mom.”The color that never was before…but always should have been,” Dawn went on excitedly as Mom listened transfixed. “No. Not another re…but French for red…it’s scarlet on a spree, spiced with a plum-wild tang-to dance on lips that dare to be delicious!”

“It’s the new spice in fashions life” she rhapsodized as she continued. “And when French Spice glows on your fingertips…goes to your toes…who knows what beautiful things it can lead to,” she concluded winking.

Mom smiled to herself. Nine months later from the purchase of that lipstick I was born.

The Avon Lady had been a lifesaver when Mom was pregnant. By her third trimester Mom had blown up like a balloon, and her enormous body encased in a tent size garment called a maternity dress didn’t do much for her self esteem, or her beauty IQ.

She could have hugged Dawn when she had suggested earrings and a new shade of Avon lipstick might keep a young wifes mind-and her husbands eyes off  her ungainly figure during the final months of her pregnancy.

 Pregnant, Moms moods could turn on a dime; she could be fidgety and irritable. Dawn was a strong shoulder; she understood. Her words could be as transformative as the products she sold. “Solving a problem that plagues others is a thrill,” she explained to Mom.

Dawn called herself the listening ear of the community. It was, she confided to mom one of the secrets of a good Avon lady.

 “Put your best face forward,” Dawn was fond of saying and she practiced what she preached.

Good advise to Joan and Peggy as they battle it out for the Avon account on Mad Men.

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Coming Soon: Ding Dong…Avon Calling Pt II

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Avon may be a coveted account on AMC’s Mad Men, but for many mid-century housewives, Avon was a coveted career.

By the early 1960s Dawn Logan our neighborhood Avon Lady, was living out the ring-a-ding ding-American Dream.

With her Irish good looks and obvious love of life and people, it was no wonder Dawn was such a successful Avon representative. Flush with cash from all the cosmetics she sold to neighborhood suburban housewives, she was living out the post-war promise of plenty.

Consuming Passions

Vintage illustration by Alajalov Saturday Evening Post Cover 8/15/59

Americans entered the post-war world as ardent consumers .

The end of WWII left us all with no restrictions of how much happiness we could buy. The  material dreams kept pumping through the culture in lavish color drenched ads, whetting our war-weary appetites..

It would be a future filled with an abundance of consumer goods. Now at your fingertips, goods that you had never seen, felt, owned, driven or tasted before. Everything was long-wearing, fast drying king-sized, the last word, working twice as fast.

Like thousands of other young marrieds in the 1950s, Robert and Dawn Logan had moved to the suburbs. It was large house in a big development so fresh off the building line and typical you could shut your eyes and see it.

Even with Uncle Sam’s assistance from the GI Bill, the Logan’s mortgage was a stretch. And waiting to fill their suburban home was a sparkling constellation of consumer goods- TVs, percolators, power tools, automatic washers, Hi-Fi’s, and station wagons to fill with all your shopping goodies.

The American Dream

It wasn’t long before the Logans were part of that new post-war American dream -owing more money than they had.

Her husband Bob’s salary of $6700 a year ran a losing race with the Logan’s free-fisted spending. When bills and bedlam got too thick, Dawn went out and played bingo at a net loss of $20 a month. “Bill called himself the built-in baby sitter,” Dawn said “But when I got up to 3 nights a week playing bingo he really put his foot down.”

(L) Vintage Ad 1950 Sweetheart soap (R) Vintage Ad 1954 National Cash Register

Dawn fretted about taking a job for the extra money. With her stellar steno skills she’d be scooped up as a secretary in a jiff.

Sure it would help bring in much-needed income, but in her heart she knew keeping house full-time was still the number one job choice of the modern women. Between car pools, cub scouts and home decorating there weren’t enough hours in the day.

She needed a job that would accommodate the kind of flexible hours in her busy life.

That’s when the bell went off in her head…ding-dong, she would become an Avon Representative.

Avon offered a unique way for a woman to take control of her life and achieve some economic independence all while working part-time and flexible hours.

Many stars of stage and screen were featured in Avon ads in the 1940′s and 50′s including Rosalind Russell, Loretta Young, Helene Hayes, Claudette Colbert and Jimmy Stewart along with his wife. The Avon ad on the left features Barbara Bel Geddes, star of stage, screen, radio and TV. “Selecting Avon Cosmetics best for your complexion needs is so convenient…with the Avon Representative in your own home,” says charming Barbara Bel Geddes.

Avon Calling

Vintage Ads for Avon (L) 1946 (R) 1947

Besides which, Avon ran in her blood.

Selling fragrance door to door, Dawn’s own mother Selma had been an Avon sales rep since the dark days of the Depression back when Avon was still called California Perfume Company. Without a car she would walk up to 5 miles every day carrying her sample case of goodies. In 1939 the company officially became Avon and Selma, along with 26,000 other saleswomen, proudly called herself an Avon Lady.

The first “Avon Lady” was actually a man.

This uniquely female direct sales operation was established in 1886 by a 28 year old door to door salesman named David McConnel who would eventually help open the door to women.

He discovered that the rose oil perfume he was giving away with his books as an added customer incentive was actually the very reason women were buying his books. He decided to sell perfume and other beauty products through independent door to door sales representatives using women.

It was to say the least, a novel approach in the late 19th century giving women an opportunity to earn money. The face to face direct selling approach relied on a womans social skills and her reputation in the community since customers tended to trust their neighbors more than traveling salesmen.

WWII

Vintage Ad Avon WWII 1945 A Salute to Cadet Nurses

During WWII Avon like most manufacturers, went on a war footing. They converted 50% of its production plant into manufacturing such items as paratrooper kits, insect repellents and gas mask canisters to help the war effort.

But gals on the home front still needed to keep up appearances and put their best foot forward.

Between volunteering at the local USO Canteen and the Red Cross, Selma still made her rounds carrying her Avon samples that included 8 lipstick colors, and 8 colors of rouge all in containers made of cardboard since all metal was saved for war effort.

With war over the company grew and by 1949 had 2,500 employees, 65,000 representatives and $25 million annual sales.

Avon Ads often featured “prominent community wives in their ad such as this one from 1952. “Mrs Helena P Hamill (R) most active in civics affairs and wife of the former mayor of Pasadena Calif. takes time out in the comfort of her home to select Avon Cosmetics with the help of Mrs. Marion Gordon her Avon Representative.”

In this 1959 ad (L), Avon competes with Revlon’s famous Fire and Ice and Cherries in the Snow campaign with their own version Cherry Ice-”This newest shade a gay red iced with blue comes in Avons famous lipstick…matching nail polish…harmonizing make-up. The fragrance ad for Topaz (R) states that their fragrance “becomes every woman, appeals to every man

 

A Cinderella Story… Avon Calling

Vintage ad 1946 (L) Shell Oil (R) Vintage illustration Happy Homemaker 1956 illustration Lionel Gilbert

By the mid 1950s. Dawn believed she had found her calling in Avon. beauty was her business, and the suburban housewife her best client.

The most envied woman in the world was the mid-century American housewife…smart, yet easy going, with never you mind freedom. What gal wouldn’t want to achieve this new ideal- a Lady Clairol colorful Cold War World of carpools, cookouts, cream of mushroom soup casseroles, and catering to contented children and happy go lucky husbands.

Her life was magical this bewitchingly new American Housewife. As one advertiser explained it: “her home is her castle. Snug within it she basks in the warmth of a good mans love, glories in the laughter of children, glows with pride at every acquisition. And she’s always there.”

“Today’s Cinderella has a modern fairy godmother in the Avon Lady,” Dawn would tell her customers.

With the flick of an eyebrow pencil – the flash of a lipstick she could transform any woman and give them the assurance most women need to be completely at ease, confident in her self and her bright looks!

Vintage Avon Ads (L) 1959 (R) !958

Spreading out those special products on a living room coffee table, she called herself “the listening ear of the community” Dawn knew from her mother the personal relationship was always the key to the success of a good Avon representative Along with  the lipstick samples shaped like bullets, she dispensed advise, support and friendship  

Now working part-time, Dawn had the best of both worlds the independence and extra money of a office girl and plenty time to be a mother and wife.

Times They are a Changing

Vintage Avon Ad 1962 (L) The Woman’s Dress For Success Book by John Molloy 1977

But the 1970s would usher in some big changes.

By the late 1960s, happy housewives with their smiling glowing faces shining with pink pancake makeup in harmonized shades keyed to match their appliances were, like those same retro appliances, replaced by a newer model- the career girl.

Suddenly the job a generation of women had trained for was obsolete by the 1970s. Along with their bras, women-libbers threw out the American Housewife and June Cleaver got kicked to the curb.

Traditional woman’s work was no longer relevant.

The career girl exploded, knocking the married housewife off her pedestal. Along with the homemaker, the Avon Lady became obsolete as more women worked outside the home-the very place where most of the demonstrations and sales traditionally took place.

Avon suffered a decline in fortunes in the 1970s due to the changing lifestyles as many salesperson left to pursue more lucrative career opportunities.

While Mad Men’s Peggy and Joan fight it out over Avon, career girls like them would soon make housewives and the Avon Lady a throwback to an earlier age.

