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July 13, 2009

STEPHANIE SALTER: Autumn 1964: What a long, strange, sexist trip it was

By Stephanie Salter

TERRE HAUTE — My favorite ad in the 174-page magazine is on the inside back cover. It features a gauzy, color photo of the torso and legs of a slim woman in a long white girdle. In bold, black type above the headless body, the ad asks: “Why do men who hate girdles like girls who wear Warner’s?”

The text answers the question in a breezy, patronizing tone so reflective of the era. “At Warner’s we have a healthy regard for the female anatomy,” it begins. “We think a girl ought to look like a girl. Even in a girdle.”

The text goes on to deplore the “unnatural, unfeminine” look that most girdles produce. The Warner’s “Delilah,” however, is different with its three ounces of nylon and Lycra spandex that “improve what needs improving — and leave the rest alone.”

The ad concludes: “Incidentally, as you may have guessed, the people who run things at Warner’s are Men.”

My neighbor found the September 1964 McCall’s at a garage sale and thought I’d like it. Taped along the spine and smelling of the basement it’s probably inhabited since the LBJ administration, the magazine is in good shape for a 45-year-old paper product.

Slowly turning its big, creamy pages is a free ride in a time machine. (Women’s studies teachers are welcome to borrow it; this magazine could save weeks of reviewing the socio-cultural factors behind second-wave feminism.)

I was just entering high school in the fall of 1964, so the musty McCall’s stirs strong memories.

Clothes-crazy, I gobbled every autumn “college issue” of Mademoiselle, Seventeen and Glamour to gauge my wardrobe against the New York oracles. Boy-crazy, I heeded the advice of ads such as the one for Warner’s girdles, and for “complexion” products, perfume, hair coloring and toothpaste that made you more kissable.

McCall’s target audience in 1964 wasn’t high-schoolers like me. It was what we teenagers all wanted to be next: young married women, homemakers and mothers who were expected to be as adept at cooking and sewing as they were at looking (and being) sexy for their husbands. Those expectations were captured perfectly in the 1963 Bacharach-David’s hit song, “Wives and Lovers.”

Hey, little girl/ Comb your hair/ fix your make-up/ Soon he will open the door/ Don’t think because/ there’s a ring on your finger/ You needn’t try anymore/ For wives should always/ be lovers too/ Run to his arms/ the moment he comes home to you/ I’m warning you.



The warnings are rife in the 1964 McCall’s.

Take a small ad for Zonite Personal Antiseptic: “Frees married women from worry. Gentle-formula Zonite banishes embarrassing odors, lets you approach the intimate moments of marriage with confidence in your total feminine cleanliness.”

Equally effective is a dual ad for Hotpoint washers and Tide detergent. A stern-looking woman, wearing a frilly white apron over her shirtwaist dress, fantasizes about being the president of Hotpoint. If she were, she proclaims to three riveted men in business suits, she would pack a box of Tide in every new washer.

The ad copy replies: “Good idea, lady, but Hotpoint already does pack Tide.”

Ouch. Stick to the laundry, sweetie, leave the executive decisions to men.

Most of the advertising in the old McCall’s highlights the impossible standard to which American women were held. Despite the lack of a paycheck, the buck stopped with them. They were responsible for everything, including their husband’s behavior, in and out of the home. As the Bacharach-David song intoned:

Day after day/ there are girls at the office/ And men will always be men/ Don’t send him off/ with your hair still in curlers/ You may not see him again.

A full-page ad for Serta mattresses echoes the theme.

A 30-ish couple are in bed in pajamas, an extended arm apart. He’s grinning and patting the top of her head, “good-girl” style; she’s smiling, at once sheepish and knowing.

“That gleam is back in George’s eye … again,” the ad begins. “Although we never discussed it, I knew George was suffering from acute ennui. Boredom. Weariness. Dissatisfaction with his job. Me. He also needed a good night’s sleep. So did I.”

While George was content to complain about lumps in the mattress, his Missus “couldn’t stand it any longer” and went shopping. She describes the wonderful innards of a Serta, the many models available, and how the one she bought for $79.50 alleviated George’s ennui and helped him get his groove back.

Her reward? Presumably that pat on the head and a frisky husband who wouldn’t be bored into an office affair — as long as his wife kept her curlers out of view.

So compelling are the ads in the McCall’s, it took me another trip through the magazine to examine the actual articles. They seem part of a different publication. Diverse, well-written and respectful of the reader’s intelligence, they present a contrasting view of the 1964 target audience.

Among the features: A short story by Pearl S. Buck. An exposé on U.S. nursing homes. Film mogul Jack Warner’s excerpted memoirs. Biologist Carl Hartman’s “One Hundred Unanswered Questions about the Start of Human Life.” An essay on American crime by Clare Boothe Luce, slightly paranoid like its author, but snappy, good reading.

The main fashion spread (sweaters on Long Island) was shot by the superb Art Kane, who also worked for Life and Esquire and left the world a portfolio that includes portraits of some of the great rock and pop musicians of his time.

A harbinger of the feminist wave to come is a feature on New York college “girls,” who discuss everything from their plans to marry and work to the latest campus fads, such as pierced ears, hootenannies, “big owl sunglasses,” straight hair and slang expressions that foreshadow Third Millennium text messaging: “TTFN — ta ta for now” and “NOKP — not our kind of people.”

One ad in the McCall’s is a harbinger, too, standing in stark contrast to the other ads. It’s for Tampax, and I remember it well. Seeing it today gives me chills — in a good way.

A classy blonde, in subtle makeup and a white leather John Weitz jumpsuit, stands in an open, cream-colored Jaguar XKE. The convertible is parked in a field of autumnal rust and gold. The ad copy begins, “Go girl, go! Go where you want, do what you wish. Never let anything hold you back from enjoyment!”

Not another soul is in the picture. The young woman is poised above the steering wheel, smiling, in the driver’s seat.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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