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.

Bookended by Cheryl Tiegs in 1975 and Christie Brinkley in 1981, Martha Stewart is the oldest model to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit at 81. Photo: Ruven Afanador.

First, it was Cheryl Tiegs in the 1970s whose 20-something California girl good looks and smokin’ body I felt I could never live up to.

Then it was Christie Brinkley’s perfect 10 bod raising the bar in the eighties. Bikini-clad Elle, Paulina, and Tyra kept the pressure going. Today it’s an octogenarian Martha Stewart as Sports Illustrated swimsuit model who is setting unrealistic expectations for women.

True to her brand she’s promoting perfection in unattainable ways.

Comparing ourselves to unrealistic images, first as a domestic goddess and now as a sex symbol at 81
Sports Illustrated Photo- Ruven Afanado

It’s now not just the domestic diva’s ability to effortlessly organize a kitchen, prepare a 6-course meal with one hand tied behind her back and perfectly fold a fitted sheet. Now we have to compete with her age-defying- age denying looks too.

In her latest venture, Martha is serving up that time-tested recipe for women to come up short in the self-esteem department.

Their aging looks.

It is as unrealistic for most 81-year-old women to achieve Martha’s look as it was for a 25-year-old to look like Christie Brinkley.

Martha, that’s not a good thing.

You Go, Girl

Is Stewart the age-positive influencer the press is making her out to be? With all it takes to achieve this look, this is not a natural beauty at 81. Sports Illustrated Photo- Ruven Afanador

Yes, some fans are showering the lifestyle guru with praise falling over themselves in awe of her fabulous age-defying cover girl looks. Yes, Sports Illustrated should be applauded for their diversity in using an older woman on their iconic swimsuit issue cover.

Go, Martha, some friends are gushing, for breaking new ground, calling her a trailblazer.

Except this trail is a tricky one filled with booby traps.

A familiar well-trodden path that women have been led down before, it’s a troubled one. Yet again we have an idealized model to emulate and judge ourselves against, worsening insecurities and feelings of inadequacy.

Modeling Ourselves

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models (L-R) Paulina Porizkovau 1985, Cheryl Tiegs 1983, Kathy Ireland, Elle MacPherson 1988, Dayle Haddon 1973, Paulina Porizkovau 1984, 1995, Tyra Banks 1996

For most of my life, I was trapped like other girls in a cycle of comparison where we viewed ourselves relative to friends and models in magazines never feeling thin, pretty, or fit enough. It doesn’t necessarily diminish as we age.

Is having an older idealized woman like Martha Stewart really revolutionary or are they just casting the net wider for a larger portion of women to self-scrutinize?

In a culture where self-esteem and how we look have become one and the same, women are trapped in a negative cycle of disliking their appearance from puberty to menopause to post-menopause.

Though she claims to want to welcome us to “Generation Ageless,” she is perpetuating unrealistic expectations surrounding aging. Sports Illustrated Photo Ruven Afanado

If a magazine filters and photoshops a photo of an 81-year-old woman so that she looks 40 can this really be considered a celebration of aging? Praising older celebrities for looking young is nothing more than the same old glorification of youth. It’s the same anti-aging propaganda women have been force-fed for centuries.

Is this really fighting ageism or merely perpetuating it?

“It’s refreshing,”  a fan tweeted “to see Stewart embracing her age and own it with confidence. Her presence on the cover is a celebration of diversity and aging and a reminder that beauty transcends age.”

“It’s inspiring,” others say, “to see her feel comfortable and confident in her skin!”

I don’t care what great genes you have, no one who is 81 can look like this without a lot of money. Sports Illustrated Photo Ruven Afanado

I hate to be a downer on this celebratory spirit, but Stewart is creating unreasonable expectations of what aging looks like particularly for those without her financial resources. That skin she’s so comfortable in has been well cared for by someone with the means to do so,

On Instagram the lifestyle guru shared a series of zoomed-in selfies showing her flawless face without a beauty filter, insisting her smooth skin wasn’t a facelift, but the result of facials and diet.

Martha attributes her good looks to a healthy diet, Pilates, and good genes.

Great, who can argue with that?

There is no mention of procedures, colorists, stylists, and digital technology. The octogenarian reportedly eschews surgical intervention in favor of less invasive procedures that make her appear to have had surgery.

It takes a whole lot of lifting and tightening to look this good. And I don’t mean just the exercise. This face and body are benefited by fillers and Botox, laser resurfacing, and ultrasounds.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

As with any woman, Martha should avail herself of whatever means that make her feel good about herself.

