Standard Textbook of Cosmetology (1938, 1954, 1959, 1962)

Good afternoon!

I hope you had a great weekend-- ours was busy, busy, busy! Friday, Dad and I hit the flea market; Saturday, we went to a couple estate sales and watched some Jimmy Stewart westerns, and Sunday, Matthew and I lounged as hard as we could possibly lounge on a rare, shared day off. Six hours of season one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta and delivery General Tso's tofu yesterday is making me feel a little bad for my gluttonous indulgence of high calorie food and low quality (BEST POSSIBLE QUALITY)  reality tv...but you're only young once, right?

Speaking of being young, I'm thinking of cutting my hair to sync up with big changes on the not-so-distant horizon (don't worry, it's good news!). It's down to my elbows right now, but as you can tell from blog pictures, I always wear it up, and I think I'm ready for a bob for the first time in six years. As far as short hair styles, do we consult Celebrity Hair Now or similar shiny tabloid hair makeover rags? Nope-- you know us better than that! I dug up this Standard Textbook of Cosmetology, originally published in 1938 but updated as recently as 1962, to take a look at what was good in the world of coiffures. I didn't find my new hairstyle, but I did find some pretty neat stuff! Wanna take a look?

Mr. Lee's State Beauty College was a cosmetology school in Yakima, Washington...while I couldn't find much information on the institution, I like to think it was like that episode of Tabatha's Salon Takeover where she updates a beauty school that was started by the suave and then-eighty-some-odd year old proprietor named Flavio in the fifties'. Imagine the kind of Warren Beatty in Shampoo like hot guy hair stylist, and these are the dreams I'm projecting on Mr. Lee. The book, from page one, is a hoot-- it combines all the different editions of the book (1938-1962....quite a wide swath of beauty trends there) as one semi-cohesive textbook for the would be beautician.

First, please color me thrilled about this forecast for your success or failure as a working beauty professional:

That pert, swept-updo gal Friday is SO. CUTE. And I whole heartedly agree with the Goofus and Gallant like juxtaposition of how you should do and how you shouldn't. Could someone please needlepoint "TO BE SUCCESSFUL-- you must learn to do the little things that will make people like you" for me to hang up in my home and place of business?

Two pages later, we've jumped from the late forties' to the early fifties' (but still not au courant with the 1962 publication of the book) and what your own personal hygiene as a beautician should entail.

Do you ever notice in hair salons (or maybe the hair salons I would go to in college that specialize in $10 haircuts), there will be two or three girls with perfect, asymmetrical bobs streaked in cute highlights, wearing skinny jeans and a nice top, and they are never the person who comes to cut my hair? I am 9 times out of 10 stuck with a mountainous woman with over, over, OVER processed hair the color of  nothing found in nature, and styled (herself! After all, she's a beautician!) in the fashion of Kate Gosselin or somebody's-trying-too-hard-mom. This woman unwaveringly would look at my photo of Mia Farrow or Jean Seberg or whatever waif-like style icon I was going for at the time, and say "Yeah, I can do that," and proceed to give me a shorter version of her own hair cut. What I wouldn't give to see someone like this smiling brightly at me over the counter-- she would understand how I want hair um exactly like hers and what's more, know how to do it!

Each and every time I brush out my curled hair, I manage to look like one of the Mandrell sisters-- not-that-that's-a-bad-thing, but I can't not do bouncy, 70's prom curls even when I specifically wanted short, forties' defined waves. My hair has a natural wave to it, but is by no means curly, and I have the hardest time figuring out what kind of potions or potents I need to put on it to make the curls stay curled! I know a lot of it is in the comb out... vis à vis the chart below. SO MANY CUTE CURLS. So little that have actually appeared on my head:

I can just see myself with a pen and paper trying to remember if I was doing C curls or CC curls:

Oh, look! The exact marcelled wave from the 20's and 30's I want, but here in this 1962 textbook! Do you think it would be super, unbelievably difficult to recreate this style in the 21st century? Also, would I look like a fruit damn cake? I'm going to do research in the text of the book, but chime in if you know anything about these hair dids. Can I look like La Swanson with the basic, limited hair skills I already possess?

