The red white and blue American Dream sparkled in Kodacolor.
Kodak and the American Dream were made for one another. The wholesome images of all-American family fun portrayed in their long running advertisements would saturate our Kodacolor dreams for decades creating a template for the middle class.
These wholesome, homogenous tableau’s created by Kodak, along with the familiar yellow and red logo, insinuated themselves into the very fabric of American family life.
After WWII Kodak ramped up their already heavily sentimental ads to fit in with the ethos of domestic post-war America, the middle class family idealized as never before.
Bristling with their box brownies, Americans have long been hard at work recording the spectacle of the their middle class moments, cameras clicking away at birthday parties, little league games, picnics, communions and graduations.
1900 marked the arrival of the groundbreaking Brownie dollar camera.
For a buck -with film costing 15 cents for 6 shots -everyone could now archive their life.
Suddenly this simple camera and film would give “you and million others- not camera wizards, just average everyday folks- the power to make wonderful snapshots of family friends and home.”
That same year the infamous little box Brownie made its debut, my grandmother Sadie was born and her father, my Russian born businessman great-grandfather rushed out and purchased one of the first Brownies, like a “real Yankee.”
Despite it being designed to be “so simple a child could use it”, the family Brownie gathered dust, as my great-grandfather still preferred the stiff, formal studio portraits so popular at the time.
A studio portrait of my grandmother Sadie (l) and her 2 sisters 1908
All I would see of my grandmother’s childhood were the framed steely toned portraits of her youth that she kept on display on her living room drum table. Much of her privileged carefree childhood was recorded against a staged studio backdrop.
These stilted images in subtle sepia tones with hints of blue matted in thick stock paper with the mysterious name of Sol Young Studios Brooklyn embossed on the back, had left an indelible imprint on me.
Not only were the old-fashioned photos unrecognizable as my silver-haired up-to-date-Cadillac driving-Jack La-Lanne-exercising-grandmother, but they bore little resemblance to any happy-go-lucky mid-century kids I knew.
These staid, solemn photographs stood in stark contrast to the fun-saver snapshots of my own-you push the button we do the rest Kodak moments
“Nobody gets more fun out of making a good snapshot, Kodak assured us,” than a rank beginner- a kid or maybe a woman who was always afraid of a camera!”
Snapshots were the great equalizer, the perfect tool for a democratic society, capturing the quintessential American good life.
Knowledge of technology was unimportant for a Kodak picture. The film was made for all who wanted to get a good picture of their good times…without any bother. No fuss no muss. With its automatic push-button ease Kodak was a precursor to the easy living push-button world that would characterize mid-century America
With Verichrome film, the ads promised, they “get the picture” and that’s that.
Pictures radiated with suburban domestic bliss and abundance.
It made picture-taking so easy so sure, the ads promised even a child ( or a woman) with film in his Brownie could take a good picture. Everyman could be his own Norman Rockwell recording and replicating those saccharine filled moments captured so brilliantly in those light drenched ads.
In this bliss no one knew what went on in the darkroom nor did they need too. Like the telephone the camera was this simple magical black box that could be used without being understood.
Just as we were blissfully ignorant of the shadows of society, we were happy to bask in the sunny Kodacolor optimism the ads promised, that sunny outlook that fit in so well with our sense of self.
Snapshots caught the middle glass moments of our lives
The death knell for Eastman Kodak, that very recorder and reinforce of middle class America seems to sadly coincide with the Autumn of that ethos of upward mobility it helped reinforce.
Once upon a time, but not too long ago, all Dads were king.
Not only for a measly third Sunday in June, but to believe the mid-century American advertiser, the head of the household was the sovereign ruler of his suburban dominion the year round.
But it was on that special date proclaimed Fathers Day, a day filled with pageantry and celebration, that all his subjects paid homage bearing royal gifts worthy of his majesty.
When I was growing up in the 1950′s and 60′s, Father’s Day was a day of protocol, precedent and custom.
Truth be told, in our house my father was known more as the Queens husband than as Sovereign ruler, not unlike England’s Prince Phillip.
But not on Fathers Day, when his throne was never more secure nor its occupant more firmly rooted in his subjects affections.
While Mom was busy washing the dishes from the royal breakfast feast, our King for a day, his most excellent majesty, Marvin, sat in regal isolation in his Naughahyde Barca-Lounger throne. With a Kaywoodie briar pipe as his scepter, resplendent in his Dacron wash ‘n wear pajamas, he wore a crudely constructed cardboard crown given as a promotion from big Al’s appliance store atop his prematurely balding head.
Contently he basked in the glow of the day as presents were offered on bended knee , displayed before him for his approval.
Nothing said “Thanks, Pop” like a splendid no-wrinkle Acrylan mu-mu sport shirt with authentic south sea prints. Who said a ruler couldn’t be a snappy pappy?
What was more worthy of a king than a distinguished pair of fairway themed cotton boxers with golf balls and nine irons cleverly printed across the fabric?
Every imperial leader needed a touch of bracing after-shave now and again, the woodsy aroma the very finest in masculinity, whose daily use helped give the royal face a clean magnetic masculine air.
But for my Dad no princely ban-lon shirt, crush resistant slacks, tiki print tie, no, not even an out of this world, newer-than-tomorrow electric razor could light up his countenance the way something truly for for a Royal did-a 1 pound canister of Prince Albert tobacco- “the national joy smoke.”
Like Old King Cole Dad was never merrier than when smoking his briar wood pipe, packing it tight with his Prince Albert tobacco.
“More than you know, perhaps…you do wonderful things for Dad by giving him a Kaywoodie pipe.” the ads promised. “You give far more in fact than the countless sweet hours of relaxation this luxury pipe brings to a man.”
Of course governing can be a stressful job so when he wasn’t puffing on a pipe, Dad could be found relaxing with a soothing cigarette.
Lucky for us mid-century tobacco manufacturers were more than happy to lend a hand on Fathers Day coming out with a line of special gift-wrapped Father Day cartons and canisters fit for a king
RJ Reynolds Tobacco company reassured its readers that our choice was a wise one and truly fit for a beloved monarch:
“Nearest and dearest to Dad- next to you- are his favorite cigarette or his faithful pipe. One of the things closest to your father are his smokes-his cigarette or his pipe. He carries them with him wherever he goes…they’re always part of the picture when he relaxes.”
“When it’s a gift from loved ones it’s doubly precious”
Of course not as precious as all those years lost from developing emphysema. And that pipe line to his heart eventually found its way there with a heart attack at age 60.
Once you got the delivery system down- breast-feeding or baby formula-the more important dilemma for new Mothers has been when and how often feeding should occur: self demand vs rigid scheduled feedings.
For mid-century Moms the choice was a clear one.
A Mid-Century Visit to The Nursery
I was still fast asleep in the nursery the afternoon both my grandmothers came to visit me in the hospital after I was born. My napping Mom, Betty, opened her eyes and blurrily stared at the imposing matriarchal figures squeezed in the two visiting chairs in her room.
Clutching her paper visitors pass in one hand and an assortment of shopping bags in the other, my mortified grandmother, Nana Sadie checked her watch, saw it was way past my scheduled 3:00 feeding and went marching down the tiled antiseptic corridor in panicked pursuit of the nurse.
My grandmother, like most of her generation, believed baby had to be fed by the clock.
Just as trains run on the clock, so did scheduled eating’s. Both my grandmothers were from the old school of rigid scheduled feedings with its hard and fast rules on quantities and times of eating, which were to be followed to the letter if baby was to survive in the modern industrial world. As soon as baby was born he was punching a time clock.
As a young mother, my grandmother had been so intimidated by the sanctity of strict schedule ling that she did not dare feed a hungry baby Betty one minute early for fear the baby would be spoiled if she were fed when she was actually hungry. Sadie would sit and bite her nails waiting for the clock to say it was feeding time.
If baby Betty demanded food at her off hours, she, in unison with the rest of “The Greatest Generation”, had to cry it out.
By the time I was born in the flush of prosperous 1955 post-war America, the motto was more of everything you want and that applied to baby’s meals as well. In this freedom-loving land of ours, permissiveness was sweeping the nation.
Why wait? You can have it all, right now.
Like so many mothers, Mom clutched onto the reassurance of Dr Spock’s book like a pacifier.
His free and easy world of affection and flexibility stood in sharp contrast to the once revered behaviorist Dr Watson the reigning expert for 30 years. The swami of scheduling and self-control now seemed like a ruthless dictator with its totalitarian web of shackles and controls creating parents who held an iron grip of control over their children.
Today’s Mothers had to be flexible and adjust to babies’ needs and happiness. After all, we weren’t living behind an Iron Curtain where mothers were forced to work in dark factories and children were raised by the state.
“Your baby, modern mothers were reassured, “ can be so much happier than yesterdays babies No longer are mothers told to let baby cry it out for hours; to turn thumbs down on all thumb-sucking, like in their mother’s day. Today, babies are less frustrated and happier as a rule.”
It was now believed better for “…a baby to be fed according to his own rhythmic demands for food, we must respect this schedule as set by baby and feed him only when he wants to be fed.” Babies’ doctor tells us not to wheedle or force…baby’s tummy knows best! Besides which, mothers were told that feeding on demand was fun and amusing- enjoyable to both baby and especially mom.
American Moms had to be at her baby’s disposal 24/7 or risked trouble.
Danger now lurked in ignoring your babies every whim; in not being too attentive, cuddly, feeding her whenever she wanted, whatever she wanted…..or run the risk of producing a scrawny, nervous wreck.
There would be no crying it out for this baby….Mom was at this baby boomers beck and call.
As millions crowd our airports for the traditional Thanksgiving trek home over the river and through the woods, the tension mounts at the thought of long lines, insufferable crowds, and the dreaded delays’ that inevitably await the weary and wary traveler.
Gloom is cast before the holiday even begins.
But for the Post-War population, the new air travel was a breeze.
For the modern mid-century family, the notion of flying home for the holidays was a novelty and a grand experience at that.
They could ditch their De Soto which was now as dated and old-fashioned as traveling by sleigh.