You go, girl!

Martha Stewart’s Instagram post from the salon. As a new beauty influencer, Martha sets the expectations and examples of what women should look like as they age.

But when she is being set up as a role model and trailblazer in aging, that becomes problematic.

As a new beauty influencer, Martha sets the expectations and examples of what women should look like as they age.  We are now at a point where there is a social stigma around the effects of the natural aging process.

This is both dangerous and damaging to girls as well as older women.

Our girls deserve more from us.

Underrepresented.

It sets up unrealistic ideas of aging when older women are woefully underrepresented in the media. The ones we do see are the same idealized airbrushed ones we saw in our twenties and thirties, equally unattainable standards.

This is not about positive aging. It’s about age-denying.

We can do better.

It is the same old dangerous set of unrealistic expectations leading to poor body image, depression, and low self-esteem.

Why It Matters

Martha Stewart, Sports Illustrated Photo Ruven Afanado

We are in an epidemic of self-consciousness. Everyone is acutely aware of how they look and appearances are a currency we trade on.

Older women get devalued because they don’t fit the currency of youth.

Is it any wonder so many girls and women don’t think they measure up to society-manufactured standards of beauty -or lose their appeal once they reach a certain age unless they are wrinkle-free and have no sags.

If we are drowning from a lifetime of unrealistic expectations when it comes to our looks, Martha Stewart is not offering a lifeline out of these unrealistic expectations.

Accomplished women who are 81 and look terrific. (L-R) Carole King, composer, Twyla Tharp choreographer, Miriam Margolyes, actress, Juliet Mills, actress, Martha Argerich, pianist, Fionnula Flanagan, actress, Martha Stewart, Esther Ofarim, actress, Margarethe von Trotta, film director, Silvia Federici, activist, Laura Mulvey, art historian, film director, Darlene Love, singer.

It would be an immeasurable gift to our daughters and granddaughters to embrace our outward signs of growing older and wider and indeed happier.

By allowing our silver hair, lines, and drooping skin, to be revealed and celebrated, we make it easier for them to resist the unnecessary, wasteful, and damaging need to fight the inevitable.

Now that would be a good thing.

© 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.

Today I enter the last year of a decade I tip-toed into in 2015 with some bemusement and a not without a touch o’ disbelief.

Today I turn 69 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 “aging woman.” Yet the window for beguiling is a short one in our still 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.

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 45 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 boosted 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.

Occasionally I am 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? Over 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.

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

It is my birthday wish for all women, to feel at peace with themselves.

Yesterday morning after I showered and washed my hair I decided to take Moe out for a walk. Forgoing my usual blow drying, I chose to walk him with a head of wet hair letting the air dry it.

Feeling the bright sun beat down on my bare head gently drying my hair, I was transported back to my days at summer sleep-away camp when my bunkmates and I would sit outside on the grass to let the sun dry our hair after shampooing it on the designated hair washing day.

Yes, hair washing was a designated one-hour activity.

Along with softball, field hockey, and archery, hair washing was a scheduled activity printed on the pink mimeographed schedule thumb-tacked to a bulletin board in the bunk.

Of course, this makes sense. This was a period when women would turn down dates saying “Sorry I’m washing my hair” it was an entire evening activity.

Vintage Breck Shampoo Advertisement

My bunk mates, would gather their plastic bottles of shampoos-golden Breck, pink Lustre cream, and green Prell and line up for the shower. ( The days of Herbal Essence and Balsam infused products were just a few years away) The popular girls from Great Neck with the perfect shiny hair and teeth always had Breck Crème Rinse too, considered a luxury item from the more middle-class suburbs I came from.

Hair blowers or dryers of any sort were forbidden in the camp so afterward we all gathered outside on a grassy area of the campus surrounding the faux rustic bunks, and let the sun dry our hair more effectively than that portable GE bonnet affair I was used to at home.

Spread out on the grass we used the time to read 16 Magazine, Archie comics, and wrote letters home to friends on flower power festooned stationary. While we sat outside, the camp “mother” an elderly woman with a graying bun and cat eyeglasses would go inside the bunk and wash our brushes for us laying them on the bunk railing to dry. Even the brushes offered a glimpse into privilege. My dowdy fuller hair brush co-mingled with the more rarefied Mason Pearsons.

As the hour drew to a close, it seemed as though most of the girls would walk away with their Breck perfect hair, while my baby fine locks would be just a mass of tangles.

But today when I returned home with Moe my newly dried hair looked just fine. Maybe it was the Moe factor