Bachelor Girl_ The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century - Betsy Israel [98]
Training young women to capture husbands now underwent a vast CinemaScopic fifties-era renaissance.
In 1955 alone there were more than three hundred promarriage, antisingular tomes. From one foreword: “It would seem that some have come to view marriage in its current state as…disappointing for women, and especially those who have taken the higher degree.” As if it was 1910, the author concluded: “The lure of the city and its many pleasures will make of many potentially fine and worthy wives unnatural defeated spinsters…sick and lonely women.”
As always, commentators dragged the discussion back to education and the eternal topic—“what should we teach our women?” One home-economics professor from a college in Virginia wrote in the Reader’s Digest: “Unless there is a direct application to the home, or the conflicts and issues that will confront her in the home, in [dealing with] her husband or children, it is not valid education; it is unfair to the girl and confusing.”
One 1956 home-ec textbook provided a quick-study list of thirty-five tasks to perform before a husband returned from “his labors.” Here’s a small sampling of what the fifties singles studied:
1. Have dinner ready: Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal—on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most are men are hungry when they come home!
2. Minimize the noise: At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of washer, dryer, dishwasher or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet. Have them properly dressed to give their greetings.
3. Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or suggest he lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillow…speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.
Whatever her interests, the single girl picked up a magazine, went to the movies—got into a conversation with just about anyone—and heard about what single girls had heard about since 1860: how to catch a man and make him stay. For example, a February 1952 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal provided a “quick inventory for bachelor girls”: “What about your…hair, complexion, clothes? Are you a good talker, dancer, listener? Do you have a sense of humor? Hobby? Outside interests?…If anything is lacking you must go to the hairdresser, psychiatrist, whatever is needed. Only then are you prepared to face the world.”
These articles and books prescribed ways to achieve a kind of robotic period perfection, “a rigorous ideal that is…to be desired by any woman who cares about her future.” But in fact the physical attributes of 1950s “perfection” were intensely difficult to attain. The dictates of the female ideal were repeated and reprinted as if they were a paper doll’s mantra: “I am 5 feet 4 inches tall, 122 pounds, with brown hair, blue eyes, a 251/2-inch waist, 34-inch bust, and 36-inch hips.” Famed anthropologist and frequent commentator Margaret Mead found it startling—and not necessarily “good”—that the average 1956 girl was fifteen pounds lighter than her counterpart thirty years before.
New products appeared to assist in her transformation, most dramatically, hair dye that one could use safely at home without burning the scalp or turning hair purple (both incidents documented in a 1922 diary). Shirley Polykoff, a female advertising executive who, along with Estée Lauder and PR magnate Eleanor Lambert, were the professional “exceptions” to every