“Over the River and Over the woods. To grandmothers house we go” this 1951 TWA ad announces gaily.
The gleeful modern family fairly bursting with pep and anticipation couldn’t wait to board their flight to visit Grandma. Why let old-fashioned distance keep a family apart?
“There’s a new road now to an old tradition. It’s the TWA high way home for Thanksgiving. And what a blessing it is to families separated by too many rivers and too many woods….and so many years!”
“If you’ve let distance and lack of time keep you away too long, try traveling this high way. Find out how TWA can make it very near to someone dear- for even an ocean apart is only hours apart…by skyliner!”
Snowbound for the Holidays
Compare the cheery disposition of Mr. and Mrs. Modern who have chosen the up -to-date way to travel to visit Grandmother with their neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Outdated who chose the more antiquated mode of travel- their automobile.
Hampered by a snow storm they are unable to dig out in time for the turkey. Mrs. Outdated, with visions of stuffing and cranberries dancing in her head, looks longingly at the speeding plane in the sky, carrying the wise Moderns to the destination.
“Don’t Give Up- Go Up” declared American Airlines in this 1949 advertisement , touting the benefits and wonders of the new air travel that most post-war families had yet to experience.
“Air Travel- and only air travel can often make the difference between the accessible and the impossible. This is especially true during the holidays when the earthbound are frequently snowbound. Hence, wise travelers plan to go by air.”
“Also, air travel is little affected by the challenge of distance and time. The miles on the map lose their menace- the hands of the clock become friend instead of foe when you use this modern means of transportation.”
“So when holiday travel plans seem likely to get ‘bogged down’ don’t give up- go up.”
Just like the mythical Dick, Jane and Sally would visit Grandmother and Grandfather on their farm, I was off for an overnight visit with mine in Queens, NY.
Clutching my Fun with Dick and Jane Primer to occupy me during the car ride to my grandparents apartment, I was entranced with the colorful illustrations of the bucolic farm.
Vintage children’s schoolbook illustrations from “We Read Pictures”- Dick, Jane & Sally 1956
I could imagine myself frolicking among the pastoral, green meadows, and picturesque pastures, sitting on the front porch of the charming country farmhouse with Grandmother shucking ears of corn, watching Grandfather milk the contented cows, in the rustic old barn. And best of all, just like my namesake Little Sally, my very own pony to ride. It was so lush and green, I half expected the Jolly Green Giant to suddenly appear in the verdant valley. Ho-Ho-Ho
Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmothers House We Go..
But there was nothing bucolic about Queens Boulevard.
It always came as a surprise that my fastidious grandmother lived in a borough that always looked as if it could use a good scrubbing.
As we drove to my grandparents on that last Saturday in November of 1960, the clear blue skies of suburban Nassau County gradually gave way to a dingy, dishwater gray as we entered Queens.
Whereas the suburbs was a place where every single thing seemed infused with newness glittering with promise, Queens was a borough in which everyone and everything looked as if they had long since passed their expiration date. Its endless blocks of desolate looking warehouses were flanked by squat, dingy buildings and grimy factories; its streets lined with rows of dreary two family attached houses, the grim blue and white statues of Mary, forlornly standing watch over the postage-stamp sized lawns,.
New Horizons
Could this be the same Queens , the home of the great World of Tomorrow that was the 1939 NY Worlds fair? Driving along Robert Mose’s Grand Central Parkway my parents never failed to point out the site where the Worlds Fair had miraculously sprung up out of a garbage dump.
The air was thick with a steady stream of soot, steam and smoke belching from the multitude of factories that dotted the landscape. But the rich yeasty aroma of fresh-baked bread emanating from the Silver Cup Bread Factory that would miraculously find its way in through the slightest crack in the closed windows of our Plymouth, made up for everything else.
As we approached my grandparent’s apartment in Astoria, the wide noisy roadways were darkened by a great tangle of elevated subway tracks, the BMT trains screeching around curves at all hours on the tracks overhead, blocking out whatever sunshine there was adding a sense of foreboding.
Because my grandparents still lived in the same brick, Art-Deco-Moderne apartment house that my father grew up in, by the simple act of walking through the graceful arched entrance way of the once fashionable Buckingham Arms Apartments, I was entering the world of my father’s youth.
The tiny, elevator which four people, a valise and a multitude of shopping bags, all managed to squeeze into, perpetually smelled of cooking cabbage and Pinesoil cleaner.
As the wheezy, groaning elevator doors with their smudged porthole windows, eventually closed, sealing us in this airless chamber in a state of limbo, I had the sinking realization that we had left the safety and familiarity of the shiny new suburbs, where modern taste was part of better living, where no house was older than I was and no parent older than mine.
When at last the heavy metal doors parted in agonizingly slow motion, they opened up into a dim, cheerless, hallway filled with echoes and ghosts.
It was as if the elevator had morphed into Mr. Peabody’s WAY-BAC Machine, transporting me back in time to the 1930’s.
In an instant, I had moved uneasily from the fresh brisk sparkle of the Pepsi generation into the musty, sluggish, moth-balled world fueled by Geritol. With overnight valise in one hand, and my Tiny Tears doll in the other, I gingerly entered my father’s childhood.
The mid-century American Housewife was the most envied woman in the world…smart…yet easy-going with never-you-mind freedom; that was the new Mrs. America!
“To be an American woman today,” Life Magazine gushed in a late 1956 special edition dedicated to the American woman, ” is to be cast in an exciting challenging and difficult role- exciting because the sky seems to be the limit in education work and freedom.”
And with the dawning of a whole new decade, the year 1960 was not only a new year but a whole new decade, filled with unlimited possibilities and promises of new freedoms, for everyone including m’ lady of the house.
Along with Life Magazine and the electric bill, the 1960 Census forms arrived in our mail early that March morning.
Mom eagerly opened the hefty envelope from Uncle Sam and got right to work.
Although it would be another year until Americans would be asked not what our country could do for us, but what we could do for our country, anticipating that spirit, we were asked- for the very first time- to extend ourselves and fill out our own 1960 census form without the assistance of a Census worker .
Nonetheless, Uncle Sam still dispatched an army of 170,000 Census Bureau workers toting identical 14 pound cardboard satchels to go door to door to collect the data from those non do-it-yourselfers.
While Mom sat at the Formica kitchen table twisting a #2 pencil steadily around and round in her fingers as she attacked the questionnaire, Dad was busy doing a double crossword puzzle. Dawdling at the breakfast table scribbling in words, he brushed some English Muffin crumbs off the page and drank a third cup of instant coffee.
“Well, here’s one I’m sure of,” he said smiling broadly. “Head of a Household, 7 letters.”
Confidently he filled in the letters in his square neat handwriting HUSBAND.
Mom gave a fairly satiric grin and poured herself more coffee.
After writing in my fathers name as “the head of the household” on the first line of the Census form, Mom proudly filled in “homemaker” in the blank for wife’s occupation- it was the new modern term for housewife.
One of the questions on the form concerned whether any member of the household other than Dad worked: “Did this person work anytime last week?” the government asked.
You were instructed to include “part-time work such as helping without pay in a family business or on a family farm.
However Uncle Sam stated very clearly- “Do not count housework.”
As if Mom would ever consider that work.
Like most housewives, Mom’s life was seemingly carefree. In the easy-does-it-beauty-without-buffing-self-polishing-wash-and-wear-fast acting-no-bending-no-stretching-no scrubbing-no-rubbing-magically-carefree-push-button world that was the American housewife’s world, she felt like a Queen.
“Well that’s that.” Mom said when she had finished filling out the Census. She spoke in the happy energetic tone of one who has found her mission in life and expects to enjoy it to the full.
Mrs. Housewife
She genuinely gloried in her role as the perfect wife and mother. After all, “What kind of woman am I if I don’t feel this fulfillment?”she and her friends would ask themselves.
Mrs. Housewife, they was told again and again in the plethora of articles and ads that appeared in the media, your judgment and taste have helped make the American standard of living the highest in the world!
Why just this very week Newsweek Magazine ran a special scientific report investigating the changing lives of educated women. “Who could ask for anything more?” Newsweek asked in this March 7. 1960 article. “The educated American woman has her brains, her good looks, her car, her freedom…freedom to choose a dress straight from Paris ( original or copy) or to attend a class in ceramics or calculus; freedom to determine the timing of her next baby or who shall be the next President of the U.S.”
Vintage magazine “Better Living” featuring Ad for Mrs America Contest
Dad always boasted that Mom was the ideal wife- she could balance a checkbook, get out of a restaurant without losing her gloves, wear a pair of stockings twice without developing a run and prevent the Chinese laundry from smashing his shirt buttons and spraying on too much starch.
Although Dad kept nudging her to enter the annual Mrs. America contest sponsored by the American Gas Association, Mom demurred.
The contest was a nationwide search for America’s outstanding homemaker. She was selected on the basis of her ability as a homemaker and her personal attractiveness.
“If your husband boasts about your cooking,” the ad explained, “if your bright new curtains were stitched by hand- and you’re a good homemaker, this contest is for you.”
“ You can be the next Mrs. America!” Dad read out loud looking straight at Mom.
Along with the honor, the grand prize for the best homemaker would include a new Freedom Gas Kitchen and an exciting all expense pleasure trip for Mrs America and her husband to the fabulous Belgian Congo!
Reading further, the ad continued in its description for the ideal American Mrs.
“What is the typical American Woman like? We polled top homemakers of the country to find the answer. Is it you? If you love a party, hate doing the dishes and find ironing a bore, you are according to our American Mrs. Quiz, as normal as “blueberry pie.”
Mom grabbed the magazine from Dad and continued reading:
“How does she spend her day?
Most of her day is devoted to her house and family. She has several children and does almost all her own housework alone though she sometimes hires help to give a hand with heavier chores.
The way youngsters love to eat, it’s no wonder that the American Mrs puts cooking at the top of the list of favorite homework. Second best on this list- this surprised us- is cleaning. Sometimes she works outside the home but it’s usually on a limited part-time basis.
