the good old days

Now that the Socialists have won the White House, what can we expect for our nation’s future? Dishwashers for everybody!

Allowing five to a family, there are fifteen million families in this country; and at least ten million of these live separately, the domestic drudge being either the wife or a wage slave. Now set aside the modern system of pneumatic house-cleaning, and the economies of co-operative cooking; and consider one single item, the washing of dishes. Surely it is moderate to say that the dishwashing for a family of five takes half an hour a day; with ten hours as a day’s work, it takes, therefore, half a million able-bodied persons—mostly women to do the dishwashing of the country. And note that [dishwashing] is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work; that it is a cause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper; of prostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children—for all of which things the community has naturally to pay. And now consider that in each of my little free communities there would be a machine which would wash and dry the dishes, and do it, not merely to the eye and the touch, but scientifically—sterilizing them—and do it at a saving of all the drudgery and nine-tenths of the time!
– The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

The rise of Bad Commies in USSR put an end to Dr. Schliemann’s vision of saving the world (or the USA, at least) from the evils of dishwashing. Luckily, the Capitalists would invent dishwashers anyway. (Or maybe they’re socialist dishwashers in a cunning disguise. That would explain the GRRRNNGTTTZZZ noise mine is making.)

The ad is from the 1940’s for Hotpoint Dishwasher, and thanks to Confessions of an Apron Queen for originally posting it.

A couple months back, Kitchen Retro posted this advertisement for Nitey Nite. Squinting shows that the company offered patterns that the creative mother could use to make her children’s nice, warm, normal sleepwear into fruits or vegetables — a watermelon and radish, respectively.

Now, I’m not a crazy obsessive crafter. Indeed, I don’t manage to turn out more than about six projects a year. But I do make my kids Halloween costumes. This started a few years ago, out of frustration more than anything else.

When my daughter was born, I joined a baby group. All the mothers had their first children with a couple months of each other, so it was a great way to hang around with people going through the same childrearing problems at the same time. I got equal sympathy over stressful days at work from both the working and at-home moms; they were all very supportive of whatever your job situation was, all except for one… we’ll call her Martha.

Martha was nice enough, but had a compulsion to turn every conversation towards how she was totally amazing and coped with so much to make her house a wonderful place to live. She’d ask how my day at work had gone, and I’d end up hearing about cupcakes she baked with her daughter that morning, and how wonderful it was to be home all the time. Whether she meant to or not, she was incredibly judgmental towards the other moms who weren’t — for a wide range of reasons — unemployed. And it pissed me off.

So when Martha started talking about Halloween costumes in August, I made my stand. I bought a pattern and fabric and spent two months making the worlds most beautiful witch costume ever — purple satin underdress, poofy purple and black tulle skirt, and a black satin overvest. It was fucking awesome. We bought a pointy hat and a little broom and she was just the prettiest witch ever. Martha’s daughter handmade costume — a cute leopard print shirt, sewn-on tail, and headband with kitty cat ears — was adorable, but uninspired. That’s right, I can optimize a production process all day and still make a better costume than you when I get home, bitch!

Ignoring my incredibly immature motivation, I’m pretty pleased with the witch costume. My daughter has worn it three times now. Last year I made my son a black cat costume so he’d match big sister. This year, she suggested he be a pickle instead.

And that’s how I’m neatly tying in my competitive costuming obsession with vintage sleepwear ads. See how totally awesome that tie-in was? I can search for engineering jobs on Monster all day and still write a better blog post about toddler pickle costumes than you, Martha!

Following up from yesterday’s Schlitz & Vitamin D post — did 1930’s men’s bathing suits always have belts? (I’ll have to buy the Michael Phelps Crazy Amazing Saga from NBC to see if that’s still in vogue…)