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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• Ding Dong…Avon Calling (envisioningtheamericandream.com)

New Yorkers went nuts for Miss Rheingold
Vintage Rheingold Beer Ad Miss Rheingold 1951 Elise Gammon

For some mid-century misses the title of Miss America was the American Dream. But in 1948, for NYC born and bred Angie O’ Riley, it paled next to the most coveted title of all- Miss Rheingold. Once upon a time, the selection of the annual “Miss Rheingold” was as highly anticipated as the race for the White House. During the heyday of the popular contest- a clever marketing ploy which ran from 1941 to 1964,  a time when every third beer hoisted in NY was a Rheingold – the pictures of 6 smiling beauty contestants  were displayed everywhere  from bars,delis, restaurants to  billboards and ads. “Yes, in a town full of pretty girls there’s only one Miss Rheingold,” the omnipresent radio ads would blare. “She’s a NY tradition that can’t be matched.”

My Beer Is Rheingold the Dry Beer…

Over the sound of the jukebox playing and the whirring of the oscillating fan overhead, animated conversation at the bar ran hot, heavy and long through the night.
Vintage illustration from 1947 advertisement Mt Vernon Whiskey

Rheingold beer ran through the O’Riley blood…literally. Angies father Tom ran O’Rileys Bar and Grill in Queens, NY. For over 40 years the dimly lit tavern on Jackson Avenue stood right next door to my grandfathers pawn shop Edelstein Pawnbrokers. The smell of beer wafted next door, permanently permeating the pawnshop with its rich yeasty odor, so it was not unusual for a patron flush with cash from just having hocked a Timex watch or an Emerson table top radio to drop in at O Rileys for a tall glass or 2 of Rheingolds and stay through the night. In the humid summer of 1948, a frosty glass of pale beer for 15 cents was the perfect way to cool down from the heat. Over the sound of the jukebox playing and the whirring oscillating fan overhead, animated conversation at the bar ran hot, heavy and long through the night. When the barflys were finished debating the batting prowess of Stan Musial vs Ted Williams, snickering over the findings of the Kinsey Report, smirking over first sightings of  something called a bikini that made its inaugural appearance  on the beaches that summer, and  grousing about the inability to get a good ol American beefsteak because of the darn meat shortage, the high-spirited conversation turned to the elections.

Elections

The power and impact of the Miss Rheingold election is hard to comprehend. In 1948 2,510,706 votes were cast in NYC in the Truman/ Dewey Presidential election; over 3 million votes were cast to elect Miss Rheingold that same year.
Truman and Dewey combined spent about $400,000 on paid advertising in the NY area, they were outspent by Rheingold which put close to $4 million behind the election of Miss Rheingold.
Vintage 1948 Life Magazine covers (L) President harry Truman wins election (R) candidate Thomas Dewey

By late July the presidential campaigns had begun, at least as far as President Harry Truman was concerned. Governor Thomas Dewey behaving more like an incumbent than a member of a party out of office for 16 years wouldn’t  even begin campaigning until mid September. No matter. It was all a big yawn. Everyone agreed it sure looked like the 48 states were going to ditch Truman and take Dewey. If the 1948 presidential campaign seemed to have less fireworks than usual it was because Dewey seemed to have known all along that he would win. Besides which, the presidential elections were anticlimactic compared to the one election that really mattered to the men on Jackson Ave.  Inevitably the conversation turned to the more lively contest-  the upcoming Miss Rheingold.  In the next few weeks the finalists would be chosen and the race would begin. When it came to elections in NY nothing beat the hotly debated contest for Miss Rheingold.

Beer Mugs

At the height of the campaign there were 35,000 boxes displayed at the end of aisles, atop crates of Rheingold beer and on bar tops. The contest was the creation of Philip Liebmann a member of the family that had owned the Rheingold brewery in Bushwick since 1855

Like most bars in town, O’ Reileys was one of the thousands of taverns where ballots could be cast for the coveted title. Perched precariously on top of the Wurlitzer jukebox, were the big Miss Rheingold ballot boxes that Tom displayed every year, The smiling faces of the 6 hopefuls grinned optimistically at the appreciative customers in the dimly lit bar, the countenance of each contestant lit by the glow from the neon lit jukebox. Until the election closed in September, the booze hounds would have loud debates about the eyes, the hair, and the smiles of each contestant. But on one thing they all agreed. Toms daughter Angie was as pretty as any Miss Rheingold. The Miss Rheingold contest was more carefree than Miss America. With no talent segment to boost her appeal, Miss Rheingold had only to smile prettily and show her oomph in a lovely cashmere sweater set. And Angie sure had oomph! The consensus at O Reily’s was clear- this was the  year that Angie should compete.

Once in Love With Angie

Men-unless they had rocks in their heads- liked Angie!
Vintage image from Lustre Creme Shampoo advertisement

Born in Bushwick not far from where Rheingold was brewed, Angie O Riley long had her heart set on one day becoming a Miss Rheingold herself. With her Moms smoldering Sicilian eyes,  raven black hair, and warm olive skin she was as exotic as a hot-house orchid. Modeling jobs at the local department store gave her a stamp of approval which she hardly needed. A wildly popular song that year was “Once in Love with Amy” from the Broadway  show “Where’s Charley” sung by Ray Bolger. It didn’t take long before my grandfather and the other men on Jackson Ave. put their own spin on it. Off key  choruses of “Once in Love with Angie …always in love with Angie!” could be heard coming out of O’Rileys Pub till the wee hours. Men liked Angie. My grandfather, clearly besotted, would wax on about Angie: “She was in a class with South Pacific, the Notre Dame team and swank convertibles. She was tall and slim with deep brown eyes and when she smiled- that’s all brother! “ Yes, men-unless they had rocks in their heads- liked Angie! So in 1948, she decided to enter the contest.  Everyone in the  neighborhood  agreed,  “Tom’s daughter was a shoe-in….. just like Dewey!”

Toast of the Town

The winning Miss Rheingold would receive up to $50,000 in cash plus a travel and wardrobe expense account, The winning candidate receives a contract from Rheingold according to which she is to appear in Rheingold ads and to be available for public appearances and receives $50,000 in cash and wardrobe estimated to be worth another $25,000
Vintage Rheingold Beer ads 1951 featuring Elise Gammon Miss Rheingold 1951

Each year in the dog days of August, thousands of women- all registered models, gathered at the swanky Waldorf Astoria Hotel in NYC for the preliminary judging.of the Miss Rheingold contest.  As every citizen and barfly  knew, the field was narrowed to 6 candidates whose faces would adorn ballots throughout the NY area. Angie could hardly sleep the night before the big audition. Not only was it a major event covered in local newspapers but the finalists were interviewed on radio by Arthur Godfrey  himself. Besides the prestige, there were plenty of prizes too..Last years Miss Rheingold had averaged over $100 per week during her reign as a result of gifts, personal appearances talks and radio and TV spots. And Hollywood was sure to come calling. Carefully dressed in a sky blue dress with matching sky blue pumps, white purse and white gloves and hat, Angie had the look of fashion and of news…from the bag she carried to the angle of her hat, the rightness of her gloves and shoes. “Give em’ hell Angie” the boys in the bar shouted out to her as she left to take the subway into Manhattan. After a  final dusting on her nose with angel face powder, Angie smiled. Angie would oblige.

The Waldorf Astoria

The young women would appear at the Waldorf Astoria ballroom before a panel of celebrity judges that over the years included Tony Randall, Joan Fontaine, Casey Stengal, Rosalind Russell and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The celebrity judges, columnists and ad men chose the 6 initial finalists and the lucky 6 would compete in a 6 week campaign. Many Miss Rheingolds contestants went on to be stars by themselves. Tippi Hedrren was a runner-up one year as was Mary Ann Mobley, while Hope Lange was a finalist.
Vintage Rheingold Beer ads 1951 featuring Elise Gammon Miss Rheingold 1951

Confident, she strided into the razzle dazzle of the Waldorf where a sea of 3,000 other pretty girls between the ages of 18 and 29 milled around. As the loot and the publicity grew, the battle to be Miss Rheingold had become more intense. Like a convention hall, the hotel ballroom resembled a circus tent, hot, sweaty and crowded. At times everyone seemed to be moving at once, contenders trying to make a deal, run down a rumor, hunting for a Coke or an aspirin tablet. Over this frantic milling there were newsmen darting around, the newsreel lights beat down like the noonday sun and the photographers bulbs made quick flashes of lightning. Angie smiled for the cameras. With her incandescent smile, artfully framed by full  lips colored with Max Factor Hollywood Red she was seductive. Slithering through the hall, her skirt swinging in rhythm with her glittering St Agnes of Rome patron Saint medal bouncing seductively on her virginal Annette Funicello like bosom she was sizzling. Buoyant with the winning confidence of a Tom Dewey, she expected to be the “femme fatale”as usual,

Blondes, Beauty and Beer

“How does it feel to be the most popular girl in a town that’s loaded with talent?” asks this ad for Rheingold Beer featuring lovely blonde Elise Gammon newly Elected Miss Rheingold 1951

But in a sea of saucy blue-eyed blondes this swarthy Italian stunner stood out like a patch of crabgrass in a manicured suburban lawn. Girls with virtuous winks, dazzling Doris day smiles outlined in Flame Glo heavenly pink lipstick that were a perfect match for their  perfectly pale complexion, girls who were the envy of every girl in high school, the chaste blue-eyed blonde angelic halo-hair perfect models Judged on wholesomeness and personality, Miss Rheingold was the epitome of the girl next door. The background of the beauties were always 100% All American…. that is as long as you were White, Anglo saxon. In 1948, Angie O Riley didn’t stand a chance. Like Dewey, her defeat should not have been unexpected.