I love thinking of the illustrator going, ok, I need to show how this would work in the theoretical. Also, I need a poster of this crazy figure for my house.

Pin curls! Another thing I will be able to do once I hack off about a foot of this hair. Make me look like Carole Lombard, pin curls!

 This one reminds me of Norma Shearer-- doesn't it you?

Poor, dopey looking "convex" and Disney villainess looking "low forehead, sharp chin"-- I feel like I have a straight pointed profile? Can I vote none of these?

Ok, now that you've seen some of the actually helpful portions of the book, I present to you the truly weird and wackadoodle illustrations from the second half:

Jim! Jim, what happened to your FAAAAACE?! I love how nonplussed he looks even without skin.

It's a rake...for your scalp...wired for electricity...soooo....

With and without protective goggles.

A quartet of horrors. 1) Pattymelt face, 2) I'll worry about my foot bones, you worry about keeping me in Louboutins, 3)Why does Simone Signoret have such a hairy face, 4) Why does this diagram have a face at all! Disturbing! 

I've got to get going, but let me know what you think! Should I cut my hair? What vintage styling tips have you found helpful? Seen any weird textbook illustrations lately? Spill, spill!

Have a great Monday, and hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with some weekend finds! Take care; talk to you then.

Dress: The Clothing Textbook, Ch 5 (1969)

Good morning!

In continuing this week with things that were unearthed during "The Great Bookshelf Move of 2012" (the repercussions of which are still being felt throughout the house, as I tripped over a stack of forties'-era movie star biographies in my hallway this morning), I found this 1969 edition of a home economics title called Dress: The Clothing Textbook and thought you guys would get a kick out of it like I did. With units like "Personal Clothing Needs", "Clothing the Family", and "Textile Fabrics", the table of contents already boasts several points of interest-- today, I scanned some of the items from Chapter 5, entitled "Shopping Wisely and Well". Wanna see, wanna see?

Over the last five years, my clothes-shopping habits have changed dramatically from about a fifty/fifty split between estate sales/Goodwill and Target/the mall, to a 80/20 ratio of the same store breakdowns. I still hit L'Target for socks and underthings and the occasional shoe, but for the most part, all of my separates and dresses, which are legion, come from somebody else's closet by one means or another. Something about the "hunt" aspect of digging through racks and racks of old clothes is just too appealing-- and it's hard to go back and pay $30 for an okay dress at a department store, on sale, when you could have a shock-and-awe style $100 dress from the 80's for $7.99 (if you can find it and subsequently squeeze into it!). My twenty-point check system is a lot like the (bizarrely coiffed) woman in this quality assurance tutorial, except add "does it have a burned spot from the misguided ash of someone's cigarette at a New Year's party in the seventies'?" and "have the seams fallen out?" and "is this a 1960's vintage chili sauce stain? Will it come out with Biz?"

I was shopping at an antique store out in Goodletsville last week with Emma from The Fiercest Lilliputian and we were lamenting the idea of stores-full of the kinds of vintage accouterments we like for reasonable retail prices in their respective decades-- a pair of forties' leather wedgies for twenty bucks, all sizes! Sixties' pill box hats, fifteen dollars, all sizes! It's kind of hard to wrap your head around a time when you could go to the department store and there was a whole rack of the kind of vintage stuff for which we girls spend weekend-after-weekend scouring the thrift stores and vintage racks and every other where. Also, the stores themselves! I'm sorry, but Macy's in Rivergate doesn't look anything like this:

You said it was typical! You lied to me, text!

Filene's (above) was a chain of department stores that served customers in New England and New York locations up until 2005. This little wedding cake of a location looks like it's ready to take off! One of my favorite teenage bedtime stories was to ask my parents to tell me about the "Lemon Frog Shop" at Sears in the early seventies', which did have a Nashville location... I like to think this would be just the same kind of place, a veritable Candyland of polyknit pant suits and jumpers. Dis-similarly,  I would be actually afraid to go to the Wannamaker's location pictured below. Do you SEE the "Christ on the Calvary" painting that's taller than my house and probably twice as expensive? Also, note the bird cages as decoration on different countertops and the large falcon statuary close to the foreground of the picture. Don't come in here with your "Hey there, show me some cheap sweaters!" from yesterday's post, in front of a famous painting of our Lord!

