thats sexist bullshit

So...if you read bad literature(what's that supposed to mean anyway?)you'll be an outcast by the time you're forty?

No pressure or anything, you just read nothing but Pulitzer prize winners or your life is forfeit.

I can't be the only one who thinks the fast life, flirting and coquettery sounds awesome. And there's a gap from 26 to 60 for the "good girl" that I assume is the omission of a life of thankless domestic toil and drudgery.

Hm. I kinda followed the path on the left. And I'm perfectly happy as an outcast at 40. :D

aw crap. i'm eight years off schedule. better start poppin' kids or i'll be ostracized by society in a few years...

i would love to see the male version of this, but i doubt there is one. i've seen similar but they just end up with stds instead of becoming outcasts.

i found the male version:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_two_paths_(m).png

apparently not only do boys get two more years of youth and not have to worry about their futures until they are 15 instead of 13, but they also do not have to have children to be successful or become outcasts if they do not follow the right path- they only become "moral-physical wreck[s]" which sounds a lot more of a personal problem that you can possibly deal with in private, than the public disgrace that is ostracized by society.

Bad literature: the gateway literature.

Interesting that the male version has the 'good' path on the left and the 'bad' path on the right - opposite to the female. Probably not significant, but thought I'd note it anyway.

Ladies, I'm living proof you can have a large proportion of the above. The flirting, "dissipation" (in my case, too much booze), bad literature - and the good Mama stuff too. I'm 32 but my kids (7 and 5) like me tons - even if I'm "fast".

Welp, I know which path I've gone down.

Under the section, "Traditional View of Women" on this page, you can find two more versions of "What will the girl become?":
http://www.peterpappas.com/docs/lesson13/index.htm

One version features a Black girl, and the other features a White girl. Each has the same text as the version already posted on this site, but with different illustrations.

Both of the versions on the site I linked to have very similar illustrations. I found this surprising, because the social hygiene movement was associated with the promotion of "racial purity." On the other hand, the existence of these two versions seems to indicate that separate manuals were prepared for Black and White audiences.

I should add that in each of the additional versions I linked to, each girl is shown consorting (presumably sexually) only with men of her own race. At the same time, both the Black and White girl appear to be of the same social class.

The Black woman's grandchild somewhat resembles a pickaninny caricature, but I guess there's nothing inherently racist about portraying a young Black child with cornrows. The other drawings in the version for Black girls seem quite free from racist stereotypes to me.

Pfft, I'll take fast life and coquetry for $500, Alex.

Also, "coquettery?" Not a word. Clearly the creator of this poster didn't follow the path of study and obedience.

all that from masturbation!?

I married the one on the left. Life has been a blast.

But if polite society thinks it has cast _us_ out...well, let polite society enjoy its version of the facts.

Hmm... Is it insignificant or important that the text for the white girl emphasises that she comes from a "good Christian family", and that this phrase is absent from the description of the black girl?

Oh, and what exactly is meant by "bad literature", anyway?

I'd say they mean 'low' publications like the Penny Dreadfuls and other serial based cheap magazine stories. Also perhaps erotic fiction, as the comparable boy's image includes a warning against 'self abuse' (= masturbation).

I guess the equivalent of mills and boon, women's weekly and other two-a-penny paperback books.

I find interesting the fact that boys apparently don't need to worry about children, whereas not one but TWO of the girl's life-stages are based around them.

Also, the differing spacing is interesting--seemingly everything important a woman can do is wrapped up well before she hits 30 (because she's married then! OBJECTIVE COMPLETED), with the exception of grandchildren. Whereas the man hits goals spread more evenly throughout his life (presumably because, even if he does marry young, he gets to keep *having* a life)

Al novels were considered "bad liturature"

If you combined both paths for the boy into a single person, I think you'd have a formula for the typical successful politician (right up until the scandal breaks, anyway). It doesn't work for the girl's paths because for a woman to be a politician she has to absolutely stick to the 'good girl' side at all costs. Imagine the consequences if it had been Hillary who had enticed a young male intern into some shenanigans (at ANY point in her public career), then consider Chappaquiddick.

The one for boys also makes it sort of appear that men don't become loving fathers until they're 60 (no mention of Grandfather status). Men are too busy amassing all that venerable success until then, I suppose...

What were the crime rates, illegitimacy rates, and poverty rates of this era? It's no good holding this "social hygiene" stuff up for ridicule if we don't consider whether or not it was part of a successful social regimen for containing self-destructive behavior.

Most loving mothers & honorable fathers, after all, don't have the leisure for snarky comments on blogs.

I think it is a great illustration of the virgin/whore dichotomy for the girl. The boy only has problems due to sex in terms of "self-abuse". hehe

One thing that the girl version of the two paths has going for it is that it shows the girl studying. I think this demonstrates that, by then, people no longer feared that if women and girls learn something, they would ruin their reproductive capabilities and/or would be un-marriable (and should therefore stick to music and dancing, etc). Which was the case not just a few decades before this picture was made. In this case, studying actually is shown as leading good mothers.

"awesome"? aw shucks *blush* thanks :)

Saphos being the novel is curious- the story of a man who is seduced by a parisian liberal woman who has many lovers (not unlike the "vamp" of early silent films) and extremely racy for late 19th/early 20th century for that reason, but also because there were implications the main character was a lesbian (hence the "Saphos"). very sly, mr. illustrator, very sly...

OOOh... so that's where these came from!

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=30242803

They've been selling these pendants at local craft stores for a while now (they're just now going off shelves and I guess out of style). I picked up some to make thank-you presents for my committee members when I finish my dissertation (on sociology of gender, naturally). As awful as the originals are, I think it's kind of hilarious that they've been reclaimed as kitsch pendant fodder.

This is why I thank God for giving us a new chance each and every day. This type of scenario, however, seems to think that one choice determines the rest of life for you.