{"id":19868,"date":"2013-03-28T11:30:26","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T16:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=19868"},"modified":"2013-03-26T22:42:04","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T03:42:04","slug":"what-was-in-the-1941-college-womans-closet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/03\/28\/what-was-in-the-1941-college-womans-closet\/","title":{"rendered":"What Was in the 1941 College Woman’s Closet?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted in 2010. Re-posted in honor of\u00a0Women\u2019s History Month<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

The New York Public Library<\/a> posted a page from the first issue (September 1941) of Design for Living: The Magazine for Young Moderns<\/em> that I thought was sorta neat for bringing some perspective to the increase in the amount and variety of clothing we take as normal today–but also, to my relief, the acceptance of a more casual style of dress. The magazine conducted a poll of women at a number of colleges throughout the U.S. about how many of various articles of clothing they owned. Here’s a visual\u00a0showing the school where women reported the highest and lowest averages (the top item is a dickey, not a shirt):<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Overall the women reported spending an average of $240.33 per year on clothing.<\/p>\n

Hats for women were apparently well on their way out of fashion:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Can you imagine a magazine aimed at college women today implying that you might be able to get away with only three or four pairs of shoes, even if that’s what women reported?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At the end of the article they bring readers’ attention to the fact that they used a sample:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I can’t help but find it rather charming that a popular magazine would even bother to clarify anything about their polling methods<\/a>. So…earnest!<\/p>\nGwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted in 2010. Re-posted in honor of\u00a0Women\u2019s History Month. The New York Public Library posted a page from the first issue (September 1941) of Design for Living: The Magazine for Young Moderns that I thought was sorta neat for bringing some perspective to the increase in the amount and variety of clothing we take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[225,229,55,2102,274,23705],"class_list":["post-19868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-clothesfashion","tag-consumption","tag-gender","tag-gender-history","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-vintage-stuff"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19868"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54564,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19868\/revisions\/54564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}