Mostly she chooses a profession like church organist, beauty counselor or voice teacher to give creative expression to some special talent.
And when Mrs. America’s mister said ‘till death do us part,” he meant it!
Not one separation in all except in the line of military duties.”
Of course if Mom were to read further in that Newsweek article about the young wife with a brain who seemed to have it all, she would read about the boredom and stagnation that was creeping into the lives of thousands of young wives. “She is dissatisfied with a lot that women of other lands can only dream of,” the magazine reported. “Her discontent is deep, pervasive and impervious to the superficial remedies which are offered at every hand.”
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.
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.
(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.
“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.
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.”
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 15th 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.
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.
Vintage Coca Cola Ads (1953) (R) WWII ad 1944 Coke in New Zealand
During WWII the boys overseas were fighting for Mom, apple pie and a bottle of Coke.
Coca Cola, as much a part of the American Dream as a white picket fence and baseball, has symbolized the American way of life, no more so than during WWII when Coke aligned itself with blatantly patriotic themed ads. Coca Cola went to remarkable lengths to make sure their soft drink was never far from the front lines, and the fighting men never forgot.
Years later, long after the boys had returned home triumphant from the war, Memorial Day was a day for remembrance, backyard barbeques and in my family, consuming lots of coca cola.
What better way to honor our fallen heroes than with a patriotic, freedom loving frosty bottle of Coke that sweet elixir that had helped the greatest generation win the war.
Like today, Memorial Day in 1961 was the opening salvo for summer in the suburbs. The season’s first barbecue was always a joint operation among my family members, handled with the precision of a war maneuver.
The base of operation was our suburban backyard.
Like clockwork, the convoy of cargo carrying relatives arrived loaded with essential supplies. My Aunt Judy’s peppy whoop-de-doo potato salad was always popular and Aunt Helen’s picnic perfect double dutch slaw habitually a hit.
But the most eagerly anticipated contribution was the cache of Coca Cola courtesy of Moms cousin Milton who schlepped wooden cases of Coke straight from the bottling plant he managed in Maspeth Queens.
While wives stayed safely behind the lines, the men folk were recruited and deployed to the front, where Dad was CO in charge of the Barbeque Brigade.
Well fortified to do battle with cokes firmly in hand, they mobilized around the Weber grill in a primal huddle of their own as they anxiously awaited orders.
Like the infantry sent to do battle, these buttoned down bar-b-que enthusiasts, combat ready in their comfort-in-action-perma- press Bermuda shorts, gathered on all sides of the roaring fire while my older, Great uncles stylishly at ease in their Decoration day best white leather Italian styled slip on shoes, remained safely under the striped awning, offering tactical assistance like battle-scarred retired officers from the comfort of their glider aluminum lawn chairs.
The torch had indeed been passed to a new generation, our war hero President Kennedy had informed us, and passed directly into the hands of these bespectacled men in clingy ban-lon, all of whom had served our country in the Second World War.
Only 15 years earlier, this bunch of balding band of brothers, blissfully barbecuing in my backyard, had returned war-weary but triumphant in their GI issued haircuts, to confetti and parades from that greatest of all wars.
Strategically wielding the Big Boy barbecue tongs, Dad was ready for any barbecue maneuver. A king size cigaretteYou get a lot to like with a Marrr-boro/ fil-terrr/fla-vvor/flip top box- dangling from his lips, barbecue apron round his regulation plaid Bermuda shorts, his smart masculine styling rated a fashion 21 gun salute.
With the precision used to plan a bombing mission in the south pacific, Dad calculated the wind velocity, temperature and cloud coverage when making the perfect fire, skills learned as a meteorologist in the Army Air Corp while serving in New Guinea.
Eagerly biting into a tongue scalding frankfurter hot off the grill, Moms cousin Milton, a short and stubby man, his GI regulation washboard abs having long gone AWOL leaving his ever-expanding belly stretching the outer limits of his Acrylan shirt, never failed to offer up war stories and his contribution to winning the war. “I have just one word for you-Coca Cola!” he would state firmly, gobbling his hot dog with gusto.
During the war Milton had been a “Coca Cola Colonel” one of 148 Coke employees sent abroad to oversee the installation and management of makeshift bottling plants to serve the US Army wherever they served. With his US Army uniform and rank of Technical Observer this four-eyed kid from Brooklyn was treated as an officer, and was deemed as vital as those other TO’s who fixed tanks or airplanes.
WWII Coca Cola ad 1944 “Have a Coke =Soldier, refresh yourself, or the way to relax in training camp”
In 1941 Coca Colas president Robert Woodward made the famous order declaring that “everyman in uniform gets a bottle of Coca Cola for 5 cents wherever and whatever it costs.”
However for many men serving overseas, a soda fountain would be something they could only dream of. The logistical headache was the problem. To reach GI’s overseas in significant numbers the company would have to build bottling plants where the fighting was going on in the combat theaters.
The boys could thank General Eisenhower for getting the ball rolling. In 1943 in an attempt to raise morale, he sent a classified cable from Allied headquarters in North Africa asking for 10 bottling plants and enough syrup to provide his men with 6 million Soft drinks, No wonder the boys “liked Ike.”
The Coca Cola company was more than happy to comply with Eisenhower’s orders.
WWII Coca Cola Ad 1945 Phillipines. The ad shows a Coke jungle dispenser painted green for camouflage
Wherever the American Army went so did Coca Cola. “Anywhere for a nickel,” Milton boasted. “From the jungles of Admiral Islands to the officer clubs in Riviera. There would be a convoy of army trucks carrying a complete bottling plant from Calcutta into China, on the Burma Road climbing mountains and crossing pontoon bridges. “
In the remote island of New Guinea, the land of C rations, Spam and dehydrated foods, where Coke would remain a distant memory of home for my father.
The South Pacific was one of the more difficult problems for Technical Officers like Milton. After considerable brainstorming, a portable soda fountain that had been used at drugstore conventions was re-commissioned, painted green for camouflage and enlisted to help quench the thirst of jungle bound soldiers like Dad. The army quickly ordered hundred more of these jungle fountains
Nearly 1,100 of these units were used in the Pacific. (The Philippines ad shows a jungle dispenser painted green for camouflage
Vintage Coca Cola Advertisements (L) Seventh Inning Stretch (R) WWII ad 1945 Battle seasoned Seabees turning in refreshments on the Admirality Isles
The excitement caused by a coke and its reminders about the local corner drugstore to homesick GI’s on a tropical island halfway across the world from the US was unparalleled, When the war started the soldiers craved a piece of home to remind them what they were fighting for. Soldiers wanted 4 things from home: mail, cigarettes, chewing gum and coke.
“For these homesick boys to have a Coke was like having home brought near you” Milton would explain. “Sometimes its just one of the little things of life that really counted, the familiar sweet taste turned it into a poignant reminder of home, instantly bringing back memories of maybe Ebbetts Field and hot dogs or a pretty girlfriend back home in the drugstore over a Coke. I can truthfully say, he would comment wistfully,” I hadn’t t seen smiles on the boys faces as they did when they saw Coke in those Godforsaken places.”
Gathering for the Family Backyard Barbecue-Vintage illustration McCall’s Magazine 1955
A summer staple at my 1960′s family barbeques was the ritual hot dog competition not in competitive eating but dissecting who made the best toothsome well turned frank.
The mouth-watering aroma of grilling franks wafting through the suburban air sparked the inevitable debate about who made the best hot dog.
A Hot Dog Makes Them Love Control! Vintage advertisements (L) Del Monte Catsup 1961 (R) Gleam Toothpaste 1950s
The faithful kosher deli coalition whose Hebrew National dogs were grilled flat on a gas griddle to a crispy puckering finish, scoffed at the sacrilege of the “dirty water dogs” languishing in a warm water bath sold by the city street vendors, whose devotees swore by the steamed Sabretts, heaped high with rich day-glo orange-colored sweet-tart onion sauce.
Loyalists to NYC’s West Side Greys Papaya formed an unlikely alliance with their East Side rival Papaya King, both of which thought it blasphemous to wash down a frank with anything but papaya juice, certainly never an orange drink, even if the frank dressed with mustard relish and nestled in a buttered toasted bun was “Good …like Nediks!”
For some the pontificating took on the seriousness of a rabbinic argument, though in actuality it more closely resembled a bunch of kids arguing over which were the best baseball cards, Topps in the nickel wax pack or Bazookas cut from panels on the gum boxes, and like both discourses, no one ever won the dispute.
With the dexterity and skills of a fencer, Dad nimbly poked and prodded the franks on the grill. Normally the only dogs to sizzle on our Weber were those approved by a Higher Authority, Hebrew National, but as a surprise my grandfather had brought us cartons of gen-u-ine New York Yankee- approved-Stahl Meyer hot dogs direct from their Ridgewood Queens factory.
The boxes of pork and beef frankfurters were more than likely a token of thanks to my pawnbroker grandfather from a Stahl Meyer delivery truck driver with a penchant for poker who had pawned his Timex for the umpteenth time.To show his appreciation for my grandfathers leniency, he had made an unscheduled “delivery” to Edelstein Brothers Pawnshop on his regular route supplying dogs to Yankee stadium
The very mention of a Stahl Meyer hot dog brought boyish grins across generations of Dodger and Giants fans, instantly transporting my curmudgeon great Uncles and their broad beamed sons from the comfort of their webbed aluminum lawn chairs to the hard, gray painted, wood slatted seats of the bleachers of the old Polo Grounds and Ebbitts Field.
Even those observant Jews like my Great Uncle Leo who would never dream of eating a hot dog that wasn’t kosher, crossed a sacred boundary with ease at a baseball game.
Like eating at a Chinese Restaurant, age-old prohibitions were suspended for the day, as he willingly succumbed to the enticing aroma of a steamy Stahl Meyer dog fished out of rapidly cooling water by vendors dressed in white lugging around iron trays shouting “They’re skinless and boneless and harmless and homeless” as they bounded up and down the narrow aisles.
For some members of my family any hot dog that wasn’t a kosher Hebrew National, might well have been the same as barbecuing bacon.