Keep America Beautiful

The great American melting pot that was New York had not spoiled over into the antiseptically clean and white Miss Rheingold ads that regularly featured fair blue eyed blondes.
Vintage Rheingold Beer ads 1951 featuring Elise Gammon Miss Rheingold 1951

In the great cultural cauldron of mid-century America there was only one ingredient to being an American beauty- fair and preferably blue-eyed blonde Despite our great democracy the pop culture landscape of mid-century America was populated by one type of American beauty. The great American melting pot that was New York  had not spoiled over into the antiseptically clean and white Miss Rheingold ads. In a consumer culture filled with an abundance of choices, the choices were pretty black and white

For over 20 years the ads were nearly identical-young, blonde and blue eyed.
By 1965 The NY Times asked; “How does a white, blonde haired blue eyed Miss Rheingold sell Rheingold beer to Negroes? Or Puerto Ricans? Or to Italians, Greeks, Chinese or to the Irish for that matter?” Times would be changing
Vintage beer Ad Schlitz 1943

Back home on Jackson Ave while Dick Haymes crooned “Little White Lies” on the Wurlitzer,, the vanquished would be beauty queen drowned her sorrows in a glass of beer. Just for the night and just this once, there would be no Rheingold- Tom bitterly poured Angie  a glass of Schlitz the beer that made Milwaukee famous.

Post script

After the audition, Angie commiserated with another pretty girl who sadly didn’t make it to the finals either. Despite the fact that this lovely 19-year-old girl from Philadelphia whose name was   Grace Kelley and was every bit as pretty as the sea of blue-eyed blondes,  she was unceremoniously sent home from that years  contest for being “too thin”. I never knew what happened to Angie O’ Riley but I hear Grace Kelly filled out quite nicely and luckily found work. © Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2013. 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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All American Beauty A Blueprint For the Middle Class

Vintage ad Elizabeth Arden Velva Leg Film

Long before self tanners, and micro mist airbrush tanning sprays flooded the market, a retro a gal need only apply a good film of bronzer to give herself show girl legs.

Learn how tan-in-a-bottle might have helped a pale-face gal face the summer.

In the summer of 1944, Doris had a big date with a dreamy Staff Sergeant and she was desperate.

Gentlemen may prefer blondes, but when it comes to legs, gentlemen prefer bronze.

Of all times to get a run in her last pair of precious pre-war nylons.  Stockings have always been important to any girl who knows the first thing about grooming. Always so cautious when Luxing her dainties, one little moment of carelessness and she had snagged her stockings.

Stockings were precious during WWII when nylon and rayon went to war. (L) 1945 Vintage ad Ivory Snow advising care of your precious stockings (R) Vintage ad Shell 1943 the rayon for one parachute they explain would make 444 stockings

Doris knew a  good pair of stockings would add some colorful life to her winter-white legs that were as pale as a ghost but because of the war there was not a pair of nylon stockings to be found.

A gal couldn’t very well go out to the a home-front dance without hose.

In an era when Betty Grable’s shapely gams were the gold standard, any assistance in the leg department was welcomed.

Poor Doris

If only she had only been hep to what thousands of war wise women had  already discovered- a miracle in a bottle.

No, not bottled stockings but the next best thing- Elizabeth Arden’s Velva Leg Film, leg makeup to  give the appearance of stockings

Shake a leg sister, and head to your local department store.

 Goof Proof Fool Proof

“So easy to apply and quick to dry Elizabeth Arden’s leg make up stays on the legs and off the clothes,” the ads promised. “Water resistant clings until washed away, with a blemish-concealing sheer textured beauty that trims the ankle- slims the leg.”

And Velva Film was perfect for a day at the beach.

“Be sure to wear Velva Film with bathing suits or shorts, it makes your legs look sun burnished…far more lovely.” The fact that your arms were pale didn’t seem to matter.

A Leg Up on the Sun

Released in 1941, the product created a huge market

Department stores opened leg make up bars and ran promotions where you could have your legs painted to see the effect or get advise as to how to apply for the best effect.

Helena Rubenstein was an early advocate of the leg bar. In 1942 she opened a Bare-Leg Bar in her NYC 5th Ave. Salon. The bar featured leg make up creams and cosmetics for the leg. On opening day different types of cosmetic stockings were demonstrated stick form out of a bottle and sprayed on the legs

Other companies joined the band wagon for cosmetic stockings in the 1940’s:  Gentlemen Prefer Bronze ( Charbert) Leg Make Up (Charles of the Ritz) Jiff-On ( Beauty Counselor) Leg Show (Dorothy Gray).

Shake a leg sister, and head to your local department store.

Copyright (©) 2014 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Like most women growing up in the 1950s and 1960s I was fed a generous serving of sugar-coated media stereotypes of happy homemakers who were as frozen and neatly packaged as the processed foods they served their cold war families.

The Feminine Mistake 1960

In the years before I went to Kindergarten, I shadowed my mother Betty  everywhere she went.

Within her suburban sphere of influence I was a contented little satellite, spinning in her orbit.

Whether shopping or schlepping, picking up or dropping off, I would follow in her footsteps…literally. The task I enjoyed tagging along with the most was her weekly appointment at the Glam-A-Rama Beauty Parlor.

Glam-A- Rama Beauty Parlor

The beauty parlor was a unique universe unlike any place else, where unfamiliar, strange-looking equipment was being used by familiar neighborhood women looking strange.

All dressed alike, their ordinary clothes replaced by identical leopard print smocks, it was a universe with its own uniform.

A universe where gossip was as hot and swift as the air blowing through the missile shaped hairdryers, a world where I was privy to carefully guarded grown up secrets.

Strange intimacies grew between women who organized carpools and now found themselves sitting, captive under pink hair dryers.

These conversations were unlike the hurried confidences exchanged as Friday’s schedule was switched with Tuesdays, pick-ups and deliveries reversed, or when a tired mother deposits the last child and stayed for a quick cup of instant coffee.

It was over the roar of the dryers in the afternoons while casseroles simmered in automatic ovens back home that these women gave full voice to secret whispering fears. Somehow dread words could be spoken and reassurances offered.

In the shadow of the hairdryers, as nails were polished, calluses scraped and hair teased, dread words could be safely spoken.

Post War Periodicals

(R) Ladies Home Journal 5/52 illustration Al Parker

Sinking into a padded turquoise swivel styling chair, I sat next to Mom, carefully watching as Miss Blanche the hairdresser, combed and teased, bombarding Mom with hairspray.

This was truly a space age hair-do with its propulsion accomplished by strenuous backcombing.

Mom would sit in the hydraulic  chair reading 2 month old, dog-eared copies of McCalls and Good Housekeeping, while  Miss Blanche maintaining a steady flow of mindless chatter as she worked.

Magazine Madness

Tucked within those pages, the periodicals promised the modern mid-century housewife would find exactly the right information and products that would give her the knowledge to excel in her role as wife and mother.

Glancing at her favorite magazines at the Glama-Rama only seemed to confirm what Mom knew in her heart to be true- that love, marriage, and children is The career for women.

“Yes,” she would read, nodding in agreement “for today’s homemaker her home is her castle.”

“Snug within it she basks in the warmth of a good mans love…glories in the laughter of healthy children…glows with pride in every new acquisition that adds color or comfort pleasure or leisure to her family’s life.”

“And, she’s always there! She’s an up to date modern American homemaker.”

Breathing in deeply of the beauty parlor air heavy with the cloying sweetness of perfume diluted by the acrid smell of singed hair, Mom sighed contently.

Home Work

Of course, the gals all agreed, some poor mothers had to work to provide for their families.

The big talk that day that set tongues wagging concerned Shirley Birnbaum who was pregnant and planned to go back to work as a teacher after she had a baby!

“But the ones I’d like to talk about,” our neighbor Estelle Wolfson said between puffs of her Parliament  pointing to an article in one magazine, “are those who feel that household and community activities are for “squares.”

The curler clad ladies nodded in unison.

Can This Marriage Be Saved

By the fall of 1960 there had began to appear some quiet rumblings among some unhappy housewives across the country.

Now and again Mom would read an article, usually in the Can This Marriage be Saved column, about those few unfortunate women who felt stifled and lonely in their marriage.

“Feminists” or anyone who couldn’t find fulfillment in the Lady Clairol colorful cold war world of carpools, cookouts, cream of mushroom soup casseroles, and catering to contented children and happy-go-lucky husbands, were disturbed.

Flipping through one magazine, she noticed that September’s Redbook offered a $500 prize for the best essay on “Why Young Mothers Feel Trapped.”

It triggered an unexpectedly large response 24,000 entries.

Another magazine, Good Housekeeping   also tapped into this vein of unhappiness with a September article of its own. “I Say: Women Are People Too.”

The article caught Moms eye.

