history

Lisa and I went to the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas today. We were not allowed to take pictures! However, we were inspired to post about the word “atomic.” Below are some pictures related to the U.S. bombing of Nagasaki during WWII. They are followed by some examples of the way in which the word “atomic” has been taken up in popular culture

The mushroom cloud over Nagasaki, Japan:

Nagasaki before and after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb (found here):

Together the bombs dropped by the U.S. on Nagasaki and Hiroshima killed between 150,000 and 220,000 people immediately (that is, not considering the long-term morbidity and mortality). For more on the science of atomic bombs and the structural and human casualties of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, click here. Our point here is to point out that at this point in history, the word “atomic” referred to something incredibly devastating to human life.

Given this, we find it fascinating that the word came to mean something like “cool,” “super extra much,” “hot and spicy” and numerous other vague references to awesomeness. Then, the adjective could be used to describe anything at all. Consider the following examples

Clothes and sporting equipment:

Music-related stuff:

Candy:

So at some time and for some reason, the word “atomic” came to refer not to something very, very serious and instead to something very, very fun. How odd. We did a search for the etymology of the word “atomic” and there was nothing to explain how the word came to be used that way in popular American culture. In fact, there was no reference to its non-scientific use at all.

P.S. – If you’re ever in Las Vegas and want to see something very, very weird (sociologically, we mean), we suggest the Atomic Testing Museum. There, you can learn about America’s proud “atomic testing heritage.”

UPDATE: Commenter Elena pointed out that before the creation of the atomic bomb, people thought radiation promoted health. An ad for a radioactive “solar pad,” basically a radioactive belt people were supposed to wear:

Found here.

A radium water filter:

Found here.

It seems odd to me that after the devastation the atomic bombs caused in Japan, the word “atomic” and atomic materials such as uranium retained any positive connotations in the public realm.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

The propaganda below, from World War II, was distributed by the U.S. government.  In the posters, venereal disease (later known as sexually transmitted disease, and even later as sexually transmitted infections) is personified as a woman. Remember, venereal disease is NOT a woman. It’s bacteria or virus that passes between women and men. Women do not give it to men. Women and men pass it to each other. When venereal disease is personified as a woman, it makes women the diseased, guilty party and men the vulnerable, innocent party.

In this ad, the soldier is made innocent with the label “The Young, The Brave, The Strong.” The first girl is labeled “prostitution.” She says to the soldier: “Two girls I know want to meet you in the worst way.” The two women on the stairs, with the faces of skeletons, are labelled “syphilis” and “gonnorhea.”

Text: “Warning: These enemies are still lurking around.” The women are labeled “syphillis” and “gonnorhea.”

This one is my favorite. A female skeleton in an evening gown walks with her arms around Hitler and Hirohito. The text reads: “V.D. Worst of the Three.”

Here are three more:

At least some of these can be found here. Thanks to the unbeatablekid pointing out a source in our comments.

NEW: Marc sent us a link to these images (all found here):

A matchbook:

A pamphlet distributed to soldiers:

Thanks, Marc!

It is a norm for women in the U.S. to shave their armpits, but this is not the norm elsewhere, even in countries that have relatively a lot in common with the U.S. (like France I’ve been corrected). How did armpit shaving become the norm in the U.S.? And who benefited from this?

Vee the Monsoon sent us the following commentary and ad. It turns out, women shave in the U.S. today, in part, because of a concerted marketing effort on the part of companies that stood to profit from the creation of such a norm with the creation of anxiety about “objectionable hair.”

From The Straight Dope:

…U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915. (Leg hair came later.) The aim of… the Great Underarm Campaign was to inform American womanhood of a problem that till then it didn’t know it had, namely unsightly underarm hair. To be sure, women had been concerned about the appearance of their hair since time immemorial, but (sensibly) only the stuff you could see. Prior to World War I this meant scalp and, for an unlucky few, facial hair. Around 1915, however, sleeveless dresses became popular, opening up a whole new field of female vulnerability for marketers to exploit…. the underarm campaign began in May, 1915, in Harper’s Bazaar, a magazine aimed at the upper crust. The first ad ‘featured a waist-up photograph of a young woman who appears to be dressed in a slip with a toga-like outfit covering one shoulder. Her arms are arched over her head revealing perfectly clear armpits. The first part of the ad read “Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable
hair.

From the May 1915 issue of Harper’s Bazaar:

Thanks Vee!

NEW!  Another example from the U.K., 1934 (found here).  This one encourages the dissolving of armpit hair as a way to fight armpit odor:

There are other things interesting about this graph too.  (1)  The overall increase in the percentage of the U.S. population who attends and graduates college… and thus changing ideas about who “needs” a college degree.  (2) The fact that the gender difference wasn’t extreme in the late 1800s at all and increased in the early 1900s. (This is in contrast to most students understanding of history, in my experience, as a linear story of progress from backwards to enllightened.)  (3)  The spike in college enrollment and graduation after WWII (GI Bill… but how does that explain the stats on women?).  (4)  The weird dip in 1950s (I don’t know what that’s all about).  And, (5) the period of near parity in the 1960s.  (In the comments, Penny points out that I mis-read the graph in haste.  I apologize.)   (3) The weird dip for people born in the 1950s and coming of age in the 1970s (I don’t know what that’s all about).  And, (4) the period of near parity for people born in the 1960s and coming of age in the 1980s. 

See the accompanying article at the New York Times.

This ad appeared in a 1970s high school newsletter in Indianapolis:

Found at Vintage Ads.

“Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose.”

If only. I have started vacuuming my dogs, which seems more efficient than letting them shed and then vacuuming their hair off the carpet, but that’s a long way from just being able to hose the house down every day.

This image, found here, is a good illustration of visions of the future and the intense belief in science and technology to completely change daily life (except who does housework) that was so common in the 1950s.
It could also be useful for a discussion of how new household appliances and technologies actually changed women’s lives. In some cases, new electrical appliances clearly reduced women’s domestic workload. My great-grandma had a lifelong devotion to Franklin D. Roosevelt because his New Deal rural electrification project eventually made it possible for her to get an electric washer. She had 7 kids and swore to me multiple times that the electric washing machine was the single greatest thing that ever happened to women (birth control being a close second). On the other hand, as more household appliances became available, our standards of cleanliness increased, so in many cases women ended up doing more housework in an effort to meet the more stringent cleanliness (and to use their electric vacuum to vacuum a peacock-fan-shaped pattern into the carpet, among other useful skills some home economics courses imparted).

Thanks to Ben G. for sending this along!

In case you thought this was a new phenomenon:

Found here thanks to Jason S.

Fellow blogger, Brett, specializes in counseling adolescent boys.  He says, no matter what they come in for–skipping school, fighting, arson–they always get around to asking, “How do you know when a girl likes you?”

One thing you may not know about the peoples of the pre-Columbian Andean region: they were fond of making pottery with exaggerated penises. These were often pipes or water vessels and forced the user to place his or her mouth on the gigantic penis. Images can be found here, here, here and here.

I like these because they remind students that sexual humor (making pottery that forces someone to drink out of a penis, for instance) is not even close to being a modern invention. I’m sure there are lots of other interpretations–that this actually shows an obsession with the penis than indicates a patriarchal culture, that it was part of a cult of warrior potency, and so on–but I bet there was also a level of joking going on too.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.