As Dad casually nudged the plump Hebrew Nationals to one side of the grill, my great Aunt Rena watched like a hawk making certain that a rogue Stahl Meyer frank did not accidentally defect over to the other side of the barbecue. It wasn’t just that these franks were not sanctified by rabbinic law, no it was far worse.
These dogs had Deutschland written all over them.
As if the factory was on the Rhine and not Ridgewood Queens, Aunt Rena shuddered at the thought of some former Bund Deutscher Madel blue-eyed blonde, meat-packing Fräulein fondling the Fuher’s frankfurters in their natural casings, while lustily humming the Nazi anthem “Horst Wessel song.”
Vintage Ad (L) Skinless Franks 1948 (R) Vintage Saturday Evening Post Cover 7/31/43 illustration Kenneth Stuart
Ridgewood, where the hot dogs were manufactured was a notoriously German neighborhood.
Not surprisingly, Aunt Rena was not the only family member who was convinced its many multi family row houses built-in the 1920s by Germans for Germans , brick by golden-colored Kreischer brick, was still populated by men in brown shirts, black Jack boots and wide Sam Browne Belts, rank and file members of the German American Volksbund who 25 years earlier, believed in Nazi power and strength to conqueror the world who still refused to embrace Aus der traum.
As the Stahl Meyer dogs rolled perilously close to the Hebrew Nationals, a shiver of terror went through some of my relatives, as if Joseph Goebbels himself had cheerfully stuffed those plump terra-cotta tubes with not only pork and spices, but a hefty serving of Nazi propaganda for good measure.
When it came to Germany, a wall had already been built by my family, beating the Russians by a full decade.
May I make the Introduction, Mother? Vintage ad Anscochrome Film 1959
Here’s Your Hat…Whats Your Hurry?
While the Duchess of Cambridge, like most new Moms today, will get a very un royal speedy exit from the hospital after giving birth to her new little prince, my own mid-century Mom was treated like a Queen with a full 10 day stay in the hospital after giving birth to her own little princess…me.
When I was born in 1955, a hospital stay of at least 10-14 days was a must, although some progressive hospital sent patients home in as little as 7.
9L) Vintage Illustration Baby in Womb (R) Johnson & Johnson Vintage Ad 1949
The stay in the hospital mirrored the lengthy time I spent in my mother’s womb.
Apparently I was in no rush to be born.
Just as a giant sigh of relief was heard echoing around the world full of royal baby watchers when Kate Middleton finally went into labor, so my own family could relax when, after my own due date came and went, my mother finally went into labor.
Since I had taken up residency for over 9 months in my mothers womb, I felt entitled to squatter’s rights. However, by late March my lease was nearly up and option for renewal was out of the question.
A creature of comfort I was unenthusiastic about the prospect of relinquishing the premises and would have been happy to stay put indefinitely. Despite the fact that the cozy quarters had become a bit claustrophobic and there wasn’t much of a view, you just couldn’t beat the amenities.
Regardless of my reluctance to leave, Mom was more than happy to serve an eviction notice on me. Could she possibly get any bigger, she despaired. Dad joked that she was expanding as rapidly as the Russians were over Eastern Europe.
“Carnation House Formula used in best Hospitals” Vintage Ad Carnation Milk 1945
Once I was born my ten-day all-inclusive, all expense paid vacation in St Josephs Hospital was about to begin.
After fluffing up Moms pillows, a lovely nurse, who bore a striking resemblance to Nurse Cherry Ames, dressed in a crisp white uniform, her starched white cap perched on bouncing black curls, would bring me to Mom for my feeding. Wrapped in a sterile blanket,a sterile feeding sheet was spread over the bed-clothes.
Although we were “housemates” sharing the same body for over nine months, for the entire ten-day stay in the hospital, we were never roommates-my mother was in her room and I was in the nursery. We wouldn’t be formally introduced for several hours, at which time I could look forward to my very first meal.
After months of ordering in -“womb service”- I was looking forward to my first home cooked meal outside the womb.
Any hopes of latching onto a breast and getting me some bone fide mothers milk were quickly dispelled.
“Babies begin life on Dextrose Sugar” Vintage Ad 1941
My Mom knew that most modern babies “begin life on Dextrose.” Being a typical up-to-date-American baby, my very first mouthful of nourishment was a synthetic, sweetened bottle formula, sipped through a-its-so-life-like-just-like-mother-latex-rubber nipple.
Talk about whetting your appetite for future petroleum-based products.
In fact at the tender age of three minutes, I was baptized in a soothing petroleum product. I could look forward to a cornucopia of baby lotions, potions and potables that came from petroleum. These, their producer Shell oil confidently promised, would start your baby on his way to the 57,805 gallons of oil, they reckoned he’d use in a lifetime. (Lots of it from Shell they hoped.)
While Mom was still groggy from the anesthesia, a bouncy candy striper had handed her a colorful pamphlet (thoughtfully distributed by Carnation Milk) discouraging breast-feeding.
Why nurse baby when there were herds of Carnations contented cows more than willing to offer up their services. Breast feeding might be okay for Elsie the Cow, but not for my post war-mom.
To her surprise Moms roommate, who gently tossed the booklet aside, was quietly breast-feeding. Mom was bewildered. Why live in the dark ages when modern science and medical know how could make feeding so easy.
Vintage Illustration from Ad A&P Evaporated Milk 1948
Doctors did little to encourage breast-feeding and why should they.
Concocted by chemists in a lab, scientific baby formula was marketed as being as complicated as nuclear science and just as precise, so unless you had majored in bio-chemistry and physics, you would require detailed instructions from your doctor. Since formula feedings needed the special skills only he could provide, the pediatrician elevated his position in the mother’s life, and in his bank account.
Bottle-feeding formula became increasingly the norm, the relaxing, modern scientific, way. Feeding at fingertip control.
A Helping Hand From Dad- Vintage illustration from Penn Life Insurance ad 1955
Prince William is sure to be a hands on kind of Dad. Today’s Dads are much more engaged and involved in their baby’s birth and care than fathers from previous generations who were generally pictured as bumbling fools when it came to babies.
My Dad, like many mid-century Dads, had been left out in the cold during most of the pregnancy.
Even though Togetherness was the decades foolproof formula for family fun and fellowship, the warm and fuzzy tableau of togetherness didn’t get all tangled up with the messy business of birth.
Not withstanding the fact that Madison Avenue had become enamored with the idea of an entirely new type of fatherhood, portraying snappy pappy’s not just behind the wheel of a new Buick but behind a baby stroller, real-life fathers were still kind of an after thought when it came to babies.
In the hospital if my father had wanted to see his baby, he had to stand outside a nursery window, tap on the plate glass and look beseechingly at the night nurse.
Squinting through her coke bottle glasses, she would then check my tiny name bracelet made up of pink plastic beads, scoop me up as I snuggled into her thick white sweater and bring me over for a viewing through the window while Dad waved.
Of course he knew the hospital was right in guarding his baby and all the others from any outside germs.
But he would make up for that- he wanted to be a new kinda dad -a hands on kinda dad, transforming into the very model of togetherness.
My father may have said he wanted to be hands on kinda Dad but it was my Mother who had her hands filled.
Once the the baby nurse was gone, 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? Fuhhgedaboutitt! 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.
Vintage Magazines (L) Ladies Home Journal Oct. 1958 (R) Ladies Home Journal May 1959
But coming to Mothers rescue was the new kinda Dad. American Dads coast to coast were getting involved in child care, a trend so remarkable Life Magazine gushed enthusiastically on the phenomenon, calling the New American Domesticated Male the greatest advances in parenting.
Like many of the new kinds of Dads, Marvin had read excerpts of Dr Spock in Readers Digest. A booster for togetherness, the good doctor assured him, that active fatherhood needn’t deplete his testosterone levels: “You can be a warm father and a real man at the same time.”
Of course, Spock made it abundantly clear, he didn’t mean that the father had to give just as many bottles or change just as many diapers as mother. But it’s okay for the big brute to do these things occasionally.
Togetherness was fine as long as it fit father’s timetable.
Unlike Mom, in Dads version of togetherness, tedious, time consuming tasks were optional, picking and choosing chores like it was some sort of Chinese Menu, taking a time-out when ever he wanted.
“Madam! Suppose you traded jobs with your husband?” this vintage ad from Bell telephone asks. At a time when most families had one phone, the addition of a kitchen phone was a luxury, but soon became a necessity in the sprawling suburbs. “You can just bet the first thing he would ask for would be a telephone in the kitchen.” ” You wouldn’t catch him dashing to another room every time the telephone rang or he had to make a call! “ “He doesn’t have to do it in his office in town. It would be mighty helpful if you didn’t have to do it in ‘your’ office’ at home.”
Bottle Service
Preparing my bottles appealed to the master mixologist in Dad, so Sunday mornings became his day for making the formula.
Since he knew a thing or two about mixing a mean martini- he applied the same skills in making my bottles. Fumbling around like the sorcerers apprentice he sterilized, measured and capped in great clouds of steam, mixing enough bottles for round the clock imbibing. His motto- keep ‘em clean and keep ‘em generous.
However when he decided to streamline the preparation using a cocktail shaker, his bottle tending license was quickly revoked.
She purrs like a kitten! (L) Vintage Chevy ad (R) Vintage ad Carnation Milk 1955
In the weeks to come, my snapshot totin’-puffed- up- proud papa would chew the ears off the boys in the office with his gloating, but you never could be sure if he was swooning over his new two- toned ‘55 Chevy… or me.
“You’ve never seen its equal”, he boasted, “This is a masterpiece of design” he would crow, remarking on the fine workmanship and ease of handling. “Of course,” he’d chuckle, “she’s born of a team of great engineering! And just check the chassis,” he’d brag, flashing the Brownie snapshots around.
“She sure looks like a honey to handle” they all agreed.
Detail of Collage by Sally Edelstein “And They Lived Happily Ever After” Appropriated vintage images. The end of Camelot saw our own fantasy’s begin to crack
The nuclear family was once as American as the nuclear bomb. But by the end of the 1960′s the nuclear family detonated along with our notion of marriage and motherhood.