It noted “a strange stirring, a dissatisfied groping, a yearning” by American women, a sense that there must be more to life than raising children and maintaining a clean comfortable home.

The magazine urged its readers to overcome their malaise by taking charge of their lives. “She can’t live through her husband and children.” It said of the typical housewife. “They are separate selves. She has to find her own fulfillment first.”

The author of the Good Housekeeping article was by another Betty, Betty Friedan, a 39-year-old freelance writer from NY suburbs

Friedan was asked to assemble a booklet for her Smith college class 15^th reunion in 1957. She sent out questionnaires expecting to be inundated with cheerful stories about successful careers and young families. Many classmates responded with tales of depression and frustration. It was Friedan’s first clue than many thousands of women shared her own dissatisfaction.

The Smith questionnaire inspired her to undertake a detailed examination of what she called “the problem that has no name” interviewing hundreds of women in NY Chicago and Boston.

The Good Housekeeping piece sprang from this research. She had started a book manuscript by Oct 1960.

The book entitled The Feminine Mystique wouldn’t be published until 1963.

 Duz She or Duzn’t  She

Mom dismissed these grumblings and put down the magazine.

She never felt constrained.

She saw her life as full of choices after all she as free to choose- automobiles, clothes appliances and supermarkets.

Freedom was all around her.

Suddenly she was carefree with her automatic dishwasher, there was freedom from brushing between meals with Gleem toothpaste, you could relax if its Arnel with new ease of care, sofas covered with Velon plastic, meant she was no longer a slave to delicate upholstery, even her waist whittling calorie curve cuttin’ Playtex girdle promised her new freedom.

And best of all there was freedom to choose from a dazzling assortment at the supermarkets.

Thinking the Unthinkable

Patting her lush brown bouffant coif floating like a gentle cloud above her head, Mom left the beauty parlor happy. With a new recipe for cheese Fondue clutched in her hands and a sure-fire solution for removing ring around the collar, Mom was content. For now my mother Betty would follow in the footprints of another Betty, Betty Crocker, satisfied in her role as housewife and mother. 

The problem that had no name was so unfathomable no one even thought they had a problem. It was buried as deeply as our missiles underground, and would cause the same explosion when they were released.

Copyright (©) 2015 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Limiting and less than flattering portrayal of older women once populated the pop culture landscape. Cougars circa 1974. Playboys “horny granny” cartoon by Robert Brown was a parody of the sexy youthful Playboy bunny

Growing up, being an “older” woman was not a pretty picture – literally.

Predictably, post-menopausal women were pictured pleasingly plump their sagging jowls and sagging breasts as slumping as their sedentary, asexual lives that were defined by grandchildren, gossip and reminiscing about the good old days.

Little Golden Books often showed our golden years as grumpy old men and lumpy old women. Vintage Little Golden Book Illustrations by Eloise Wilkin

Remembrance of Romances Past. Vintage illustration from Pacific Textiles Advertisement 1947

Articles on aging didn’t depict older people still active in their communities; all dealt with the problems of aging, picturing “doddering old folks” reminiscing about the good old days. Most over 65 were not physically active or sexually active.

Swathed in a quilted hand crocheted shawl her chilly body temperature was matched only by her chilly non-existent libido.

And if “the old biddie” had a libido, it was ridiculed.

The dried up, toothless, ‘horny granny” created by Robert “Buck” Brown was a permanent fixture in Playboy Magazine in the 1970’s.

Take My Old Lady…Please

Next to ditzy female drivers and meddling battle-axe mothers in law, the older women was a favorite target of cartoonists and comics.

“Is this where old bags get renovated?” Vintage cartoon by McKay Esquire Magazine 1956

“Yes, indeed, dear- it is a surprise!” Vintage cartoon Esquire Magazine 1956

 The  Age Old Problem

For all our current advances, one fact stubbornly remains: avoid any visible sign of aging or you become invisible.

Competition. The Evil Queen was no match for the dewy young skin of Snow White. (L) Vintage illustration “Snow White A Golden Book” (R) Ivory Snow Ad 1968

Reinforced by Madison Avenue’s potpourri of promises to stave off signs of aging and restore youth, the Grimm brothers story of Snow White was quite instructive to young girls when it came to aging and faded youth

“Mirror Mirror on the wall who’s the fairest of them all?” The Queen famously asks her magic mirror. The queen has grown accustomed to a reassuring answer. “You,” the mirror always replied. “You are the fairest of them all,” until that terrible day when the mirror spoke another truth; Snow White is fairer than you.

Vanished

No amount of Elizabeth’s Arden Vanishing Cream could change the ugly fact: Women of a certain age get used to fading compliments, as slowly the attention of men fade away.

No wonder women are haunted by the horror of growing old.

Washed Up

What are women to presume?

Obviously that beauty lasts only slightly longer than puberty and it is our business and obligation to keep those visible signs of aging at bay. Or else you’re all washed up.

Especially if you want to keep a man.

Hair Today, gone tomorrow (L) Vintage ad Breck Shampoo 1955 (R) Loving Care by Clairol ad 1962 Wash Away Gray

In the 1960’s a middle-aged woman whose marriage was in trouble could reignite her love life by simply washing away her gray hair.

“Hate That  Gray?  Wash it away! “

“How do husbands react when wives suddenly look years younger,” asks a 1962 ad from Loving Care by Clairol.

 Seems most men don’t know anything about the art involved, but every man knows what he likes. And that is a wife who stays young and attractive. Not only is it a pleasure to look at but it reflects nicely on him too.

Loving care looks so fresh and natural makes your husband feel younger just to look at you!

Stay Young and Beautiful

The current portrayal of busy and botoxed boomers – diligently popping Boniva and those little blue pills – may be redefining aging, yet remnants of out-dated images linger like fossilized remains.

Age based stereotypes are often internalized in childhood long before the information is relevant; calcified for decades these disparaging stereotypes are often difficult to dissolve.

These dated images may have reached their expiration date, the prejudices against getting, old has not.

Expiration Date

But how old is old?

For most of my life the media seemed incapable of portraying an attractive woman over 30.

When it comes to attractiveness it seems like there is always an expiration date. Best used by…

Middle age was once indicator of the end of your beauty shelf life …. A warning your desirability was about to expire.

Middle Age Madness

Vintage ad Palmolive Soap 1940

Palmolive Soap ran an ad campaign in the late 1930s to warn of the scourge of ladies everywhere- middle-aged skin. Once afflicted, dates were broken along with hearts all because a careless lady allowed herself to develop middle-aged skin.

Vintage ad Palmolive Soap 1938

Even a young women could be mistaken for middle age long before her time, if precautions weren’t taken.

How Young is Old?

Young, at 51? Impossible you say?

Vintage Ad 1951 Jergens All Purpose Cream with Gloria Swanson

By 1951 fifty was apparently the old 60 when Jergens  Cream  marveled that a 51-year-old woman could still be considered attractive. Even if that woman was aging movie star Gloria Swanson.  No Norma Desmond she, Miss Swanson was no fading beauty, thanks to her daily ritual of cleansing with Jergens All Purpose Cream.

The ad asked the middle-aged reader to  be truthful: could they possibly look as young when they were over the hill.

Of course today if 40 is the new 30, and 60 is the new 50, middle age itself gets murkier.

Doesn’t she know she can look younger? Cosmetic companies eye your sagging face with greed.

The expiration date may be pushed back, but in our youth obsessed culture it is inevitable.

As long as there is an obsession with the “problem” of age and how best to avoid it through diet, exercise, chemical formulas, moisturizing creams and good old-fashioned denial, old stereotypes  can exist.

Like processed food, the more chemicals additives and fillers added to a woman, the longer the shelf life of her attractiveness.

In a culture that worships of the altar of all natural no additives the same can’t be said of our aging women.

If positive portrayals of aging promote the idea that defying aging is the only way to age successfully, negative stereotypes can remain strong

Copyright (©) 2015 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Having just turned 60 I have now entered DEFCON 2 in the war against aging.

That is, if we are to believe the media who have been waging  their own war against women and aging for years.

After decades of daily reconnaissance scrutinizing my face and body for any and all flaws, I am now on high alert as a full on assault on wrinkles, creases, puckers, furrows, and lines escalates.

My defense budget has skyrocketed, as I boost my already bloated arsenal of creams, lotions, serums, and potions.

I have been waging war against any visible signs of aging for over 30 years, and like the war on poverty and the war on drugs it is ultimately a losing battle.

Thinking the Unthinkable

It’s all out war on visible signs of aging

The threat of wrinkles, creases, folds, and furrows seems to illicit the same level of panic and fear as nuclear war once did. And like a nuclear attack, according to the conventional wisdom,  if you prepared… you could survive.

Having caught a cold war chill as a child in the 60’s I learned to live with the constant threat of Nuclear war; the fear of an inevitable, imminent attack would chase me through my childhood.

Living in a state of constant preparedness, building a protective bunker to shield you from harm was the only way to survive a nuclear attack we were warned, and these lessons would serve me well in my war against aging.

I learned early on that all around me there were aggressors ready to attack, conspiring to wreak havoc on your skin and you needed to prepare for this unrelenting battle.

