A
Girl's Life?
By David Galassie
I bought the Life magazine for the picture of
Batman on its cover- the Adam West Batman from March 11,
1966. Promising a feature on the "Mad New World of Batman,
Superman, and the Marquis de Sade" I paged through its
contents and it was like entering another world, but it
wasn't that mad new world of Batman, et al. From my 21st
century viewpoint, it was a world seemingly gone mad with
sexism and the patronizing of women.
The ads' portrayal of women hit me across the face
like one of Batman's punches. Pow! Zap! Bam! Of course,
this was 1966 and Women's Lib and feminism were in their
infancies as engines of social change. Madison Avenue
though was still giving America the view of women as
harried housewives and portraying them in the prim and
proper manner of Donna Reed and June Cleaver.
For the most part, women were shown in that 1950s
TV manner we all grew up with- dresses, pearls, high
heels, gloves. From a General Motors ad touting its fine
safety record and Body by Fisher, we see a mother and
daughter at their car after an outing of grocery shopping.
The little girl watches her mother from the shopping cart
as she puts the bags into her GTO's trunk. Mom wears a
very pink dress and she glances back at her daughter who
wears a dress with a Peter Pan collar with white tights
and black patent Mary Jane shoes.
Later, an ad for Western Auto features a "Wizard"
washer for only $169.88. The washer is pictured open, but
fully loaded and on its door rests a string of pearls and
a pair of elbow-length white gloves. The implication is
that this is a very handy appliance after that night on
the town for the little lady.
Excedrin, the headache remedy, features a woman
clutching a bag of groceries while she says, "With eight
people coming to dinner, who can take time out for a
headache?" Another housewife who just received a call from
her husband that he's invited the office staff home
tonight for dinner?
An ad by the Edison Electric Institute shows Mom
and Dad giving glowing approval to Junior's artwork. Mom
bends over to examine it while wearing a pink shirt dress
and stylish beige pumps. Dad has obviously shed his coat
and tie for the night as he settles in on the couch to
take in the family moment.
Smaller
photos festoon across the page bottom, vividly
illustrating how "You Live Better Electrically" as Mom,
still in her dress, fixes dinner on an electric range,
checks the clothes in an electric dryer, and with Junior's
help, empties the electric dishwasher.
This
"totally electric" home earns the prestigious "Gold
Medallion" and is "fully equipped with flameless electric
appliances to save you time and help take the drudgery out
of routine housework." The American Dream for the
homemaker, hmmm?
In other ads, "girls" predominate. Parker Pen tells
us that "A girl-size hand needs a girl-size pen." And
later, after a photo comparison showing the smaller
"Jotter" pen alongside the "man-size" Jotter, we learn
"Girls- and girl-size hands- delight in the new compact
Jotter. It's smaller, daintier, a joy to write with." So
nice of Parker to tell all the girls out there what they
needed.
An ad for the Ford Mustang labels its offering as
"Six and the Single Girl," an obvious takeoff on "Sex and
the Single Girl" by Helen Gurley Brown, the very popular
(and revolutionary, for its time) book and movie from the
early '60s. The ad copy reads, "She knew she could trust
this husky, suave brute of an engine to squire her around
town, drive her to the mountains for a weekend, even drop
her off for dinner with the girls" It sounds as if the
Mustang is the protector for the poor, defenseless female.
Such attitudes even permeated some feature
articles. A fashion feature- "Charlie Chaplin's Daughter
Geraldine Lights up a Circus" is even more of the girl
mode. "If I were a man," says Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie's
21 year old daughter, "I'd want to be a clown." But being
a girl and a very pretty one at that "she did the next
best thing to running away with the circus" And that would
be that, starring in a fashion show with the circus as a
backdrop?
One exception to all the sexism was an ad for Metropolitan
Life Insurance which asked, "How come one out of every
four professional accountants is insured by Metropolitan
Life?" Of the seven accountants pictured in the ad, one
was a woman. In1966, was the tide slowly turning towards
acceptance of women as something other than the old
standby careers- teacher, nurse, secretary, housewife? Or
was Metropolitan Life just ahead of its time? You'd never
infer much social progress for women from the other 99% of
the magazine.
What a world! If that magazine is truly representative of
its time, what a revelation it is to compare the
representation of 1966's women with what women are capable
of today- heading major corporations, flying into space,
going into combat, filling vital, high-profile roles in
government, medicine, business, and on and on.
The difference
in 40 years is remarkable. I realize the condescending
tone of the ads and the compartmentalized roles women were
portrayed in reflects that time and this was universally
accepted. But what an eye-opener for today.
Perhaps I'm just an over-reacting father of two daughters
who wants the best that life has to offer for them. I'd
always told them they could be anything they wanted to be.
Yet, after seeing all this, I have to wonder what I might
have said in 1966- "Don't worry about a "career"
because it's just temporary until you find the right man?
"I want to think" I would have fared better than that but I
realize we're products of the times we live in.
I might
have succumbed to society's mores for that time, and also
considered my daughters in limited roles. And what's even
worse, odds are they would have accepted them, too.
Thankfully, they no longer live in a world that says you
can't do this or that because you're not a man or have a
need for a "girl-size" pen. Still, I have to wonder
though' when did they stop making girl-size pens?
About the author: David Galassie
is a human resources specialist in Columbia, SC. When not
writing in his free time, he pursues genealogy, Wisconsin
history, and comic book collecting. A frequent contributor
to Rewind the Fifties, he has been published online in The
Comic Book Electronic Magazine, Long Story Short, and in
print in Good Old Days Specials magazine.
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