Parenting and partnering were not a priority for the newly liberated lady…..just ask Mad Men’s Peggy Olson.
And They Lived Happily Ever After…
As the decade drew to a close, the New Frontier years of Camelot came to a crashing halt and turned out to be just one more fairy tale.
It wasn’t long before the spell was broken and we realized not everyone would live happily ever after like Cinderella.
The only shining white knight coming to the housewives rescue would be the Ajax White Knight galloping into her suburban neighborhood destroying dirt in his path with his magic lance.
Only 10 years earlier, the family’s outlook had never been brighter.
McCall’s Magazine even created a term for this Togetherness.
Along with the rest of the media, the real mad men of Madison Avenue painted the same glowing picture of the American family emphatic in their belief that the family was the center of your living and if it wasn’t you’ve gone astray… or you’re a communist!
Some magazine articles even went so far as to imply that a woman’s failure to bear children was a quasi perversion and just plain unnatural. Nothing was more patriotic than having children and like the steel industry, mothering was running at close to 100% capacity.
Waxy Yellow Build Up
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Detail of Collage by Sally Edelstein “White Wash” Appropriated vintage illustrations of American Housewives from the 1950s and 1960s
With their gleaming Ipana smiles, happy homemakers asked nothing more of others than to refrain from scuffing up the shine on her freshly Glo coated floor.
In a world rampant with wars , rioting and male entitlement, these happy housewives may have been smiling but more than likely they were numb from Miltown or Valium.
Like underground nuclear testing anger was to be buried beneath the surface, but the fall out would soon appear. Before the decade was out women would become as agitated as their miracle 2 agitator washers.
But by the late 1960’s happy housewives with their smiling faces dressed in harmonized shades to match their carefree kitchen appliances, were, like those same retro appliances replaced for a newer model.
Nuclear Family Meltdown
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Detail of collage by Sally Edelstein “Always Ask a Man” An amalgam of mass media stereotypes of women from the 1950′s and 60′s . A reshuffling of clichés about popular cultures representation of female choices.
With the bewitching speed and ease of Samantha Stevens twitching her nose the job a generation of women had trained for was suddenly obsolete by 1970. Along with their bras, women libbers threw out the American housewife and June Cleaver got kicked to the curb.
The single gal exploded on the scene knocking the married lady off her pedestal. Ads proclaimed: “It’s your time to shine baby and we don’t mean pots and pans!”
As if hit by a strong dose of radiation, the familiar 1950’s nuclear family in the media had mutated into monstrous families as June and Ward Cleaver were replaced by Lilli and Herman Munster.
Has the selling of the 1950’s nuclear family finally reached it’s expiration date?
In a consumer culture of unlimited choices, Madison Avenue has long sold only one brand of the American family…and it is now a bit shopworn.
Never was the notion of the idealized nuclear family more potent or more seductive than in mid-century America. The much cherished, deeply engrained ideal of Mom, Dad, Sis and Jr. was solidified into our shared iconography in the post-war years when America went on a binge of family life.
Family Construct
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“Dads like a kid again when Bill and Bobby bring out their construction set. And Mom and Betty can’t resist a little “experting” on the sidelines. At all family affairs 7 up is a welcome part of everybody’s fun. 7-Up the all family drink-is a good friend of youngest and oldest alike. Be a fresh family…every member can be a 7 Up steady.” Vintage 7-Up advertisement 1949
The Mad Men of mid-century Madison Avenue cleverly created advertising campaigns calculated to sell the perfect family along with the American dream.
Images of the nuclear family exploded in advertising, scattering its potent assumptions of family deep into our collective psyches. And like a toxic overspill, remnants remain in each of us today.
Hawking the romanticized family as much as they sold brand loyalty to beer, cameras, or soft drinks, the ads both reinforced and reflected the fairy tale suburban life, offering a blueprint to the newly minted post-war middle class, living out the American dream.
The Nuclear Family Takes Off! Vintage 7-Up ad 1948
One popular ad campaign was a series of advertisements from 7 Up that created the picture perfect expression of the nuclear family who were as wholesome, bubbly and saccharine sweet as the soda pop itself.
Long before 7 Up was the “wet and wild” happening beverage for the “now generation” it was “The All Family Drink,” the perfect beverage for the perfect suburban family.
The ads which ran from the late 1940′s to the late 1950′s served up an idealized mid-century America enjoying their post-war promises of prosperity, while engaged in happy family living.
Share the Family Fun
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7-Up the wholesome drink for wholesome families! The ads offered Kodacolor snapshots of the American dream made better with 7- Up Vintage 7-Up advertisement 1951
The idyllic snapshots of the American dream family that 7-Up used in the ads all portrayed an eerily homogenous landscape of spacious suburban homes and smiling, prosperous, cheerful, Anglo-Saxon families enjoying fun times together in their suburban rumpus rooms and backyards.
Naturally 7-Up was a regular part of family fun.
This “Happy Family Living” was the image that most advertising and entertainment seemed determined to project and one which served as a template for the idea of family.
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“In Tune with Family Fun! It’s fun when the whole family gathers around Mom at the piano singing and playing their favorite tunes. And cheerful crystal clear 7-Up joins right in because its lively sparkle and clean taste appeal to all ages. It’s a regular part of happy family living in millions of homes. ” Vintage 7-Up Ad 1950
TV’s June and Ward Cleaver or Jim and Margaret Anderson-no slouches when it came to the nuclear family- would have fit right at home in any of these dozens of tableau’s of the American dream.
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“Scores With all the Family- Young Bill may be the best bowler, but its pretty evident there’s another top scorer with the whole family. 7-Up lends its own good cheer to every family activity.” Vintage 7-Up ad 1950
All in the Family Drink
They really meant it when they suggested that sparkling clear 7-Up was the “All Family drink.” Several ads were directed at the playpen set. Because 7-Up was so pure, so good..so wholesome “…folks of all ages including little tots can “fresh up” with as much 7 -Up as they want, and as often as they want.”
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“Really got a grip on that 7 Up haven’t you big boy? asks this 1953 Seven Up ad. “Go right ahead “fresh up to your heart’s content! Mom knows sparkling crystal clear 7 up is so pure so good so wholesome that folks of all ages even little guys like you can enjoy it often.” Babyboomers could get hooked for life.
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“Pint size players can have big league thirsts and these little sand lot sultans of swat really know whats good for ‘em- and good to ‘em!” Vintage 7-Up ad 1953
Enjoy Good Times and Togetherness
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“Bright and lively 7-Up is right down your alley whether you’re out bowling with the family or having your family at home!” Vintage 7-Up ad 1953
Funs a Poppin’ With 7-Up
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Home Hearth and Kids. “Here’s a plot for happy autumn evenings…the fire glowing on the hearth the corn’s a popping and plenty of sparkling crystal clear 7-Up” Vintage 7 Up ad 1953
Perfect for any suburban family pow wow. Seven Up is “one of the family” whether you’re working or playing. For friendly cheerful 7 Up adds its own lively sparkle to any occasion.” Honest Injun! Vintage 7-Up ad 1951
End Note
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The advertising of those years have done so much to shape our impression of the era.
In the process, they came to crystallize some of the great American self delusions of the 1950s. By 1969 even Mad Men’s Peggy Olson wondered “Do family’s like this really exist anymore? Are there people who eat dinner and smile at each other instead of watching TV?”
Today as the very definition of family has gone through transformation allowing for more diversity, some still cling to the dusty and outmoded notions of the nuclear family that are as outdated as these vintage images.
Once upon a time, but not too long ago, all Dads were king.
Not only for a measly third Sunday in June, but to believe the mid-century American advertiser, the head of the household was the sovereign ruler of his suburban dominion the year round.
But it was on that special date proclaimed Fathers Day, a day filled with pageantry and celebration, that all his subjects paid homage bearing royal gifts worthy of his majesty.
When I was growing up in the 1950′s and 60′s, Father’s Day was a day of protocol, precedent and custom.
Truth be told, in our house my father was known more as the Queen’s Husband than as Sovereign ruler, not unlike England’s Prince Phillip.
But not on Fathers Day, when his throne was never more secure nor its occupant more firmly rooted in his subjects affections.
A Suburban Fathers Day
While Mom was busy washing the dishes from the royal breakfast feast, our King for a day, his most excellent majesty, Marvin, sat in regal isolation in his Naughahyde Barca-Lounger throne.
With a Kaywoodie briar pipe as his scepter, resplendent in his Dacron wash ‘n wear pajamas, he wore a crudely constructed cardboard crown given as a promotion from Big Al’s Appliance Store atop his prematurely balding head.
Contently he basked in the glow of the day as presents were offered on bended knee, displayed before him for his approval.
Nothing said “Thanks, Pop” like a splendid no-wrinkle Acrylan mu-mu sport shirt with authentic south sea prints. Who said a ruler couldn’t be a snappy pappy?
What was more worthy of a king than a distinguished pair of fairway themed cotton boxers with golf balls and nine irons cleverly printed across the fabric?
Every imperial leader needed a touch of bracing after-shave now and again, the woodsy aroma the very finest in masculinity, whose daily use helped give the royal face a clean magnetic masculine air.
A Pipe and Slippers Fit for a King (L) Vintage Fathers Day ad Evans Slippers 1951 (R) Vintage ad Zippo Lighters For Fathers Day
But for my Dad no princely ban-lon shirt, crush resistant slacks, tiki print tie, no, not even an out of this world, newer-than-tomorrow electric razor could light up his countenance the way something truly fit for a Royal did -a 1 pound canister of Prince Albert tobacco- “the national joy smoke.”
Like Old King Cole Dad was never merrier than when smoking his briar wood pipe, packing it tight with his Prince Albert tobacco.
“More than you know, perhaps…you do wonderful things for Dad by giving him a Kaywoodie pipe.” the ads promised. “You give far more in fact than the countless sweet hours of relaxation this luxury pipe brings to a man.”
Of course governing can be a stressful job so when he wasn’t puffing on a pipe, Dad could be found relaxing with a soothing cigarette.