Basic Training DEFCON5

Vintage ads 1970

Basic training for this long fight against any facial flaws began early for most girls. Life long survival skills like vigilant scouting for imperfections were honed early in our teens.

The objective: winning the admiration and approval of others. Honestly.

Because honesty is so important. Bonnie Bell says the biggest reason for a girl to clear up her skin is boys. And Bonne Bells ten o six Lotion is best way to give you clean clear honest skin. Vintage Ad 1970

Boot Camp- Teenagers Attention!

From the time of puberty, a national policy of deterrence against small skin flaws began. Teenage girls immediately enlisted in the Clear Complexion Corps. Occasional skirmishes were easily controlled with conventional weapons like Noxema and Bonnie Bell .

Teenagers Attention! Neutrogena declared war on complexion troubles, even offering a wonderful battle ribbon – free! Vintage ad 1970

Anti acne activists were deployed ; Battling blemishes could easily be obliterated with a dash of Clearasil.

Eternal Youth

Like a good fairy Godmother, estrogen enriched hormone creams from the 1960’s were the answer for younger looking skin for the mature woman over 35.

As a teen in the early 1970s, aging seemed far off in the future.

It was a subject relegated to the back pages of the women’s magazines where ads for hormone creams that promised to make m’ menopausal lady look younger, years younger, shared space with stop-gap measures like Hollywood Wings, those adhesive strips that aging movie stars swore by to keep their skin taut.

Also called “smoothies”( though no greek yogurt is involved) they were made of flesh textured fabric treated to adhere to the skin. Moisten and press over furrows. At 50 wings for $2, it was a bargain.

The biggest worry after dry skin were “the heartbreak of psoriasis,” and the appearance of those horrid brown age spots that “told the world you’re getting old.” (Fade them away with Esoterica)

For the time being, it was limited war fare.

Vintage ad Noxema “Tomorrow is the best reason to wash with Noxema today!”

Deploying the usual ammunition of drug store products I diligently followed directives to stay attractive. Neutrogena soap and a splash of Jean Nate were all it took to keep me Cover Girl Fresh. Love Cosmetics “created for every young woman between 20 and thirty were sexy dramatic but free as a bra-less body and a new washed face.”

As ordered, I volumized my hair while I fattened my lashes but always made sure to never, ever be anything but slender.

Combat Ready

Even Wonder Woman Lynda Carter wasn’t safe from wrinkles. Vintage ad Maybelline Moisture Whip 1980

By the end of the decade, conventional weapons like Lubiderm were no longer sufficient to ward off the inevitable. The obliteration of oily skin was a cakewalk compared to defeating marionette lines.

Wrinkles, we quickly learned were sneaky plotters. One day disguised as innocent laugh lines, they would morph overnight into deep creases ominously called nasolabial folds.

It was nothing to laugh at.

If measures weren’t taken long before the first warning – the appearance of your AARP membership card – it was already too late. Preparedness was crucial.

You Can Survive- DEFCON4

Because our culture is unforgiving about every single body change that a woman goes through over the course of her life from puberty to menopause it has been one unrelenting battle.

By the time Ronald Reagan took office urgency was felt across the nation.

As crows feet crept across the face of baby boomer women from coast to coast, warlike rattles could be heard as the youthquake generation woke up to the fact that they ought to be doing something to protect themselves.

All the Fear That’s Fit to Print

The number of magazine articles and ads warning of the ravages of aging accelerated. An onslaught of youth ensuring products appeared promising to stave off the enemy.

To believe the media nothing it seemed, could match the fear of visible signs of aging.

Now the appearance of wrinkles was something to be feared akin to a nuclear attack. A national doctrine of media strategy MAD ( Media Assured Deceit) was instituted.

A battle cry went out and it was call to arms.

We must prepare for all eventualities…of aging.

Aging – Just Say No

The never ending fight against furrows or any facial flaws

It was during the Reagan years that my defense policy was firmly formed: When it came to wrinkles it was “just say No!”

As the cold war took on a new chill under Ronald Reagan and our defense system became more high-tech so my own defenses accelerated becoming more high-tech too.

A New Urgency

By 1983 it was all out war.

My own battle began in earnest during the Reagan years when along with the presidents Star Wars Defense System, my very own Strategic Defense Initiative was put into motion.

As I turned my Sony Trinitron on one March evening a few days before my 28th birthday, I found my regularly scheduled programs preempted. Instead of my weekly dose of Dynasty I got “The Facts of Life”- served up straight from our President.

In a televised speech from the oval office, a somber Reagan warned of the increasing threat of a Soviet Nuclear attack urging the development of new technology to intercept enemy missiles, a program dubbed “Star Wars” by the media.

It was time for a major modernization of our defense system.

When 30 Really Was Something

R) Vintage Harpers Bazaar July 1983 devoted to being beautiful at 30.

With the tension of turning 30 looming in the very near future, I decided it was time to develop my own Strategic Defense Initiative response to aging.

If left unchecked, frowns and creases would soon be goose-stepping across the planes of my face unstoppable, ravishing my face as quickly as the Soviets ravaged Eastern Europe.

Mere emollients were not sufficient for these clever perpetrators. Now an array of forces was necessary to deter the inevitable attack. It would be a new world of defense weapons.

The Victory of Science over Time

Advanced, ever changing American engineering, technology and laboratory science were put to use in the all out war against aging .

The scientific, advanced anti-aging delivery systems developed by the cosmetic companies deploying “micro-carriers” of collagen, liposomes and patented peptides were as sophisticated and complicated as the anti ballistic missile system Reagan wanted put in place.

And the claims were just as far-fetched as some of the “Star War” notions.

Operating with the precision of a guided missiles these bio-genetic, micro cellular moisturizing systems targeted layers of skin unheard of 5 years ago. Our skin was put behind “protective barriers” and invisible shields” in order to deflect “external aggressors.”

Anti-aging agents who worked under cover in the stealth of night as though trained by the CIA plotted covert operations, operating at a cellular level to wipe out and eradicate any trace of aging.

As time went on my build up of anti aging products became as inflated as our cold war arsenal and just as ineffective and costly.

Back to the Future

Because today’s technology would bring you to your future better self how old you really were was on a “need to know” basis. Vintage illustration 1955

With each passing year each new anti aging system came into question. Only the latest technology would bring you to your future better self.

Because protection took effort, money and time, I worried.

Were my defense system woefully out of date, was my defense budget adequate ? No wonder worry lines began to appear.

Beat the Clock-DEFCON3

As the doomsday clock ticks…Before you’re a moment older …after extensive clinical tests… It was back to the future of a youthful, dewy, more glowing complexion – the holy grail of beauty… younger looking skin.

By age 55 the Doomsday Clock was ticking.

Forget the fact that the actual doomsday clock was now 2 minutes closer to midnight, thanks to climate change and unchecked nuclear proliferation.

More urgently, the specter of crepey skin, droopy lips, puffy eyes all posed an immediate threat to national security.

Facial lines heretofore unheard –  Atrophic Crinkling Rhytids, Permanent Elastic creases, oral commisures and gravitational folds, menaced.

Watching the Clock

Promising to be clock stoppers, there was an expanding arsenal of skin renovation systems, including fillers that like Spackle promised to freshen up This Old House. Now if you were derelict in you  moisturizer duties there were other methods to combat aging.

Was biological warfare the next step?

Before I reach for the botox… here’s the wrinkle in our youth obsessed culture: All adult women whether they like it or not are aging women.

Battle fatigued, I soldier on.

Copyright (©) 2015 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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An Age Old Problem: Women and Aging

Exposed of lying about her ethnicity,  Rachel Dolezan has gone through efforts to change her natural physical appearance – her skin darker, hair kinkier than the pale blond of her teenage years.

Oops! Looks like Rachel Dolezal, the White woman who has been passing as a Black woman for years got caught with her pants down.

Sparking furor and causing a media frenzy, the recently resigned  president of the Spokane NAACP chapter came under intense scrutiny after her biological parents said their Caucasian born daughter has falsely portrayed herself as Black.

Not discounting her strong advocacy for the Black community, the essential element of “passing” involves deception. That’s the problem.

The unfolding story has created strong responses opening up yet another dialogue and debate about race and the very definition of racial identity.

Despite Dolezals good intentions, some are offended by her adopting Black culture without carrying the burden, while others are amused by her attempts to “pass” as a Black Woman.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

The practice of “passing” is nothing new.

But “passing” used to be one way only.

Visitors at the Whitney Museum’s 1993 Biennial Exhibition received printed metal admission buttons reading “I Can’t Imagine Ever Wanting To Be White” designed by artist Daniel J Martinez

What seems to fascinate is the idea that a White woman would choose to pass as Black, freely abandoning the privileges and entitlement that come with being White.

The idea of passing — identifying with and presenting oneself as one race while denying ancestry of another was not uncommon during the pre Civil Rights era.

For generations those from multiracial backgrounds with light skin often “passed” as White to avoid racism.

Like others who have historically “passed” Rachel Dolezal’s identity is strategically constructed and harkens back to the behavior of those who “passed “ during the restrictive Jim Crow days.