Here are some more department stores of yesteryear with their "Gosh, let me go shopping there for just five minutes, just whatever I can grab in five minutes!" interiors:

What's neat about this text, and what I enjoy about vintage home ec books in general, is the tone set by the author of starting at near scratch with their intended audience. Let's assume you've just come off the farm in Dog Patch, Arkansas or descended from Mars in your shiny metal spaceship... Cousin Jessop and Xanadu alike would find great solace in the text's presupposition that you have never set barefoot nor webbed-foot in a commercial retail setting, ever ever ever. This is not so much a "tips and advice" book as a manual for how to successfully shop for a wardrobe, right from the very beginning. Here are three successful 1969 girl shoppers and their respective wardrobes. Of the center outfit, the caption reads "A basic suit with accessories for casual wear. The shoulder bag and the turtleneck ribbed sweater match the line in the plaid of the suit. Knee socks and loafers are also suitable for casual wear." Now, if you'd never seen a sixties' movie or pictures of your mom or aunt or uncle growing up, there's a blue print for a decent late sixties' casual outfit. Tell me more, oh wise vintage clothing advisers!

How to buy strapless and strapped brassieres, and how to buy panty girdles versus the step-in girdle...know your differences and similarities! It occurred to me, as I was reading, that all the boys in whatever grade this was necessary for in the 1969 high school curriculum, would be in shop class while we girls are covering the unit on delicates and unmentionables in "Dress Class". Isn't that crazy to think about? Wellness, when I was in high school, was probably the closest we got to any home and health instruction in the early 2000's, and it was decidedly co-educational. That means when the guy came in from the Public Health Department with his STD photo examples flashcards (I couldn't make this up if I tried), we alllllll had to see the ensuing presentation. Together. In bi-gender unity. EEK! The 1960's guys were probably learning how to use a drill press while we girls were weighing our girdle options in Dress class. Ah, well. Times, they change!

I didn't know this or think about this with regard to shoes-- I think the shiny material makes the shoe wearer's foot look slightly smaller. Maybe I should pay more attention to shiny options in shoe wear next time I hit the Target!

Patterned tights were the thing in late sixties' and early seventies' leg wear, and I, for one, would have been grateful to them for allowing some kind of coverage in those thigh high miniskirt days. Here's two tricks for thicker legs and skinny-mini legs, respectively. I didn't think about the optical value of either one of them before, but you'd better bet I'm taking it into consideration in the future! Also, I could die over how much I want to look like that girl at the football game below.

Another instructive moment-- I've always wanted to know more about what to call certain types of vintage handbags. Box purses are kind of obviously named, but look at all the different kinds of bags you probably have in your vintage collection that you haven't been calling by its right name all this time! "Swagger" and "Vagabond" are new ones on me. I wish there was a similar chart on hats in this chapter, but we came up short on that account.

Vintage department store clothing tags. Look at the Penney-Tween typography and the little sweater vest emblem on the Sears sweater tag. Ugh! Tags are so boring nowadays! I want a promise of quality along with the cost of the garment!

Last but not least from this chapter, I had trouble scanning this because of the tight binding and the size of the book, but oh Good Lord look at these poor, poor teen boys trying to look cool in front of the Sears "fashion coordinator". Could you die? You can see the Martha-haired woman at center going "Really? This is what you want to send down the runway? Not in a million years, boys! Not in a million years!". That said, i hope that guy on the far right is their very-short teacher; otherwise, he's the lest datable teen of all!

Do you have any memories of vintage looking department stores from your youth or your parents' recollections? What "signs of quality" do you look for in either vintage clothes or new store-bought items for your wardrobe? Have any vintage home ec textbooks that have taught you valuable life lessons? Do share!

That's all for today-- more book finds tomorrow!

Being Teenagers (1950)

Good morning!

I remember a while back I told you guys about a book I found at an estate sale on Fairfax Avenue in Nashville, specifically relating that it had a whole slew of Pat Boone advice columns from the fifties' carefully clipped and saved in the front cover. Well, I finally got around to scanning said book, and thought you might get a kick out of "Being Teen-Agers", 1950 health and etiquette manual for the growing adolescent.