Lucky for us, mid-century tobacco manufacturers were more than happy to lend a hand on Fathers Day coming out with a line of special gift-wrapped Father Day cartons and canisters fit for a king.
Vintage ads Camel, Cavalier Cigarettes and Prince Albert Tobacco for Fathers Day 1953
RJ Reynolds Tobacco company reassured its readers that our choice was a wise one and truly fit for a beloved monarch:
“Nearest and dearest to Dad- next to you- are his favorite cigarette or his faithful pipe. One of the things closest to your father are his smokes-his cigarette or his pipe. He carries them with him wherever he goes…they’re always part of the picture when he relaxes.”
“When it’s a gift from loved ones it’s doubly precious”
Of course not as precious as all those years lost from developing emphysema. And that pipe line to his heart eventually found its way there with a heart attack at age 60.
A Visit to grandparents – visiting Queens with Dick, Jane and Sally
It was Thanksgiving weekend of 1960.
Just like the mythical Dick, Jane and Sally would visit Grandmother and Grandfather on their farm, I was off for an overnight visit with mine in Queens, NY.
Clutching my Fun with Dick and Jane Primer to occupy me during the car ride to my grandparents apartment, I was entranced with the colorful illustrations of the bucolic farm.
Vintage children’s schoolbook illustrations from “We Read Pictures”- Dick, Jane & Sally 1956
I could imagine myself frolicking among the pastoral, green meadows, and picturesque pastures, sitting on the front porch of the charming country farmhouse with Grandmother shucking ears of corn, watching Grandfather milk the contented cows, in the rustic old barn.
And best of all, just like my namesake Little Sally, my very own pony to ride. It was so lush and green I half expected the Jolly Green Giant to suddenly appear in the verdant valley. Ho-Ho-Ho
Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmothers House We Go…
But there was nothing bucolic about Queens Boulevard.
It always came as a surprise that my fastidious grandmother lived in a borough that always looked as if it could use a good scrubbing.
As we drove to my grandparents on that last Saturday in November of 1960, the clear blue skies of suburban Nassau County gradually gave way to a dingy, dishwater gray as we entered Queens.
Whereas the suburbs was a place where every single thing seemed infused with newness glittering with promise, Queens was a borough in which everyone and everything looked as if they had long since passed their expiration date. Its endless blocks of desolate looking warehouses were flanked by squat, dingy buildings and grimy factories; its streets lined with rows of dreary two family attached houses, the grim blue and white statues of Mary, forlornly standing watch over the postage-stamp sized lawns,.
New Horizons
Could this be the same Queens , the home of the great World of Tomorrow that was the 1939 NY Worlds fair? Driving along Robert Mose’s Grand Central Parkway my parents never failed to point out the site where the Worlds Fair had miraculously sprung up out of a garbage dump.
The air was thick with a steady stream of soot, steam and smoke belching from the multitude of factories that dotted the landscape. But the rich yeasty aroma of fresh-baked bread emanating from the Silver Cup Bread Factory that would miraculously find its way in through the slightest crack in the closed windows of our Plymouth, made up for everything else.
As we approached my grandparent’s apartment in Astoria, the wide noisy roadways were darkened by a great tangle of elevated subway tracks, the BMT trains screeching around curves at all hours on the tracks overhead, blocking out whatever sunshine there was adding a sense of foreboding.
(L) Vintage children’s book illustration (R) Apartment building Queens, NY
Because my grandparents still lived in the same brick, Art-Deco-Moderne apartment house that my father grew up in, by the simple act of walking through the graceful arched entrance way of the once fashionable Buckingham Arms Apartments, I was entering the world of my father’s youth.
The tiny, elevator which four people, a valise and a multitude of shopping bags, all managed to squeeze into, perpetually smelled of cooking cabbage and Pinesoil cleaner.
As the wheezy, groaning elevator doors with their smudged porthole windows, eventually closed, sealing us in this airless chamber in a state of limbo, I had the sinking realization that we had left the safety and familiarity of the shiny new suburbs, where modern taste was part of better living, where no house was older than I was and no parent older than mine.
When at last the heavy metal doors parted in agonizingly slow motion, they opened up into a dim, cheerless, hallway filled with echoes and ghosts.
It was as if the elevator had morphed into Mr. Peabody’s WAY-BAC Machine, transporting me back in time to the 1930’s.
In an instant, I had moved uneasily from the fresh brisk sparkle of the Pepsi generation into the musty, sluggish, moth-balled world fueled by Geritol. With overnight valise in one hand, and my Tiny Tears doll in the other, I gingerly entered my father’s childhood.
Normally, while Jews across the country begin celebrating Hanukkah, the festival of lights, Christians have had a good 2 week start on them with their own festival of lights- the installation of Xmas lights.
Along with Black Friday the official kick off for the display of Xmas lights seems to happen as soon as the last piece of pumpkin pie is eaten on Thanksgiving.
Like clockwork, hundreds of tiny electric lights of all colors magically appear on storefronts and homes, trees and shrubs across the land. One can hardly find a street in America during the month of December where the majority of houses are not lit up in a dazzling display of lights.
Eight skinny, little Hanukkah candles can’t even begin to compete with vibrating LED lights pulsating in sequence to the tune of gangnamstyle.
When I was growing up, a favorite family activity -a true example of 1950’s togetherness- was driving around my suburban neighborhood admiring the dazzling display of Xmas lights.
Looking at Christmas decorations was as much a holiday ritual for me as playing spin the dreidel.
No sooner would we finish lighting our Hanukkah candles on our silver-plated menorah than we’d load up in the car to drive around the neighborhood in pursuit of this most American display of merriment – a twinkling winter embodiment of the American dream. Suddenly plain, lack luster split levels were dressed up in their holiday best, each competing with the other for the most dramatic and colorful display of electric Christmas lights.
By the time we returned home, our own little holiday candles dripping and drooping in a pool of wax, had forlornly reached the end of their illumination. The flickering reflection of a distant neighbors colorful Xmas lights reflected in our darkened home.
We may have had 8 days of Hanukkah but they had nearly 6 weeks of illuminated glory. That glittering part of the American dream winking at us seductively from neighbors homes was always just outside my grasp.
In the winter of 1961, I was actually invited into the inner sanctum of one of those illuminated homes by my first grade classmate Linda Harris. As my Mom dropped me off at her house I stood outside in my Snowster Gaytee rubber boots in the snow and stared at the glittering house.
An illuminated, translucent plastic Santa mask beamed at me merrily from their large picture window. His glowing, jolly face intending to radiate good cheer was in fact a bit frightening. The door was gaily decorated with bright red vinyl plastic streamers with 8 tinkling bells in graduated sizes, the jingling of bells announcing my arrival.
Once inside the exotic smell of balsam and baking holiday ham filled my virgin nostrils.
If it were true that GE brings good things to life it was certainly true in my friend’s home where every corner of her living room was magically a glow, thanks to the wizards at General Electric, Westinghouse and Sylvania.
There in front of me stood their tree majestically filling the room. The big gleaming globes of glass ornaments that had been taken down from their attic now hung on the branches of the Douglas Fir. The ornament’s lustrous colors with silk screened designs of Santa and reindeer, holly and jingle bells shimmered, reflecting the twinkling string of electric lights.
The tiny tree lights twinkled independently and the effect was mesmerizing.
The twinkling lamps called fairy lights made merry little pinging sounds as each flashed on and off. However to the family’s great consternation, their Philco TV was constantly on the fritz with the twinkling of lights. The winking lights caused severe electrical interference on both television and radio, causing snow to appear on the TV screen as often as it did outside.
But nothing was more magical than the electric bubble lights nestled on the tree. Bubble Lights were all the rage and the Harris family were not short of supply
Bubble lights were tiny glass tubes styled like miniature candles and their holders, filled with a colored liquid that bubbled rhythmically as the bulb inside heated up the liquid creating merry little bubbles The sparkle of tiny bubbles in motion added to their cheery glow as they flickered like the candle it was supposed to replace.
When all was said and done, it all came back to candles even if their electric candles were filled with the chemical methelyne chloride to create that intoxicating holiday glow.
Once upon a time the only way to light a tree before electricity was with candles.
Though a tree lit with candles was a charming sight, it was to say the least quite dangerous. Originally the candles were just attached to the tree by dripping hot wax on the branch and pressing the base of the candle on it. Eventually candle holders were designed just for this purpose came on the market.
The open flames coming in contact with pine needles especially on dried out trees could generate a fire. Cautiously, most homeowners kept a bucket of water or sand near the tree for such emergencies.
Despite their danger, the use of small candles remained the popular method of illuminating Xmas trees well into the 20th century.
General Electric was the first to market a Xmas light set in 1903.
Referred to as “Festoons” the 24 bulb set was priced at a hefty $12. While this may not seem too expensive today, the cost was out of the reach of most people The average wage for the time was 22 cents per hour which equaled a weekly paycheck of about $13.20. Electric Xmas lights were for basically for the wealthy 1%
These early sets did not plug into a wall socket like today. Houses in those days were wired only for lighting so the end of the string had to be in the shape of a screw in light bulb base so that it could connect into an existing wall lamp or ceiling socket.
By the 1920s demand went up and prices went down. As household electricity became more available and “electric servants” became more a part of daily life, strings of electric bulbs became increasingly common on Xmas trees. By the 1930s electric Xmas lights had become a standard of holiday decorating
“Twas the night before Xmas when all through the house, you could hear poor papa yelling “Our Xmas tree lamps won’t light again.”
So begins this 1940 ad for GE Mazda lamps for Christmas. Nothing was more frustrating than a burned out bulb and with GE’s new multiple light strings you could avoid the frustrating holiday hunting of burned out bulbs. When one lamp goes out, others continued to sparkle. “There would be,” they promised no “blackout of holiday joy.”
Vintage ad 1942 Christmas WWII was a practical holiday. Buy War Bonds
1940 would turn out to be the last good Xmas season for a while.
With the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, war was declared. Needless to say Americans holiday spirits were severely dampened. The Xmas 1941 selling season was a dismal one for the lighting manufacturers and that would only be the beginning.