Your Complexion is to Blame

For generations black women would use bleaching cream to appear more attractive conforming to a white ideal of beauty, something a young, blond fair,Rachel Dolezal wouldn’t need.. (L) Vintage ad for Nadinola Bleaching Cream (R) A young Rachel Dolezal

For decades African-Americans changed their physical appearances by skin lightening creams and hair straightening to appear more White and/or to conform to a White culture’s idea of beauty and attractiveness.

With a little help from skin bleaching creams those with sufficiently light skin tones- but who were legally categorized as racially Black by their invisible “one drop of Black Blood”- could pass for White, choosing to live as a White man rather than deal with the discrimination of being Black in America.

Vintage ad Nadinola Bleaching Cream

For those with darker complexions who couldn’t “pass,” they could adopt White standards of beauty, lightening their dull dark complexion which  clearly was the source of their unhappiness.

Vintage Ad for Nadinola Bleaching Cream

“Don’t let a dull dark complexion deprive you of your popularity. Perhaps your complexion is to blame.”

Vintage ad ARTRA Skin Tone Cream

Many Blacks argue that imitating European Standards of beauty and grooming was necessary for Blacks to be accepted by White culture especially White employers.

Interestingly enough, the early users of skin creams were European immigrants. Since the appearance of whiteness was the key to accessing exclusive cultural and economic privileges whiteness promises, skin whitening creams helped dark-skinned Eastern and Southern European immigrant women to blend into and assimilate into a WASP ideal of whiteness

Strate Up

Over the years African-Americans have thrown away the European standards of beauty when during the late 1960s the Afro debuted and later during the 1980s and 1990s West African hairstyles began to resurface, women and men chose dreadlocks, corkscews, and fades. Pictures of Rachel Dolezal have appeared of her featuring large kinky Afros or braids and locs pinned into intricate updos. L) Vintage ad Hair Strate Permanent hair relaxer 1960 (R) Rachel Dolezal refers to her dark curls as “natural” though she was born with blonde straight hair

For generations hairstyles have reflected the history of American race relations and the way Blacks wore their hair reflected the dominant white culture, a culture that declared. “If I’ve Only One Life to Live, Let, Me Live it as a Blonde!”

(©) 20015 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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A Primer on Police and White Privilege

BlackFace Follies

Nativism is at the core of Trumps campaign and is one of the keys to his appeal, proving Trump really is a “Know Nothing” a direct descendant from the 19th century political party who trafficked on fears that morally and racially inferior Germans and Irish Catholic immigrants were threatening the livelihoods and liberties of native-born Protestants.

When it comes to America’s melting pot, Donald Trump is following an old-fashioned, tried and true recipe – heavy on the xenophobia with just a dash of racism.

By relying on the age-old tradition of stoking the public’s fear of a shifting American demographics, the finger licking good recipe is guaranteed to please even the most persnickety white nationalists who fear a brown America and desperately cling to a dated notion of what a real American looks like.

Who’s the Fairest of Them All?

Collage by Sally Edelstein “Blonde American Style ” detail. Appropriated vintage images

In the great cultural cauldron of 20th century America there was one basic ingredient to being an American Beauty- Caucasian.

It’s easy to point the finger at Trump for igniting this xenophobia that seems to run counter with our notion of embracing immigrants. Well  that old-fashioned recipe for prejudice was at full boil just last year, with the racist reaction to the choice of an Indian American for Miss America.

When Nina Davuluri won the title of Miss America 2014 last year she set off a flurry of controversy and outrage  as the first Indian American Miss America.

It Ain’t Fair

Racist comments crying unfair, littered the internet, setting twitter abuzz with backlash: “With all due respect, this is America!” spouted one twitter user.

“This is Miss America…Not Miss Foreign Country!” tweeted another, concerned that the winner was clearly not “fair” enough!”

The remarks would have been right at home at earlier Miss America pageants when non-white women were barred from competing (no African-American woman participated until 1970.) A restriction actually codified in the pageant rules stated “that contestants must be of good health and of the white race.”

The “other” in America  has always been questioned…just the nationalities change.

A New American Beauty

Vintage Illustration from Delineator magazine Feb. 1920
Here’s The American Girl
In her component parts, so to speak, our girls are composed of “sugar and spice and everything nice,” done up in racial packages and then exquisitely blended in various combinations by our American life.
In the upper left hand corner, for example, is the daughter of Italy as she comes over here to get into the picture. On her right is the Dutch girl, who began coming over nearly 3 centuries ago; then in order, the French girl, the Irish girl, the Scotch girl, the English girl, the Spanish, the Scandinavian and the Jewish.

In 1920 the year before the Miss America Pageant officially began, the great American melting pot had not spilled over into the antiseptically clean and white popular culture.

A “progressive” article appeared in the February 1920 issue of The  Delineator a popular woman’s magazine, declaring the “Birth of  A New American Beauty,”who was now someone other than…gasp…white Anglo Saxon, and could contain elements of the Irish lass or even a spicy Spanish senorita!

A New Type of Beauty: American

Written by Downing Jacobs, the lengthy article begins with the introduction of a Mrs. A. Lion Hunter, clearly one of the many Americans who felt  the world was changing too quickly and sighed in relief when handsome dreamy Senator Warren Harding of Ohio was elected President and  promised a return to normalcy.

Our proper lady is meeting with Mr Mann, a world-famous illustrator, presumably the one who illustrated the beauties in the illustration allowing the reader to eavesdrop in on their conversation.

“Mrs. A. Lion Hunter, who had been introduced to the famous illustrator, took aim for a pot shot and pulled the trigger,” the article begins.

“Oh Mr. Mann,”said she, “I am so glad to meet you! I simply adore your stunning American girls. They are so true to life- so typical! You must have a perfectly wonderful model!”

“Oh no,” replied the Famous Illustrator unenthusiastically; “nothing like that. Still Miss O’ Brien is a quiet little worker, and she holds the pose.”

“O’Brien! But that doesn’t sound a bit American!”

“No, she’s not. Her mother was English, or maybe Scotch.  Her father is an Irishman. She was born in Belfast.”

A gasp can be heard audibly as our matron takes in this shocking information.

“Belfast! And do you always use an Irish model when you do an American girl?”

“Oh no, not always,” The Famous Illustrators eyes twinkled. “I sometimes use Miss Schumacher. Her people came from Alsace, but I think she is partly Scandinavian. She looks as if she had stepped right out of Holland.”

Mrs. Hunter, feeling faint steels herself for what is to follow.

Vintage Illustration from Delineator magazine Feb. 1920
(L-R) The Spanish girl, the Scandinavian and the Jewish girl

“The fact is Mrs. Hunter,” our artist somberly explains, “when an American artist has to do a foreign type, no matter what it may be, Scandinavian, Italian, Czecho-Slovak, Armenian or what not, he can if he wants to, find a model of that nationality waiting at his door, but if he has to do an American girl – well he hasn’t time to page the American girl. He wades right in.”

So it seems, the American artist wades right into that melting pot and gives it a good stir.

“Exactly,” broke in professor High Brow, who had been listening to the conversation  with an amused expression. “It merely goes to show that there is no such thing as an American type.”

“The Famous Illustrator turned towards the professor with a puzzled look.”

“No such thing as an American type?”

“Why no- except the American Indian. The rest of us, barring the Negroes, are pretty much all Europeans, and of comparatively recent importation too. One out of seven Americans was born in a foreign country; another one out of every seven is the offspring of foreign-born parents.”

“Oh yes Professor Brow,” interrupted Mrs. Hunter, with an encouraging glance toward the famous illustrator. “we all admit that we Americans are  dreadfully mixed but isn’t that true of the Spanish too? Yet no one would deny there is a Spanish type.”

Vintage Illustration from Delineator magazine Feb. 1920
(L-R) The daughter of Italy, the Dutch girl, and the French girl

The article  finally gets down to the question at hand describing in detail the ideal American girl who has not varied for  the past 90 years, offering a recipe for a well turned American girl.

“And so we come back to our own American girl. We know she is of European ancestry, and yet, typically she is quite different from all her European cousins.”

“Let us not be misunderstood. When we speak of the American girl we are not speaking of our foreign-born and Americans of foreign parentage.”

“Even in America there are thousands and thousands of representatives of those purely foreign types that we have been discussing. But alongside of these, there is the American girl of purely American parentage or ancestry.”

Vintage Illustration from Delineator magazine Feb. 1920
(L-R) The Irish girl, Scotch girl and the English rose

“Isolated from the foreign types around her, she stands out as distinctly fair rather than dark, and white of skin, though not with the dazzling whiteness of the Scandinavian or the English girl.”

“Her eyes indeed are of a varying hue from blue to brown, but characteristically of a color subdues by gray- rarely of the light blue of the Scandinavian or the steely blue of the Irish girl nor the deep brown or black of the Southern Europeans. Her hair, a hue of brown, with here also minor variations due to varying ancestry, shading from a light brown to dark drown and generally straight or waving.”

“A medium type, a composite type if you will, but still a type – a sort of modified Teutonic, owing much to a basic English stock, re-blended to some extent with Scandinavian or other Teutonic blood, and tempered by a touch of darker, Celtic or Alpine elements, coming perhaps by way of Ireland or the south of Germany.”

Given that not a mention has been made concerning Asian Americans, the article curiously closes with a quote from a gentleman of the Orient.

