The Anti-Modern Woman Monday Post

In 1931 "M.C." sent a letter to the editor of The New York Times, 'respectfully' suggesting that "the militant suffrage movement, now on the rampage in England, be referred to as 'The Reign of Error'."


Via Silent Porn Star (NWS).

Beautify Your Knob

Ah, doorknobs: today, we've returned to simple efficiency -- but back in the 1950s, style went into everything, all the way down to the knobs. Just look at that huge molded star surrounding an otherwise plain knob -- it looks like if you grab the doorknob wrong, you're risking a slashed palm and one less finger than you're accustomed to. Extreme care was needed when opening doors in the fifties. Here's some close-ups of other examples:


I'm rather disappointed at how they cheated: there's only 5 distinct plates here...they rotated the square one 45°, they added a background for the rectangle grid and star. I can't imagine these are the only options -- there had to be something at least as gaudy. It's sad to think that these were so utterly, overpoweringly 1950s, that they all went in the dump shortly thereafter. I don't think I've ever seen any of these in the wild, and I've been to a lot of ugly houses. The clean lines of modernism killed off all the fun.

Crappy VHS Covers - HUNDREDS of 'em!

When I was a kid, my mom worked at several different video rental stores during the 80s. As one might expect, I spent a lot of my time in these stores, browsing the shelves, looking at the covers, trying to understand the lurid and titillating R-rated movie covers...and, in case you don't remember, there was so much crap available on video, it was hard to pick the good from the horrible. Nowadays, you go to Blockbuster or Hollywood and they've got shelves full of big-name movies and DVD box sets of TV shows, things proven to be money-draws, and very little of the USA Up All Night variety. You can't find rows and rows of the videos found below any longer, unless you've still got a mom-and-pop owned video store on your block that understands the value of some good schlock.



This website, despite being heavily European in origins (which adds to the fun) has dozens upon dozens of scans of VHS video covers; most are naughty in very European ways (be careful if you're clicking from your place of employment), and they lean largely towards bloody and sexy...preferably both if available.

Have A Coolie Christmas

All you thought you had to worry about was your neighbor with the black lawn jockey...

Included in the Pacific Palisades Holiday Tour was this exotic outdoor decoration that blends East and West. Set on an outdoor patio, the antique rickshaw carries a Santa Claus figure and a collection of brightly wrapped Christmas gifts.

The coolie figure was made of papier mache with an Oriental mask face under his collie hat. This holiday display decorates the home of Mr. and Mrs. James Kalasardo of Pacific Palisades.

Found in the 1959, Better Homes & Gardens' Christmas Ideas.

When Your Plastic Pine Needles Fall...

Here's another version of a tissue paper flower tree, made on last year's tree frame.

Yes, "another version" -- because in this 1959 holiday magazine there's a more, err, traditional tree with tissue paper flowers. I don't honestly know if there is such a thing as a traditional tissue paper blossom decorated Christmas tree... But the other one is huge and I'm saving that one for holiday time. So you get this "diminutive" version, "just right to decorate a dining room or entrance hall table".


I'm not very surprised to find such a "spring posies on a Christmas tree" project; but I am surprised that the last year's artificial tree was plucked of the plastic needles so quickly...

Just in case you need to recycle your artificial tree -- and don't find tissue paper trees anything to sneeze at, here's the pattern & instructions.

Knit Your Own Space Helmet

How sad that, during the sixties, the Soyuz program required its Cosmonettes to knit their own helmet liners:

I can't imagine this was ever comfortable or warm: just look at where the wool touches. Under the chin -- wear a sweater turtleneck, you can at least pull it away or wear something underneath it; in this case, you need it cinched tight. The 'earflaps' go right up to the corner of the eye. A little bit of cat fur on my face drives me crazy, let alone rubbing the only textile made from tiny, tiny needles against the edges of my eyelid. Maybe she knitted her iPod earbuds right into that thing and that's the appeal. It sure ain't the appeal of looking like an astronaut reject.

Will She Make Underpants From Maps Of France?

Artist Elisabeth Lecourt uses maps of cities to create clothes (to put on your walls, not your bods).



Via Craftzine Blog.

Modern Woman Monday: 1000 Ways To Make Yourself Beautiful

This book jacket proclaiming, "A Thousand Ways to Make Yourself Beautiful!" is from the 1940 Hollywood Glamour Cook Book, by Mariposa.