The manufacture of Xmas lights virtually stopped during WWII as the materials were needed for war effort instead. Old string lights that were in warehouses before the war were sold as long as the stock lasted, and then Americans had to make do with their old sets.
A t the end of WWII, pent-up post war enthusiasm for Xmas lighting returned with a vengeance.
War-weary folks were eager to light up their new sub division homes and marketers were happy to oblige. Lighting companies took a full year to recover but by 1946 were able to offer an amazing number of innovative lighting outfits.
Some new types of lamps appeared including the bubble light introduced by NOMA which soon became the worlds best-selling Christmas light set. Bubble Lights were actually invented in the 1930s but NOMA the purchaser of the patents on the lights had to wait till the war was over before they could be manufactured.
Consisting of a colorful candle shaped glass tube filled with a chemical called methylene chloride and a plastic base that holds a light bulb in close contact with the bulb, the units bubble whenever heated. The chemical had such a low boiling point that it would even bubble from the heat of your hand or the sunlight entering the room through a window. The liquid came tinted in several colors
Heavily advertised in 1946 NOMA’s Bubble Lights were the thing to have for a properly decorated Post-War tree.
The next great step forward was the introduction of Permacote finish for Christmas bulbs, which let you use the same bulb indoors or outdoors. An exclusive Westinghouse development the color was provided by colored glass, fused to the bulb itself.
“Yes,” explains this 1951 ad by Westinghouse “Let it rain snow, blow or blizzard…these new Westinghouse Permacote Christmas bulbs will burn steadily with sparkling jewel like brilliance throughout the holiday seasons Their colors can’t chip or peel! It’s not paint! You’ll be smart to insist on Permacote when you buy new tree lights”
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.
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.
(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.
“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.
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.”
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 15th 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.
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.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.On a recent chilly Sunday women started disappearing from ads, magazine covers, billboards and posters directing readers to Not-There.org. Part of a powerful ad campaign to raise awareness of gender inequality, it was a graphic reminder to women “we’re not there yet.”
It’s a déjà vu for the real housewives of the cold war.
70 years ago images of working women suddenly disappeared from the media and it took them over 30 years to return.
During WWII women might have thought that they were finally there…until they weren’t.
Women went from serving the country to serving hubby a beer. L) Vintage ad Canada Drive 1944 (R) Vintage Schlitz Ad 1953
One day, dedicated working women were glorified, proudly featured in articles and advertisements; the next they vanished, replaced by dewy-eyed brides, and happy homemakers with nothing more taxing on their minds then getting rid of ring around the collar.
In a blink of an eye women went from serving the country to serving hubby a beer.
But this wasn’t a campaign to raise awareness. It was a tactical decision.
Most of these women didn’t opt out of working; it was more like they were pushed out by Uncle Sam: “Here’s your pill box hat. What’s your hurry!”
As fierce as Uncle Sam’s Rosie the Riveter campaign was (deployed in WWII to recruit women into the depleted work force) once victory was in view a decidedly different, equally aggressive, operation was launched aimed at these same women.
Women transitioned from working woman to homemaker with push buttons ease. (L) Woman war worker -Vintage ad General Electric 1943 (R) Housewife vintage ad
Not unlike like the post war US defense policy, the media went on a permanent war footing against positive portrayals of women in the workplace.
It was now all out war to get the ladies back into their soon to be fully-loaded Kelvinator kitchens and into high heels.
It would be more than a decade until this secret campaign would reveal itself: “Operation: June Cleaver” would be a huge success!
My mother Betty along with millions of other women of the greatest generation would be one of it’s casualties.
The patriotism was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Everywhere you looked, posters, ads and articles appeared applauding the resourcefulness and ingenuity of Americas working woman, that patriotic lass who had stepped up to fill the shoes of the boys who had gone off to war.
Rosie the Riveter rides the greyhound bus to her job
No effort was spared to get these ladies out of their homes and into the defense plants.
The campaign orchestrated by Uncle Sam’s Office of War Information in collaboration with Madison Avenue, women’s magazines, radio producers and Hollywood, tried overnight to make wearing overalls and operating a lathe glamorous.
When Uncle Sam came calling, these ladies “leaned in” and took over the man power.
Working girls were the new glamor girls and for impressionable teens like my mother Betty it was empowering.
What a difference a year makes. McCalls Magazine went from table setting tips pictured on the left 1941, to a war worker plotting her blueprint for a bomber on the right, 1942. Women were no longer pictured as weak, non mechanical incapable of leadership or unsuited for the challenges of the world.“The day of the lady loafer is almost over.” boasted Margaret Hickey chairperson of the Women’s Advisory Committee to the War Manpower Commission
With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, our very notion of woman’s place was decimated.
A public more accustomed to seeing their women depicted in dainty dresses while luxing the family dishes, were now being bombarded with images of hardy gals dressed in coveralls and bright bandanas doing a mans job
There was nothing a woman couldn’t do and the media couldn’t stop gushing about her.
Typical of these positive ads was one from Kotex. Geared to high school girls like my mother, it typified the wartime emphasis on female strength: “Remember when the boys used to say that girls were made of sugar and spice and all things nice? Those days are gone forever…you’re no sissy now!…”
Talk about girl power!
For a 16-year-old girl it was all thrilling . All around Betty were wives mothers and older women actively engaged in non traditional work; women who had a feeling of accomplishment proud to be part of the war effort. These jobs gave them confidence and a new sense of their capabilities.
(L) Vintage Illustration 1948 by Harry Fredman “Women’s Home Companion” (R) Vintage Brenda Starr Comic Book 1940s
By the fall of 1945 Betty was a college freshman who took her studies seriously.
As editor of Erasmus High School newspaper she had dreams of being a star reporter for a big city daily. But no sob sister stories for her- she didn’t want to get stuck covering the usual girl beat of weddings and social clubs.
No sir, she fancied herself more as a glamorous foreign correspondent type like Martha Gellhorn one of the greatest war correspondents of the twentieth century and the only woman to land at Normandy on D Day. Married to Ernest Hemingway they traveled the front lines together.
Perhaps, Betty pondered, one day she might even report from the front lines standing by her beau Stanley a Marine serving overseas.
“Hats off to the Woman of the Year” begins this 1942 ad from Mutual Life Insurance, lavishing praise on Americas working woman.
Our fighting boys were proud of these women.
Throughout the war, the armed forces newspaper, The Stars and Stripes had been bursting with pride with uplifting, home-front stories of the swell of patriotic cuties in blue overalls and hair bandanas, standing shoulder to shoulder with their men, taking up the load for Uncle Sam.
But as the war drew to a close, Uncle Sam started whistling a different tune, as in a widely circulated War Dept. brochure proclaiming that : “A woman is merely a substitute, like using plastic instead of metal.”
Fueled by fears there wouldn’t be enough jobs for returning servicemen and that Depression conditions might return, the campaign to get women out of the workforce began in earnest. That, coupled with pent-up desires of both women and men to start a family were unleashed, producing an unprecedented idealization of the nuclear family.
The ideal of the family served as a national unifier becoming a symbol of what the American system was all about. It’s what they were fighting for.
Motherhood and the proliferation of baby images were churned out from 1944-1946. Women were about to be enshrined as wives and mothers .
With the same secrecy of the Potsdam conference, a final meeting between Uncle Sam and his media allies commenced to clarify “the post war administration of women” and the rebuilding of the American family.
Those same glowing home front stories, now took a more scolding tone accusing these same patriotic girls of doing “unwomanly” jobs and taking jobs away from the returning men.
GI Joe gets his job back ((L) Vintage Texaco ad praising the working woman 1943 . R) Texaco ad 1945 “I’ll be a Texaco service man again when I get home.”
Articles and advertisements began to appear, that seemed to speak directly to the battle fatigued boys overseas. One ad for instance featured a soldier in combat wistfully daydreaming about the peaceful world he has left behind, yearning for the familiarity of home: “I want my girl back just as she is.”
The media assured the boys the American Dream would be there when they returned, that “life would be just as you left it.”
“… Yes these were the things I was fighting for, waiting for…the soldier asserts.” Vintage ad Kelvinator 1945
No series of advertisements served up a bigger helping of the post war American Dream than the brashly sentimental ads of Nash-Kelvinator.
The ads took on the tone of a letter often written by the hometown gal he left behind who had plenty to dream about too.
In this ad from 1945 the soldier pleads that once he comes home:
“…don’t let anyone tamper with a way of living that works so well.”
“Never fear darling,” – his sweetheart writes him back, that’s the way we all want it. Everything will be here, just as you left it, just as you want it…when you come back to me!
And when you come back from the war you will find, just as you left them, everything your letters tell me you hold dear.
….inside in the living room you’ll find your easy chair, your footstool and your slippers, just as they always were each night before you went away to war.
When you come back you will find nothing changed. Those at home promised that. Here in your town your children are still free to sleep and laugh and play…still free to look at the sky, clear-eyed and unafraid…our house still stands lovely as it always was…
“…Yes, back home to the same town to the same job , you liked so much…to the same America we have always known and loved…where you can work and plan and build…where together we can do things we’ve always dreamed of…where we and our children are free to make our lives what we want them to be…where there is no limits…
”You’ve said, That’s the America I want when I come home again. Ads promised GI Joe that His wife and son will make life what it ought to be once more.
“That’s the America I fought for…that’s the America I’ll be looking for when I come home.”
The way things were.
But the fairy tale American Dream didn’t include working woman.
With Victory in Europe nearing, Seargent First Class Stanley began to echo his GI buddies concerns: “Exactly what was getting into these dames anyway?”
Looking longingly at the pin-up of Betty Grable on his Barracks locker, he began to question what the heck they were fightin’ for if all the girls back home had their heads filled with a lot of hot air and plain baloney.
Would the women be willing to return to the home after the war, they worried in unison.
Even Hemingway was resentful of his glamorous wife Martha Gellhorn’s long absences during her reporting assignments. He famously wrote her “Are you a war correspondent or a wife in my bed? Needless to say They divorced in 1945
Stanley thought about Betty away from home, at college susceptible to all kinds of ideas and nonsense.