“Perhaps we rather pin our faith to the words of Wu Ting Fang: “

“When I speak of the American woman, I can not say that there really is a prevailing type. It is a mixture of all types. The American type is a combination of all that is best in the types of the world.”

Yes, as long as that world is European.

Xenophobia, like Miss America is as American as apple pie. Only the nationalities change over time.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2013. 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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Today I turn 64 and if I am to believe the media, I have long passed my expiration date of desirability as a woman.

In fact to accept conventional wisdom about women, nothing matches their fear of visible signs of ageing.

But here’s the un-botoxed- wrinkle in that. Every woman is an “ageing woman.”

It begins at birth and continues if we are fortunate for 80 decades. Yet the window for beguiling is a short one in our youth culture, one lasting only a third of our life expectancy.

Women’s attractiveness seems at best highly perishable. Not unlike a container of milk there seems to be an expiration date, a best-used by date of about 30 years.

Despite the fact that we are currently living in a time when women over 60 are more visible and more powerful in government, business, and entertainment than ever before, when it comes their looks old stereotypes about our attractiveness linger like fossilized remains.

Women’s desirability is likely to decay.

The insistence that there is an arbitrary expiration date for women and their perceived beauty has not lessened its strong grip. In fact it has only accelerated as more fillers, serums, and procedures lay in wait to correct the “problems” fix the “flaws” and reverse signs of aging. To turn back time.

All Out War

Having been drafted by the media at an early age, I have been waging a war against any visible sign of aging for over 35 years. Like most girls I learned at an early age that along with a “visible panty line” there were to be no visible signs of aging.  Or we ourselves would become invisible.

By 1985, as 30 loomed for me, it was all out war.

So began decades of daily reconnaissance scrutinizing my face and body for any and all flaws. I was on high alert as a full-on assault on wrinkles, creases, furrows and lines escalated. My defense budget skyrocketed as I boost my already bloated arsenal of  costly creams, lotions,  and potions.

It is only now that I am beginning to question if it’s truly a battle worth waging.

I am constantly told “I don’t look my age,” the holy grail of  praise for a woman.

Though secretly pleased, I also know  I will never be 30 again, nor 40. Why would I look that way? Six decades of sorrows and loss, despondency and pain, along with great loves and laughter, wisdom and adventure are etched as deeply in my face as in my heart and psyche.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. It is a life lived.

I am far from expired.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2019. 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

A Mothers Day without my own beloved mother means it’s a day of beloved mother memories.

When I was a pre-schooler, I shadowed my mid-century mother everywhere she went.

I was her Baba Looey to her Quick Draw McGraw, Boo Boo to her Yogi Bear, Tonto to her Lone Ranger. Within her sphere of influence I was a contented little satellite, spinning in her orbit wherever she went.

Whether shopping or schlepping, picking up or dropping off, I would follow in her footsteps in the seemingly endless tasks of doing for others. The errand I enjoyed tagging along with the most was her weekly appointment at the Girls-Only-Glam-A-Rama Beauty Parlor, the one thing she did all week just for her.

 Glam-A- Rama-Beauty Parlor

A unique universe unlike any place else, where unfamiliar, strange-looking equipment was being used by familiar neighborhood women looking strange, all dressed alike, their ordinary clothes replaced by identical leopard print smocks.

A universe with its own uniform. A universe where gossip was as hot and swift as the air blowing through the missile shaped hairdryers, where I was privy to carefully guarded grown up secrets.

Strange intimacies grew between women who organized carpools and now found themselves sitting, captive under pink hair dryers. It was over the roar of the dryers in the afternoons while casseroles simmered in automatic ovens back home that these women gave full voice to secret whispering fears. Somehow dread words could be spoken and reassurances offered. In the shadow of the hairdryers, as nails were polished, calluses scraped and hair teased, dread words could be safely spoken.

Does She or Doesn’t She?

Despite the fact that the sight of women in pink plastic curlers was becoming more and more common a sight in public and not discounting the legion of devotees of Miss Clairol and Toni Home permanents, beauty parlors were busier than ever.

This was due in part to the popularity of the most asked for hair ‘do of the year- the bouffant. The perfect ‘do for the world of tomorrow, one in which man is ever striving for new, ever higher horizons. Despite its French origins, it was a concoction that showed Americas might with its height, and was protected by impenetrable layers of lacquer.

A Beehive of Activity

Entering the Beauty Parlor, the Saturday before Mothers Day, you could feel the excitement in the air. A beehive of activity, a festive feeling had been added to the usual rhythmic pulse, as women pampered themselves for their big day.

Decorated to reflect the miracle of spring time, the room was showered with an assortment of plastic flower arrangements gracing walls and counters. These Forever-Flowers imported all the way from exotic Hong Kong and purchased from the nearby Fancy Goods department at Woolworths would be given to each lucky lady as a final parting gift for Mothers Day.

The air bristling with Mothers Day plans, was heavy with the cloying sweetness of perfume diluted by the acrid smell of singed hair, nose burning acetone, ammonia, and other chemical combustibles.

A Haze Of Hairspray

(R) Now even little girls could benefit from the wonders of hair spray in seen in this 1956 ad from Helene Curtis

Thick with cigarette smoke, the haze of hairspray alone was enough to create its own hole in the ozone layer. Hairspray was a modern-day wonder. Articles marveled at its might: “Not since the invention of the permanent wave had any hair product done so much for so many as todays near miracle-working hairsprays.”

The sound of “What a Difference a Day Makes” playing on the radio was nearly  drowned out by the constant hum of hairdryers and the constant chattering among the ladies. Even Dinah Washington’s fervent voice was no match for these yentas.

It was under those missile shaped dryers that sizzling party recipes were hotly debated and exchanged; fondues were scrutinized, zippy dips and dunks dissected, chex party mix gone over with a fine tooth comb and potato chips pondered-with or without ridges. Heavy trading went on, swapping a cherished Kraft TV Theatre clam dip recipe, for a new twist on Rumaki.

Musical Chairs

Like a game of musical chairs, the rows of turquoise hydraulic styling chairs filled  with chain-smoking Moms, remained stationary with the gals themselves moving slowly from chair to chair progressing from one stage of metamorphosis to the next.

A seamless transition that would have pleased Henry Ford.

One row of post-shampoo ladies, looked like a pack of wet poodles, puffing on their Parliaments, having their nails done as they patiently bided their time for the next step of transformation .

Vintage Ads (L) Du Barry Push Button Hair Color 1963 (R) Miss Clairol Champagne Blonde Hair Color 1957

Further down the assembly line, another group of adventurous gals- gals who wouldn’t take dull for an answer-sported freshly shorn locks slathered with gobs of goo and eye burning glop, that would turn them into glamorous if-I’ve-only-one- life- to- lead- let –me- live- it –as- a -Blonde.

Just the thing for the upcoming summer scene, Clairol had popped the cork on new Champagne blondes, vintage 1960. In between, eyebrows were plucked, and lips waxed, until finally scalps were tortured with clips, and curlers, and subjected to searing blasts of heat while seated under hair dryers.

Was it really true Blondes had more fun?

Sinking into a padded swivel styling chair, I sat next to Mom carefully watching as Miss Blanche, combed and teased, bombarding Mom with hairspray. This was truly a space age hair do with its propulsion accomplished by strenuous backcombing. The ‘do was composed of three major assemblies, the set with curlers, the thrust, or tease, and the fusing device of heavy hair spray. “There isn’t a head of hair that can’t profit in prettiness and manageability from spray,” Miss Blanche was fond of saying.

Mom would have a party hair do all week-long. It was a hair do with a future

“Going to the moon, or just getting back?” Dad would smile at Moms hair, the shape of a space helmet.

The petite, bespeckled, hairdresser wobbled precariously on spindly Lucite spiked heels, her own massively teased confection of taffy colored hair towered over us all, tempting fate and physics that its enormity wouldn’t tip her over.

It was truly aero dynamic.

A true artiste‘, Miss Blanche would always try for the exact balance so the coiffure would frame the clients face just right.

Stepping back from her work like Picasso, she squinted thoughtfully through her iridescent, greenish gold cat- eyes frame glasses, at Moms face in the mirror, as if she were following the progress of a painting. Of course my own myopic Mom stripped of her own blue and silver specs, would squint right back at her.

With the skillful use of fluorescent lighting, the unqualified, belief in hairspray, this world of tomorrow was a world of beauty.

Holding her hands in front of her, drying on her nails was a fresh coat of frantic red. Because it was Mothers Day Mom treated herself to a professional manicure unlike her normal dash of polish 20 minutes before party guests came.

Patting her lush brown bouffant coif floating like a gentle cloud above her head, Mom left happy, with a new recipe for cheese Fondue clutched in her hands, a sure-fire ( probably highly flammable) solution for removing stains, and clutching her Mothers Day bouquet of forever your pink plastic flowers, bendable and moveable to arrange just as you like.

Snarkily calling a rival a “meanie” and sulking about the condition of your hair are the whining of an insecure moody middle-school girl, not the president of the United States.  But a pouting tween Trump is what we are stuck with.

After complaining that he can’t wash his “beautiful hair” properly due to the drip drip drip shower heads, his administration has hair brain scheme to try and roll back showerhead regulations set in place by George HW Bush in 1992.