One of the things that most appealed to me about this text was the weird mix of cartoons and photographs to illustrate the accompanying advice. Usually, I feel like teen wellness books either adopt one or the other and run with it...Being Teenagers  couldn't decide and mixed it up with these cute late forties'-ish doodles, sometimes on the same page as realistic photos of kiddlings in action. Take a look at the cartoons first:

 

The guy at the breakfast table looks so grown up! "Well, Father, I was hoping I could get your opinion on some stocks I was considering..." Also, I think I've been in the jalopy at the bottom on more than one occasion. Do you remember how difficult it was to get home before curfew back in the day? One particular gentleman caller and I, in a Suzuki Samurai that was the vehicular equivalent of a lawnmower with a car battery, would inevitably be hurtling down I-65N only to hit some kind of traffic and be put what seemed like eons past the time I should have been home. Every. TIME! And no cell phones, of course. "I could take side roads, but I'm telling you, it would only give us the illusion of movement," said my seventeen year old aesthete of a beau would posit. "I DON'T CARE. I WANT THE ILLUSION OF MOVEMENT," I would yell over R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People on the Suzuki's tape deck. Young love.

I love the phrase "gone soft in the head" and intend to use it more often. Even the dude with the bowtie is clued in to chasing girls as a hobby over model airplanes...why stay behind in the dark, teen at left?

Teen body dysmorphia, seen from the guy's side! Do you see yourself as more of a Quagmire or more of a James Bond figure? I love that the guy pictured is of course closer to 007, but probably thinks of himself in terms of the other. Also, how did they know my troubles look EXACTLY LIKE THAT. Like a mascot from an eraser company ad, except more surly. "Get outta here troubles! Get!" Trouble: "All right already, I hoid ya the foist time!"

Isn't this how I still enter any home with a second story? Up the stairs at a barreling pace, just like the dingo I know I am at heart? Note that the women in that illustration arbitrarily have legs that diminish into pin-points, but no feet (I want to see the shoes that go with that hat, because that is quite the hat!). In the bottom picture, I feel bad for the little guy on the right. Look at his completely downward turned mouth! Why can't he make the same hit as his more popular counterpart?

And my favorite illustration of all...how did they get wind of my real-life exercise regimen?

Now, to the photograph segment:

The girl on the left had dutch braids AND  a dirdl! She may actually be of Teutonic extraction. What I love about this and all the other photos is how uncommerical they look-- poorly reproduced, not-at-all-staged, and totally of-the-moment! What more could you ask for? Look at all the glass bottle cokes everywhere.

The guy in the knit ducks sweater is KILLING all y'all other kids in the clothing department. Yowza! I love the aspect of introspection that a lot of the text has. It's something I think we can still use as adults-- look at yourself and assess your faults and strengths, and then change accordingly. What could be easier? I love "Are you friendly? If you could meet yourself coming down the street, would you say, 'Now there's a friendly person?' " I wonder!

I really want to go to the kind of school where children play accordions and banjos in the hallway and dressed-to-practice-law-in-the-forties' male instructors stop to take a gander at the ensuing jam session:

Here's a girl literally taking a look at herself. How do you like the hazy cutout around her? Also, give me your neckerchief and your dachshund and no one gets hurt.

I think to this day one of the hardest and yet most useful pieces of advice you can receive is to "be yourself". I can't even imagine trying to tell that to my poor teenage self, yet it's really the SOLE PIECE OF ADVICE that works in almost any situation. By all means, make a good impression and worry about making a good impression-- but do so by presenting your real life, honest-to-Garshen personality, and you pretty much can't lose. I love the expression of the guy in the second panel, after he's gotten comfortable. Why has the girl put her coat back on?

Last but not least, a COMBINATION of photography and illustration-- the only one like it in the whole book, for some reason!

Yeah, supposin' if you do join the camera club! You would get to take a picture of this puppy float, and all I'm saying is, that might be about the coolest thing you get to do in the course of the year. Just sayin'.

Which one of these teen illustrations is your favorite? Did you have a "how to be an adolescent" book when you were in your teenage years that shaped your young mind into what it is today? What piece of advice would you give teenage you with the present benefit of all your worldly experience?