He knew she had her heart set on being an ace reporter, solving mysteries and having fabulous adventures. But he didn’t really want her globetrotting around the world in search of sensational stories, not to mention the steamy romances.
And even if Betty did stay at home in N.Y. and get that job as a reporter for a daily paper, he still worried.
Newsrooms were he-man territory. They were smoked filled, grubby joints with spittoons on the floor and racy pin ups on the wall.
He imagined her going out after work with the boys, downing whiskey at some smoky watering hole, staying out late betting on some palooka. This Sergeant First Class didn’t want his wife shouting at boxing matches when she should be home darning his socks and cooking a casserole for him. …and taking care of the children.
It was now important to keep your man in the drivers seat. It was soon feared that the masculinization of career women would drive him away.
The women’s magazines once filled with glowing stories of courageous women were now filled with threatening articles implying that careers and higher education were leading to the masculinization of women with dangerous consequences to the country, the home, the children.
If a woman held an important professional position, they implied, she would lose her womanly qualities affecting the ability of the women as well as her husband to obtain sexual gratification!
And if a career woman had children, watch out.
She turned them into “juvenile delinquents,” “criminals” and “confirmed alcoholics.”
(L) Vintage Magazine cover Colliers 1944 (R) Vintage Tide ad
With victory the tide had turned against working women.
Gone were the ads telling women they could do anything a man could do. Gone were the ads congratulating women for performing double duty on the homefront so brilliantly.
Instead ads began appeared affirming the new conventional wisdom – there was no more important job than wife and mother.
7-UP ads ceased claiming it would produce a good disposition in women in order to win a better job as the ad on the left proclaims, to boasting the beverage would help them be happy homemakers and bring good family cheer.
Womens aspiration would soon go up in smoke. During the war Chesterfield had frequent ad supporting military recruitment and factory work. By 1946 they featured a bride.
There was no more important job than being a wife and mother. So important in fact that in 1946 The Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company offered “wife insurance” in case the poor widowed hubby was left having to cook, clean, shop, do laundry, …etc for himself!
Like many war born romances Betty’s relationship with Stanley soon fizzled out.
But in the fall of 1945 with a post war bounce in her step, Betty returned to school more determined than ever to excel, clear in the things that were really important.
She came to the realization that the highest value and only real worthwhile commitment for a woman was the fulfillment of themselves as wives and mothers.
A barrage of books and an onslaught of articles bombarded the media convincing women to stay home. Working women became the target of vehement attacks by academia, industry and politicians. In fact now the conventional wisdom was that women who wanted to continue working outside the home were neurotic.
Women’s magazines soon replaced the WWII working girl with a loving Mother who became the reigning cover girl for years, solidifying the only real worthwhile commitment for a woman was the fulfillment of themselves as wives and mothers. L) McCalls Cover 1942, (R) Ladies Home Journal cover 1946 illustration Al Parker
In her Junior year in college a crippling cloud of pessimism had drifted over the fate of the modern American Woman and the American family.
According to a 1947 bestselling book both were in dire danger.
In sociology classes all across the country earnest student like my mother cast aside Margaret Mead and devoted college papers to a dense cerebral book co authored by Marynia Farnham and Ferdinand Lundberg, a shrink and sociologist, called Modern Woman:The Lost Sex.
If there was unhappiness and uncertainty in modern life they wrote, it had a sexual reason: modern woman had denied her femininity and her womanly role.
Only by accepting her place as wife, mother homemaker and by erasing her “masculine aggressive” outside interests would woman be content. Women who avoided this natural state were “neurotically disturbed women”.
Operation: June Cleaver – Mission Accomplished. (L) Vintage 1944 Saturday Evening Post Cover of Rosie the Riveter illustration by Robert Riggs (R) Vintage 1955 Saturday Evening Cover – illustration by Steve Dohanos
Operation June Cleaver was a success! Mission Accomplished!
During the post war years, the Culture of Containment was not just a foreign policy but applied to women and their identities as much as it did to the Soviets. Women were to contain their aspirations
It would be a long fifteen years before another, young Jewish woman named Betty, would step forward and write about “the problem that has no name.” So for now my mother Betty would follow in the footsteps of yet another Betty, ol’ reliable Betty Crocker, and become the perfect homemaker.
The sexist suburban landscape. With names like Dandy Boy, The Lawn Boy and Lazy Boy, lawn mowing was clearly male turf. Vintage Illustrations (L) Saturday Evening Post Cover 1955 illustration: Dick Sargent (R) Vintage Ad 1955 Beer Belongs Home life in America Series “Showing Off The New Power Mower” illustration by Fred Siebel
The silent spring morning of my mid-century suburban childhood were broken by the sounds not of birds chirping but of a symphony of puttering gas lawn mowers synchronized all over the neighborhood.
The air would permeate of fresh-cut grass, gasoline and a heavy dose of testosterone
While ladies might putter in the garden, the lawn was strictly male turf.
But there was one fearless housewife in our neighborhood who broke the grass ceiling, venturing boldly and brazenly into that vast male prerogative known as mowing the front lawn.
Most afternoons the Kaffee Klatch of new young mothers from our new development would congregate in one anothers fully loaded Kelvinator kitchen. These recently built ranch houses were part of a bumper crop of housing that were sprouting up with record speed, and now stood in the fields where only a year before Farmer Gutsky planted Long Island potatoes.
The newly minted suburbanites would gather exchanging hints on such vital information as which was the best diaper service, the most reliable milkman, which Jackson Perkins roses were the best to plant in the rocky Long Island soil and how to keep hubby off the links and onto their front lawns with their power mowers.
Who’s the Boss now? Vintage illustration from County Gentleman Magazine 1954
One neighbor who regularly was absent from the Kaffee Klatch was Martha Mc Guinness, the neighborhood’s reigning do- do-it-yourselfer Queen.
As much as my mom raced about like a whirling dervish, she was no match for Martha who more often than not missed out on the Kaffee Klatches for some do it yourself project like installing some new asbestos Kentile floor covering in the baby’s room.
Be Modern…go Lawn Boy! Not just for boys anymore. Vintage Lawn Boy ad 1955
All the girls marveled at Martha.
A freckled face 22-year-old mother of three she didn’t let pregnancy or a household of toddlers get in her way. After all, there’s so much to do to get ready for that little bundle of joy.
The Lady and the Lawnmower
Even with a “bun in the oven” Martha was a real force of nature.
If she wasn’t busy chemically stripping and painting an heirloom crib in it-never-flakes-lead paint, she’s off gardening making sure to spray plenty of insecticides to get rid of those pesky old flies, grateful for the new insecticide bomb that contained both DDT and Pyrethrum!
She was also the only gal in the neighborhood who could be found every Saturday morning marching up and down the lawn with her Lawn Boy, leaving in its wake a lawn as smooth as velvet.
While advertisements for power motors often showed scantily clad young women in short shorts and dresses to attract the attention of the male reader, Martha chose sensible poplin peddle pushers, foregoing the pumps for a pair of good ol’ Keds.
(L) The Household Magazine 1940 cover illustration John Holmgren (R) Vintage ad Lucky Strike Cigarettes 1951
Of course like all homeowners, the gals were concerned about the appearance of a perfect lawn, the very symbol of the American Dream and suburban success.
Women’s magazines were chock full of “Advise to the Ladies” articles on achieving the exemplary deep green lawn. But they did not assume women did the work themselves.
No sir.
Women who wanted model lawns got men to work on them.
A smart cookie could cleverly manipulate her husband to achieve a beautifully landscaped home, guiding them for example, into buying proper lawn food or fertilizer.
One Power Mower ad promised: “Easier mowing makes husbands easier to get along with!”
Some ads acknowledged that in the modern marriage, wives were often part of the decision-making process for the purchase of power equipment even though men were actually the ones to use the mowers.
Suburban Family Fun! Eclipse Lawn Mowers ran fun-filled “try out parties” in suburban communities to test run one of their mowers, promising the party “was fun for the whole family.”
The Goodall Manufacturing Corp addressed the ladies directly: “Mowing is a mans job…but here’s a tip for wives whose husbands are about to buy a mower. Unless your lawn is the kind that obligingly stops growing when hubby ‘just cant find the time to mow it’…you’d better slip your arm through his and join him when he goes lawn mower shopping. If you’re going to end up chauffeuring a power-driven grass cutter- make sure its one you can handle!”
Look Lady We Designed This Big Mower Just for You!
As the suburbs continued booming, clever ad men began to see the opportunity to include women in an expanding lawn care market. Advertisements for power mowers began appealing to women by making it sound as easy as housework.
Vintage illustrations (L) “The Happy Family” Little Golden Books 1955 (R) Lawnmower ad 1958
In 1952 House and Gardens magazine published “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Power Mowers.”
The article assured m’lady that : “You don’t have to be mechanically minded in order to operate a power lawn mower. It’s no more difficult than running your vacuum cleaner or learning to drive the family car.”
Other lawn mowers promised that the mower “pushes easy as a baby buggy.”
Whether a waxer or a mower Mother loves its streamlined beauty! Vintage ads (L) Bruce Floor Products 1948 (R) Mowa -Matic Lawn Mower 1953
Lawn mowing could be downright fun.
“Everybody loves to use the Worchester Lawn Mower,” exclaimed onw ad. “Kids and grown ups- male and female- they all get a thrill out of the Worchester power mower.”
The Eclipse Lawn Mower targeted the lady of the house in one ad : “Mrs. Home Owner will appreciate the easy handling, free rolling and distinctive styling of your new Eclipse as much as the man in the family goes for it its exclusive mechanical features and trouble-free maintenance.”
“Lovely Conover Girl Joan Tuby” coyly appealed to the ladies that choosing a lawn mower was “Like picking a Husband.” Wearing short shorts and a halter top, the vivacious model also appealed to the gents.
Despite the best efforts of ad men, men dug their heels into their turf and lawn mowing remained a male domain, then as now.
Image may be NSFW.