Does this follically challenged narcissist secretly aspire to be a Breck girl,  that retro advertising icon gal with the glowing golden locks who never had a bad hair day?

A Bad Hair Day

Since the pandemic began is there anyone who has not had a bad hair day since mid-March?

After this past week of hair-ravaging humidity coupled with an electric power outage contributing to my already COVID challenged locks my normally baby-fine hair frizzed out channeling a bad 1980’s perm.  Short of wearing a large picture frame hat to hide my harried hair, I reluctantly had to zoom in on an art event resembling a cartoon character who had stuck her finger in a socket one too many times.

Yet again my own childhood hopes of emulating a Breck Shampoo girl’s perfect hair were dashed.

Hair Dos and Don’ts

Vintage Breck Advertisement 1969

Vintage Breck Ad 1968

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70’s no amount of weekly shampooing with that golden elixir that was Brecks, had ever produced for me that longed for glorious glowing hair portrayed in the popular ads. The popular girls all seem to benefit, but it somehow eluded me.

And now looking around the zoom meeting at the well-heeled crowd mingling with hipsters as they viewed and discussed the art, their common denominator was that somehow, miraculously, they all seemed to have perfectly coiffed,  disciplined hair.

Although Brecks has been unavailable except in the occasional Dollar Store, it seemed as if once again I was surrounded by a room full of Breck girls. Old insecurities reappeared and with it, remembrances of The Breck hair girl swirled in my mind.

Vintage Breck ad 1962

For 30 years the Breck shampoo advertising campaign featured as its centerpiece a romanticized portrait of a smiling girl with shiny, silky swirls of abundant hair. It both recorded and reinforced an idealized,  often unattainable American beauty ideal.

Vintage Breck Girl 1962

It didn’t matter if her hair was a beehive or a bouffant, a pixie cut or a Farrah-do, the Breck girls wholesome, and charming All-American looks never varied through the years. Always desirable yet alays chaste they were also always white.

Promises in a Bottle 

Vintage Breck Ad hair spray 1960

All shampoo ads dangled the promise that you’d be head over heels in love with the way your hair would shine and shimmer with the use of their product The results were always hair so gleaming, so glamorous, so silky smooth that romance was sure to follow.

Sure the  Halo shampoo girl may have had that look-again-look and Prell promised to make you look radiantly alive with hair he loves to touch, but the Breck girl was the hands-down envy of every American girl from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Vintage Breck ad 1967

Vintage Breck Ad 1974

As ubiquitous as a Pepsi Cola ad and just as bubbly, the Breck girl was hard to miss. The popular advertising campaign ran in every major woman’s magazine often taking up the entire back cover with her smiling golden visage.

All in The Breck Family

Vintage Breck ad 1947

In 1936, six years after Dr. John Breck founded Breck shampoo, his son Edward hired a local Springfield Mass. commercial artist Charles Gates Sheldon to draw women for his new ad campaign.

Vintage Breck ad 1947

Best known for his romanticized paintings of Hollywood celebrities for Photoplay Magazine, Sheldon utilized the same fanciful techniques for his Brecks girls.  His soft-focus portraits of real women were done in pastels, with otherworldly halos of light surrounding the glowing girls.

Sheldon favored “ordinary” women using neighbors and employees of the ad agency as models and early Breck Girls were often really just that- real Breck family members. A Breck advertising manager described Sheldon’s illustrations as “illusions depicting the quality and beauty of true womanhood using real women as models.”

Breck Shampoo ad 1945 illustration  Charles Gates Sheldon This summertime ad appeared in American Hairdresser a trade publication encouraging beauty shop owners to introduce Breck Hair treatments to their patrons. 1945

Vintage Breck ad

Twice As Nice

Vintage Breck ad 1962

Breck Shampoo Ad 1963 illustration Ralph Williams Williams
In 1957 the illustrator with the distinctive name, Ralph Williams Williams took over as the Breck artist when Sheldon retired, and his portraits are the ones most of us grew up with.

Vintage Breck Ad 1972

He preferred using professional models rather than Susie from accounting. Many of these Breck girls were also winners of the American Jr Miss contest that the company sponsored.  The ads featured such famous models as Cheryl Tiegs, Cybil Shepard  (Junior Miss from Tennessee) in 1968, Brooke Shields in 1974, and Farrah Fawcett in 1975.

The Girl in the Picture

“In 1968  Canadian women’s editors selected Nancy Leroy Pullen as the first Canadian Breck Girl. “She’s 23 married with a challenging job as a medical secretary.”

As women gained independence and challenged historical images of girlhood and womanhood Breck got hip and introduced “the Girl in the Picture” feature giving a personality to the idealized pictures. The Breck Girls were identified through the sponsorship of Americas Jr Miss Contest

“Pat Herron of Philadelphia. Pat loves modeling, needlepoint, ballet, and acting.”

Vintage Breck ad

A young Kim Basinger appeared with her mother. “Ann Basinger and her daughter Kim of Athens Georgia in 1971. Ann and Kim share many interests: dress designing, cooking, modeling in local stores, and long walks on the beach.

Vintage Breck ad 1974

In 1974, Donna Alexander was the first African American to be a Breck Girl. From East Orange NJ she was “New Jerseys Junior Miss for 1974 and represented her state and awarded a scholarship for academic achievement. Donna is now studying veterinary science at the University of Penn.”

Copyright (©) 20020 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

The real problem with aging is that we consider it a problem

We don’t need to defy aging. We need to embrace it and not see it through the lens of decline. Or diminishment

The images of “older women” were not very pretty when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s.  In tandem with the stifling portrayals of older women in popular culture, there was also an increasing obsession with the “problem” of age and how best to avoid it through diet, exercise, chemical formulas, moisturizing creams, and the best solution… denial as long as possible.

Despite the glaring absence of images of people over 65, especially older women doing or selling anything in the mass media, there was no shortage of ads reminding us about getting old. Fed at an early age, I had my fill.

Doesn’t She know She Can Look Younger?

Cosmetic companies eyed our sagging faces with greed.

Complicit with women’s magazines in alienating women from their faces and bodies, cosmetic companies eyed women’s sagging faces with greed as we were bombarded with lavish ads emphasizing the burden of getting old. “Doesn’t she know she can look younger?” one ad asked, clearly blaming any woman who did not defy her age. S

In fact, the message I received as a teen was quite clear- we were not supposed to age…at least not visibly.

The Invisible Woman

Having been drafted by the media at an early age I have been waging a war against any visible signs of aging for over 40 years. Like most girls, I learned that along with a “visible panty line,” there were to be no visible signs of aging.

Struggling to hold onto the illusions of youth we saw old age only as a decline. For all our current advancements, one fact still remains avoid any visible sign of aging or you become invisible.

No wonder women are haunted by the horrors of growing old

Despite the fact that we are currently living in a time when women way over 65 are more visible and more powerful in government, business, and entertainment than ever before the insistence that there is an arbitrary expiration date for women and their perceived beauty and function has not lessened its strong grip. In fact, it has accelerated as more fillers, serums and procedures lay in wait to correct the problem, fix the flaws, and reverse signs of aging. To turn back time.

Here’s the un-botoxed wrinkle in that. Every woman is an aging woman.

It begins at birth and continues, if we are fortunate, for 80 decades. Yet the window for desirability is a short one in our youth culture, one lasting only a third of our life’s expectancy

Like processed food, the more chemical additives and fillers added to a woman the longer the shelf life of her attractiveness. In a culture that worships at the altar of “all natural’ and “no additives” the same can’t be said of our aging women.

If positive portrayals of aging promote the idea that defying aging is the only way to age successfully, negative stereotypes can remain strong.

Last week I turned 67.

I am far from my expiration date. I defy anyone to dispute that fact.  Instead of reversing the signs of aging let’s reverse our perception of aging as a decline or as something to defy.

So how old is old? How we choose to view aging can be within our own agency.

“Agency: Feminist Art and Power” Museum of Sonoma County 425 7th Street Santa Rosa, CA Curated by Karen M. Gutfreund

Please join me on Saturday, April 9th, 2022  when I will be talking about my collage on aging, “How Old is Old” at the Museum of Sonoma County, as part of their Artists Talk for the exhibit “Agency Feminist Art and Power.”

A reception will follow and for those in the Bay area able to attend I would love to meet you.

Artist Sally Edelstein at 66 and a detail of her collage “How Old is Old”

“Beauty Expiration Date -Best Used By”  Sally Edelstein Mixed media 10” x 12”

Today I turn 68 and to believe the media, I have long passed my expiration date of desirability as a woman. But here’s the un-botoxed- wrinkle in that. Every woman is an “ageing woman.” Yet the window for beguiling is a short one in our youth culture, one lasting only a third of our life expectancy.

Women’s attractiveness seems at best highly perishable. Not unlike a container of milk there seems to be an expiration date, a best-used by date of about 30 years.

The insistence that there is an arbitrary expiration date for women and their perceived beauty has not lessened its strong grip. In fact, it has only accelerated as more fillers, serums, and procedures lay in wait to correct the “problems,” fix the “flaws,” and reverse signs of aging.

To turn back time.

Time marches on, and I’m happy to walk to the beat of my own drum.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2023. 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.