Have a G-R-E-A-T Thanksgiving! I'm taking a day or two off to cook, eat and hibernate (in that order), but I'll see you guys next week (or sooner, if I get bored)!

Dr. Kildare: The Magic Key (1963)

Good morning! I found this sometime last year at the East Nashville Goodwill and actually had to ask a man standing in front of the bin where it lay, flipping through records near the cash register, if he was going to buy it. I've reached for stuff before that I didn't realized was already "spoken for" and come close to drawing back a nub, so you can never be too sure. "Uh, no?" the records-perusing man replied, as if the item in question had been geriatric diabetic support hose rather than kitsch GOLD. Are you kidding me? Who would not want to buy this? For $1.99, no less?

Hellllloooooooo, nurse!

Omg. Look at the cheerleader's booties. And the nurse's skirt...that can't be regulation, right?

Dr. Kildare, as those in the know already know, was a popular radio, movie, and television property that ran, in different incarnations, from around 1937 to the mid sixties'. The most well-remembered version of the show was the television serial, which ran from 1961 to 1966, and starred clean-cut, handsome Richard Chamberlain in the titular medical role. Think of Dr. Kildare as the very first whoever-George-Clooney-played-on-ER, or Patrick Dempsey on Grey's Anatomy....the great-grandfather of Dr. McDreamy!

The illustrations in this book, as in any sixties' tv-tie-in text, are really the draw. While I'm sure it was fascinating for teenybopper television fans of the series to read anything at all about the further adventures of their dreamboat hero, the story is a little less than fascinating (something about a cheerleader breaking her arm? Maybe? I skimmed, man. I skimmed!). What I love is the ONE COLOR tone...you'll see this in Donna Parker or Troy Nesbitt or any of the similar teen lit of the time in that the illustrations will be in black and white...plus one key note color to ratchet up the eye appeal a little. In this case, what could be more appropriate for a hospital than that pistachio green? Even the checkerboard eschews its traditional red and black format for a taste of spearmint!

What's weird about the illustrations in this book is that the main character, Kildare, always looks more like someone's faithful labrador than his very-human looking actor counterpart, Chamberlain. Is there not something spaniel-ish about the way his face is drawn in the above panel? Most of the other people turn out looking at least like people...you'd think they would have put the MOST effort into the reason-kids-are-buying-the-book! It reminds me of those busts of Elvis or Elvis head lamps that bear little to no resemblance to the King himself. WHY DO THEY STILL APPEAL TO ME.


Note the green tints leeching into Nurse Ratchet's forehead, and the green milk. This is going too far, illustrators! I can't help but think of the "Oh Blanche...you know we've got rats in the cellar?" scene from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane... whatever's in there, girl patient, do not eat it!

Kildare manages to look slightly less canine in this picture, but still way less handsome than his real life actor man. If I had read the text, I might know who this guy is, but instead, I'm concentrating on the quaint little switch above the bed railing, and the similar switch for the tiny light fixture. Think about how many things weren't automated or button controlled in a hospital in 1963!

I personally love the following things in this picture: Chuck's freckles, mom-of-the-patient's single strand of pearls and chignon, and girl patient's cutie bangs and petulant expression. Do you see how Chuck is dressed? I might actually die.

Whatever is going on in this picture, say yes, girl patient! Say yes! Whatever I would have to do to don that absolutely too cute twirler/cheerleader/whatever it is outfit, I would gladly do it! Put down that book, pick up that baton!

You'll have to read the rest of the story (or any of the story) to figure out what happens in the end, but I'm pretty sure that no one dies and the girl gets to go baton-twirling...after all, it is a young adult book (back when that did not necessarily connote various supernatural romantic creatures, other worlds, wizards, etc).

The end pages boast other Whitman classics...um, you had me at "Little Lame Prince" (which is my new cursing epithet for Matthew, by the way):

I now HAVE to track down the Beverly Hillbillies novelization. I mean, right?

Do you remember Dr. Kildare? Did you have any embarrassingly intense tv crushes that translated into buying tie-in merchandise in your vulnerable teens? Which use of green in the above illustrations is the most off-putting to you? Let's talk!

If you're into more Kildare merch, there's a TON on Etsy practically for the asking. Check it out!

That's all for today...see you all right back here tomorrow for more scanned goodies and gewgaws.