This book will disclose to you the Beauty Secrets of the Movie Stars. You, too, can be "most divinely fair," as irresistible as your favorite Glamour Queen. Imagine the thrill of hearing someone say about you, "Isn't she Glamorous, isn't she lovely!"

You can find out more about my obsession with Mariposa in my article at Collectors' Quest. (And I welcome any knowledge you have about her!)

Sittin' On My TV Tuffet

From a 1955 Osco Drug ad; I'm still of an age where "drug store" meant "cheap department store," not "pharmacy and nothing else." You went to the drug store to buy comics, tap on the goldfish tanks, talk Mom into a pack of fake money and a squirt gun (because the allowance was being saved for comics, of course), oh, and Mom might need to find aspirin, band-aids, and nylons. Anyhow, this ad informs us that the drug store had an ample supply of this amazing piece of furniture: Tough, Rugged, Covered With Washable Plastic -- The TV Tuffet from Meljax!
These high-grade pieces of furniture came in numerous fashion colors that matched any decor: red, blue, yellow, and green. And you could get one of three different images silkscreened on the back: a cowboy, a Raggedy Ann, and a poorly-balanced elephant. As any parent of multiple children knows, these options aren't just for aesthetic purposes: the possibility of 12 combinations of color and picture means you're unlikely to buy identical chairs for any of your kids. If you've got two girls and a boy, you get a red Raggedy Ann, a blue Raggedy Ann, and a green Cowboy; simple as pie! And, in the fifties, you were willing to accept that the plastic was going to crack and split within a couple days of the chairs getting home, but the kids got used to the duct tape on their high chair, they can deal with duct tape on their tuffet. It was almost half-price even, marked down to $2.99 from $5.95.

Most amazing, and appropriate to the time, were the multiple uses of the tuffet -- you could, of course, watch TV, but it could also be used as a booster chair at the dinner table and in the car. Yes, look at that smiley kid at the bottom, relaxing seatbeltless with his hands behind his head, nary a care in the world -- you know, that care-free look you had shortly before you awaken to find teeth marks in the vinyl dashboard, blood seeping from one nostril, and a throbbing headache. Ah, the fifties were a wonderful time for children!

High-Five Fridays #10

Less kitschy, but still eyebrow raising...

1) Hitler and the Seven Dwarfs likely needs some sort of an introduction (if you haven't heard about it yet), but I like to make you curious enough to click.

2) A beautiful (and slightly creepy) vintage tablecloth with the embroidered signatures of British WWII prisoners.

Too cool for school...

3) Slippity-do-da's Very Draining Post, Indeed.

4) KKC was Found in Mom's Basement. (How'd we get in her mom's basement?)

5) A high-five to Marty Weil for his patience during my interview with him at CQ.

Want to give high-fives too? Participation is a lot like Thursday Thirteen, only your post is links to who and what you like. (Plus, it's only 5 instead of 13!)

Find out how to give your High-Five Fridays here!

The purpose of this meme is to give high-fives to 5 people, posts, blogs and/or websites you've admired during the week. I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 5 high-fives on Friday. Trackbacks, pings, linky widgets, comment links accepted!

Visiting fellow High-Fivers is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your High-Fives in others comments (please note if NWS).

Find more High-Five Friday folks here!

Chicky-Chicky-Coo

You're time is running out --- Easter us just around the corner, and you haven't gotten your chicks yet? Today, you're going to get into trouble for buying baby animals just for Easter entertainment. Back in the day, there were enough farming families around with easy access to chicks to make dyeing them for Easter a popular event; they'd be kicked back out into the barnyard when Easter passed. Now, you get rich urbanites think that fun looks awfully cute, and try to bring the practice to town...leaving unhappy birds and bunnies with no good home. These ads from 1952 were for farmers, to bulk up their livestock inventory, and I suppose a couple got a dose of beet juice on Good Friday; let's hope none found their way into the cities, lest Joey and Chandler take them in!

Funky Science In The Kitchen

Fred Equal Measure Measuring Cup tells you those hard to find measurements such as the volume of half a human brain, volume of one human breath, water in a cumulus cloud the size of a bus, and the amount of table salt in a large human...

I have no idea what you're making, but the kids & I will love it.

