“From forlorn fattie to fashion model” and other 1950s-era sage advice

3rd April 2008

“From forlorn fattie to fashion model” and other 1950s-era sage advice

posted in Body Image, Diets, Feminist Topics, Food History, Pop Culture |

While looking for an old paper yesterday, I stumbled across some notes I made while researching women’s magazines in the 1950s for articles and advertisements related to women, food and body image. I thought I’d share a few snippets here from the notes I made. Many of these would be hilariously funny if they weren’t the same kinds of things we still see in magazines and the media today.

Ladies Home Journal Jan. 1957
“The Diet That Turned Me into a Model”
As told to Dawn Crowell Norman

“Every time I see a young girl who is overweight, I want to tap her on the shoulder and say, ‘Let me tell you about my own life as a fatty – let me help! …Roy, my husband, would never have looked twice at the old 175-pound Linda… When I am occasionally tempted to eat more than I should, it’s Roy who puts his foot down! ‘Don’t forget,’ he teases, ‘you were once a fatty!’”

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Ladies Home Journal May, 1957
“Is College Education Wasted on Women?”
Dr.Nevitt Sanford

“Psychology and psychiatry have contributed their share to the notion that the best way for a girl to show that she is healthy, wholesome, mature, well-adjusted and the like is to get married and have children.”

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Good Housekeeping Aug., 1958
“How to Bring Up Perfect Little Ladies with the help of Wash and Wear”
Janet Livingstone

“Being a lady is a life’s work, and the sooner your daughter begins mastering the tricks of the trade, the better. Once she has discovered the sorcery of a smile and the magic of ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ she’s ready to go on to the next lesson: the gentle art of looking like a million bucks.

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Good Housekeeping Aug, 1958
“The Date Line: Facts and Fancies for the Girl in School”
Jan Landon

“’Calorie wisors’ are new defense weapons developed by some N. Carolina boys to protect their wallets at drive-in restaurants… the boys attach a mirror to the back of the car’s right-hand sun visor; put next to it a list of calorie values of typical items on the menu - hamburger with ten french fries, 450; banana split, 530; Coke, 75; etc. - and slyly suggest girls check their makeup before ordering!”

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In his Husband and Wife Diet Cookbook (1955), Dr. P.W. Punnett suggests one way for women to shed pounds is to simply stop “constantly nibbling candy and nuts and cake and cookies between meals and in addition to their regular meals.” Whereas, he continued, a woman most often gains weight simply because she eats “twice as much as she really needs” – primarily, “foods like pie, cake, ice cream, candy, nuts, mayonnaise, and sweet desserts” – overweight husbands ought not to “be ashamed if the pounds have sneaked up on you.” He attributed men’s weight gain to extra-fatty meats, gravies, alcohol and inactivity due to work-related advancements.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 11:14 am and is filed under Body Image, Diets, Feminist Topics, Food History, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On April 3rd, 2008, Jackie

said:

I think if I met any guy who tried that “Calorie Wiser” trick on me or someone else, I’d have a rather large desire to whallop him.

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 11:33 am

2 On April 3rd, 2008, Ashley

I think my mother in law must have read number 3 because she gave me an artical very much like it that she cut from a paper or magazine, of course I just balled it up and through it away much like I do with all her you need to lose weight info.

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 11:53 am

3 On April 3rd, 2008, Rachel

Haha, yeah and if my husband tried to “put his foot down,” I’d put my fist down… right in his big fat mouth (luckily I have a wonderful, kind, sensitive and caring husband, which is why I married him).

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 am

4 On April 3rd, 2008, Pet~

If some guy had pulled the “Calorie Wiser” trick on me, I’d proceed to order HUGE amounts of the most expensive items on the menu, then start in with “Oh! I can’t eat the triple-meat cheese-and-bacon burger! It has 900 calories! Ooops! Can’t drink the extra-large chocolate-chocolate chip fudge bomb milkshake, it has 2000 calories! Oh no! Can’t eat the mondo-sized chili-cheese fries, they have 800 calories! Can you order me a salad instead?”

Instead of protecting his wallet, he’d end up spending three times more! ROFL

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 1:23 pm

5 On April 3rd, 2008, pennylane

Ah, the good old days! When men were alcoholic and unhappy and the women were socially lobotomized.

And you should really master the tricks of the trade and remember to say “Please feck off, thank you” before ramming your fist in his big fat mouth. Please, thank you.

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 1:37 pm

6 On April 3rd, 2008, DG

Holy canoli, no wonder so many of us are so screwed up now!

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm

7 On April 3rd, 2008, Fat Girl

Yikes.

That’s really all I can say. I have to wonder if my grandmother bought into this sort of thing or not. I know my mom didn’t buy into it entirely, but she still constantly felt AWFUL for how large she was.

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 1:52 pm

8 On April 3rd, 2008, mrs.millur

inactivity due to work-related advancements

Hmm… what if you got fat but not promoted? Then what’s your excuse?

(I’m wasting my college education as I type…)

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm

9 On April 3rd, 2008, Emerald

to simply stop “constantly nibbling candy and nuts and cake and cookies between meals and in addition to their regular meals.”

They’ve met my husband, right? (He’s thin, BTW.)

