vintage stuff

Aaron B. sent in this 1947 video clip (found here), titled “Are You Popular?”:

Notice the caution to women: if you go “parking with all the boys,” you might think you’re popular, but you’ll ultimately find yourself ostracized and friendless. To be really popular, you need to be well-dressed, have the respect of girls at school, and carefully guard your reputation.

Thanks, Aaron!

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

Ben O. brought our attention to this set of vintage ads (from Found in Mom’s Basement) that all use images of Black male servants.

This one for Cream of Kentucky bourbon was illustrated by Norman Rockwell. I can’t quite figure out what the expression on the Black servant’s face is supposed to convey:

Miller Beer:

Cream of Wheat:

Glider shaving cream:

Part of the text reads, “Why did Grand-dad so often take the trouble to get water from the rain barrel for his shave?” For some reason I have a feeling it wasn’t Grand-dad getting the water.

Thanks, Ben O.!

Select text: “These well-stacked Sno-Balls have more than sex appeal… they have sales appeal!”

The 1960s via Found in Mom’s Basement.

More sexualization of food here, here, here, here, here, here, and especially here.

I can safely say that most readers of this blog probably think that broiled Spam + canned peaches looks and sounds unappetizing.  But this is only one of many creative food combinations that appeared in advertisers’ recipes and cookbooks during the 1950s and 1960s. Here’s another:

Why, yes, those are baked beans on pizza.

While there are plenty of interesting angles on these old recipes, from their use of color to their emphasis on saving money, I’d like to bring up the way that modern writers treat recipes from this period. James Lileks, for example, has an entire site, The Gallery of Regrettable Foods, which eventually spawned a book covering much of the same material.

As the index page to The Gallery of Regrettable Foods says,

What were they thinking? How did they eat this bilge? Good questions, but you won’t find them answered here. This is a simple introduction to poorly photographed foodstuffs and horrid recipes. It’s a wonder anyone in the 40s, 50s and 60s gained any weight; it’s a miracle that people didn’t put down their issue of Life magazine with a slight queasy list to their gut, and decide to sup on a nice bowl of shredded wheat and nothing else.

This [admittedly funny] type of snarky commentary has inspired other Web sites, such as Wendy McClure’s mockery of 1970s Weight Watchers recipe cards. The vintage_recipes community on LiveJournal frequently contains less formal versions of the snark.

Such modern commentary erases much of the historical significance and interest of these recipes. The radio program Engines of Our Ingenuity recently commented on the cookbook in episode 2403, with a special focus on recipes such as those shown above. As the transcript of episode 2403 suggests, many of these recipes relied on canned, gelled or prepared foods, highlighting both the Atomic Age’s fascination with technologically advanced cookery. But the mockery is way more popular these days.

These images could be used in a discussion about how “retro” images are regularly reappropriated as “cool” with little regard for their historical context.

This archive of cigarette commericals, sent in by Kay W., makes some interesting comparisons of vintage and contemporary cigarette ads.

First, they compare vintage ads that try to sell cigarettes by pointing to the fact that they suppress your appetite with contemporary-ish Virginia Slims ads which seem to suggest so indirectly.

Second, they compare vintage advertisements that argue that some brands are smooth and good for your voice with the contemporary “Find Your Voice” campaign:

Third, this set of ads nicely shows how the association of glamour with cigarette smoking has transcended history:

Rachel M. sends us this story:  The cover for the 1976 Scorpions album “Virgin Killer” apparently not considered problematic enough for censorship at the time, was pulled from a Wikipedia webpage for being “a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18.”  The image, included after the jump, features a naked prepubescent girl in a provocative pose:

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The 1966 and 1976 editions of this old board game illustrate both historical ideas about gender and the way they can change in just ten years.

The 1966 version for girls (found here):

Options for girls include going to charm school to become a model, nursing school to become a nurse, drama school to become an actress, college to become a teacher, ballet school to become a ballet dancer, or airline training school to become an airline hostess.

The 1966 version for boys (found here):

Options for boys include going to law school to become a statesman, graduate school to become a scientist, medical school to become a doctor, college to become an athlete (!?), technical school to become an engineer, or flight school to become an astronaut.

They revised the girl’s game (I’m not sure about the boy’s game) in 1976 (found here).  Girls could now choose between going to medical school to become a surgeon, the riding academy to be a jockey, flight training school to be an astronaut, college to be a commentator, drama school to be a director, and law school to be a lawyer.

I wonder if the revised boy’s version included going to college to become an elementary school teacher, to medical school to be a pediatrician, or to a dance academy to become a dancer.  I predict not.

From 1987 (found here):

No date (found here):

Also in “Oriental” stereotypes: a new restaurant in Rhode Island and Oriental Pearl Cream.