What Sci-Fi Folks Were Up To In 1959

From SaFari, issue #2, a sci-fi fanzine by Earl Kemp, part of a series of fanzines Kemp published for the Spectator Amateur Press Society, or SAPS (SAPS # 48). Follow the links and you'll see the accompanying photos.



Included are Harlan Ellison, Wilson Tucker and Robert Bloch.

Just Like A Man -- And A Woman

Just Like A Man was a Family Circle column by Byron Fish; the following appeared in the November 1964 issue of the magazine.

A boy can't learn too soon that in math, as in most subjects, there is a male and a female way to work things out. After a lesson in feminine-gender arithmetic my son figures that when it comes to higher powers of reasoning, men are squares.

First up, gender punctuation:

"You are inquiring into a mystery unsolved by man. From the time a female learns to write, she is convinced that exclamation points were invented to be used. She even feels they will go to waste unless they are put into sentences."

That's so not true!!

Regarding ellipsis...

The boy asks, "How about those dots in there?"

The father responds:

Dots sometimes are used for a specific purpose in the neuter, or masculine, gender. If you find a long row of them apparently just thrown in, they are feminine gender."

My husband would have a field day with this... He abhors my continual use of ellipsis...

I, in return, must counter by pointing out that this article is proof that everything is considered masculine unless noted as feminine (and that feminine is lower in status). I'm just sayin'...


"Men teachers probably are told during their training to allow for the more complicated punctuation by girl pupils." :sigh: I suppose I should just be happy there was no mention of retarded or intolerant women teachers.

Then again... no mention of female teachers is rather sexist -- I mean, "It's rather sexist!"

Now we move onto gender in 'rithmetic.



The boy gets the correct answer, but dad makes an ambiguous statement...

So dad needs to explain female math.

"Particularly if he is married." Yuck it up, Byron.



Oh, and it all ends with a cute little story of the little woman besting "daddy". How quaint.

:snarl:

If you'd prefer to read the column in its entirety as it appeared:

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1959 Disneyland Candle Shop

From the 1959 Better Homes & Gardens' Christmas Ideas magazine comes this photo of Disneyland's candle shop.

Mrs. Robert Beals, and her daughter Jani, find the choice of candles fantastic and a difficult decision to make. Which one shall it be?

Well, of course it's difficult to pick just one -- even if you are allowed to be known by your own name and not as your husband's property.

I never just pick one candle. Hence I am not only a huge boon the hostess of the home candle party, but have been put on candle buying prohibition; I'm not allowed to by any more candles.

Hubby thinks having a cabinet designated just for candles is silly. This, even after he's seen my sister has an entire pantry just for candles -- which should prove that I'm really deprived, not depraved, as he believes.

Everyone Needs A Demon Pig Mask

This free Demon Pig Mask Poster is from Fuzzy Balls Apparel, which, as the artist says, "sounds like I am saying 'Fuzzy Balls of Peril'." Hence the name of the pig mask poster.

While there, scroll for more free goodies and then click about, wildly, to see all the other madness.

High-Five Fridays -- So Simple, A Squirrel Can Do It!

1) Make The Logo Bigger gave us props, so right back atcha!

2) A high-five -- and a Get Out! shove -- to Miss Janey for her "Neverland Ranch" comment on the Bedtime with Blackout and Jocko illustration post. (You can pick your award up here.)

3) A high-five for Dynasty of Lao for having the good taste to notice us -- and point it out to others.

4) The Dean gets one high-five for two posts on Les Paul: Music Collectors: Sheet Music to 50k Les Paul Guitars and Musical Collections: The Les Paul Experience. (The second includes info on & a preview of the official Les Paul museum exhibit.)

5) Lastly, a high-five to Neatorama for listening to Rian (again) and posting about KKC.

Want to give high-fives too? Participation is a lot like Thursday Thirteen, only your post is links to who and what you like. (Plus, it's only 5 instead of 13!)

Find out how to give your High-Five Fridays here!

The purpose of this meme is to give high-fives to 5 people, posts, blogs and/or websites you've admired during the week. I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 5 high-fives on Friday. Trackbacks, pings, linky widgets, comment links accepted!

Visiting fellow High-Fivers is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your High-Fives in others comments (please note if NWS).

Find more High-Five Friday folks here!