the good old days

If you’re feeling both frumpy and paranoid, this may (or may not) be the movie for you — How to Be Well Groomed (1949) provides basic instruction on personal grooming habits, as well as assuring its audience that everyone is staring at you and making personal judgements all day long.

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Overall, it’s fairly bland, although the narrator can’t quite avoid being mean.

• “Sue avoids red nail polish, since it would draw attention to her stubby hands.”
• “Mother, too, keeps up a good appearance even around the house, for that keeps up her spirits.” (That quote is actually an interesting indirect acknowledgement that housework and cooking really isn’t enough to keep one cheerful and fulfilled. Unfortunately, it also implies that tidy clothing will fill in the gaps.)
• “Let’s hope [Don] pays a little attention to pattern and colors!”

Let’s face it — perfume was incredibly necessary in centuries when nobody bathed. Back then, it was vital to douse yourself in something to distract from your personal funk. But when you wash off the sweat and grime, there isn’t much odor to cloak.

The actress in this Avon commercial (instructional video?) has more fun than anyone should have when applying perfume — and also apparently wears far more perfume than is appropriate. (After all, “everone in the room” notices it…) Let’s face it — perfume was incredibly necessary in centuries when nobody bathed.

There’s a good reason you don’t see Mr. Perfume in this video — he’s died of asphyxiation. But don’t worry, her guests won’t notice the rotting body odor, thanks to the gallon of perfume on her pulse points!

“Is that ‘matchless’ as in, can’t be matched, or as in, doesn’t match?”

via Found in Mom’s Basement

Via Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science, a brilliant article from UK’s Sun which has some of the worst math ever… in more than one way.

So here’s the math — an equation, and a description of all its variables.

The equation is O=NP(20C+B)/75.

To figure out the naughtiness rating (O), you times the number of nipples exposed, from zero to two or expressed as fractions of nipple shown (N) with the percentage of exposed frontal surface area (P).

The sum in brackets is 20 multiplied by the cup size (C), where A cup is one, B is two, C is three and D or above is five.

Add that figure to B, the bust measurement in inches. Then divide your answer by 75. Any score higher than 100 is counted as obscene.

So by now you’re probably seeing one reason this is bad math: it’s an attempt to quantitatively define obscenity based on breast exposure.

The scientific term for this is “boobline.” That’s another reason this is bad math.

Then The Sun helpfully walks you through the equation, in case you don’t understand algebra, and analyzes a recent photograph of Britney Spears to demonstrate how it works — calculating her low-cut dress at 123.2 (OMG TEH OBSCENE!). Again, bad math, because it’s quite clearly just a fancy way to snark at celebrities. SCIENCE can prove that Britney is bustin’ out!

But Ben pointed out something that I wouldn’t have even bothered realizing, since I was disgusted and had stopped actively thinking:

No. Without nipple exposure Britney’s score is zero, because zero multiplied by anything is zero. In fact, even if that error wasn’t made by our genius mathematician (did you know he did maths at Cambridge?) the formula is still cock, because if all women walked around wearing absolutely nothing but tassles on their nipples – fanny, bum, the whole lot – they would still have a naughtiness rating of zero.

I laughed very, very hard at this. If you’re going to do bad math, you should at least attempt to follow math rules, especially the extremely basic ones.

But now we know: even edible nipple tassels have an obscenity rating of zero, which fact is scientifically supported by a person with a MATH degree from CAMBRIDGE. (Remind me never to send my children to Cambridge, hmm?) Now I totally know what to wear to my next ultra-professional presentation! (Buy your own candy tassels at rudefood.com, if you’re feeling peckish and prudish.)

Excerpt of a 1947 advertisement in Popular Mechanics, scanned and posted by Modern Mechanix

Here’s a tip: if you don’t want people to know you’re wearing a girdle, perhaps you should put on some pants and a shirt. But who am I to complain about people wearing restrictive undergarments while fondling fishing poles in the privacy of their own home?

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…)