I collect pre-1960s printed ephemera. The pitifully tiny amount the ’slimming housewife’ (it’s almost always assumed that the wife, never the husband, will be dieting) was supposed to live on makes me wonder why ‘wife eats husband alive’ wasn’t a more common B-movie plot.

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 2:26 pm

10 On April 3rd, 2008, Tanglethis

Oh, those clever trickster boys! Oh what charmingly sly devils! How useful and sweet of them to fatshame their hapless girlfriends, who otherwise wouldn’t be able to control her urges! (Or perhaps just can’t count? It isn’t clear.)

Those hurt. I mean, they were kind of funny, too, but what a cruel cruel kindergarten was the 1950s!
P.S. “Protect their wallets?” You know what would protect those boys’ wallets? Gender equality. Let her make her own money and buy her own calories, for heavens’ sake.

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 3:22 pm

11 On April 3rd, 2008, Charlotte

Wow.
I would have been so bored if I lived during the 50s. Sitting around looking pretty and counting calories must get really boring really fast.

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 3:42 pm

12 On April 3rd, 2008, Missicat

Maybe things haven’t changed much…was reading People yesterday (hey, was on the treadmill at the gym and it was the only thing available!) and it mentioned a model who, after giving birth, told how her husband took away her car keys so she had to walk everywhere. In the Year of our Lord 2008. So, you know, she could focus on what was important - losing weight.
*headdesk*

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 3:52 pm

13 On April 3rd, 2008, Tari

My fave:

Being a lady is a life’s work

…translation: “if you’re busy being a lady, you can’t *have* a life.” It’d be hilarious, if it wasn’t so scary.

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 5:04 pm

14 On April 3rd, 2008, Besteger

” … When I am occasionally tempted to eat more than I should, it’s Roy who puts his foot down! ‘Don’t forget,’ he teases, ‘you were once a fatty!’”

When we surrender responsibility for even our most basic health maintenance, we force our spouses to shoulder a burden that should rightly be our own. Having thus demanded that they take control, do we have any right to complain about the way they discharge their unwarranted duties?

When husbands make their wives responsible for what, when and how much they eat, they sign themselves up for emasculating criticism and nagging. Apparently, this woman did the same.

posted on April 3rd, 2008 at 7:10 pm

15 On April 4th, 2008, Fatadelic

I have a collection of, for want of a better word, ‘wife manuals’ dating from the 1920s through to the late 1960s and all of them, every single one, is filled with the kind of tripe you quote above. I must quote some of the advice on my blog one day. Here’s a snippet I posted on my old blog (which I then copied over to this new one).

posted on April 4th, 2008 at 2:29 am

16 On April 4th, 2008, Geekgirlsrule

It just goes to show that the idea of women as little more than permanently dependent children was alive and well into the last century, and still is in a lot of places. I mean, really, who ELSE is known to want to over-indulge in sweets, cake and ice cream between meals?

Fuck, we’ve come a long way, with so much longer to go.

posted on April 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am

17 On April 4th, 2008, B

Rachel,

I don’t think it is so much that I am caring and sensative but that you use your womanly voodoo on me:

she has discovered the sorcery of a smile and the magic of ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’

posted on April 4th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

18 On April 4th, 2008, Bree

Who wrote these articles? The husband from “A Doll’s House?”

posted on April 4th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

19 On April 4th, 2008, Grumpus

These excerpts remind me of an older, 1950s-era cookbook I have, full of standard meat-and-potatoes fare, and with “tidbits” of advice to the women reading the thing. Advice such as “your husband and children will enjoy this tasty cake that’s nourishing too; as for you, Mother, take a good long look in the mirror and make your own decisions!” And the classic “If you don’t watch your figure, who else will?” Agh. Growing up, an oft-heard maxim in my neck neck of the woods was “it’s better to look good than to feel good.” Classy.

This time 100 years ago you’d wear a corset when pregnant; 50 years ago you put up with all this Stepford Wife crap; these days, it is moderately easier to live your life without this condescending baggage, but I really long for the future…still some years from now…the baby steps will really have added up by then, one hopes.

posted on April 4th, 2008 at 10:19 pm

20 On April 7th, 2008, ricki

Gah. Any boy who had a “calorie wisor” wouldn’t get to first base with me….I’m moderately horrified that they actually came out and SAID those things. But then again - to an extent, it’s still that way - just more subtle.

Look at any “woman’s magazine.” About 1/3 of the magazine is devoted to recipes for delicious-looking cakes, dinners, casseroles, beverages…and another 1/3 to telling women why they can’t eat ANY of that stuff if they want to be “healthy.” And there are diet plans ALMOST as loopy as the 50s-era plans.

The main difference is that they used to beat us over the head with “ladylike,” now it’s “healthy.”

I’m surprised more 1950s housewives weren’t seriously addicted to various drugs…be it the speed in diet pills or “mother’s little helper” to keep her from feeling “blue” because she’d decided not to “waste” her life going to college….

posted on April 7th, 2008 at 10:00 pm

21 On April 9th, 2008, Never teh Bride

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Oh, we don’t hear the message in the same cutesy terms these days…no one says fatty or eats ten (gasp) French fries. But open any women’s rag and you’ll see the exact message they were pushing back then: be small and look “right” or you won’t land a man. Bleah.

posted on April 9th, 2008 at 10:02 am