Here’s How
Schreiber
1967
This is one of those special books that tells you how to be a girl: appropriate hair and makeup, sewing, entertaining, diet, decorating, and gift wrapping. These are skills that will really pay off when you go husband shopping! My favorite tip is to use your brother’s lunchbox to hold your hair stuff. I keep thinking it might be kind of cool to breakout your Batman lunchbox when your hair needs help.
Most of these tips are super obvious or not necessary. No wonder the book is in pretty good shape. Even girls in 1967 thought this was a bit dumb.
Mary
0
Was “short and dumpy” any less of an insult back in 1967? Way to make a teenaged girl feel good about herself. Wow.
I had to laugh at “If you are short and dumpy” under “Wardrobe Wizardry.”
I think this is back when Sears sold “husky” for boys and “chubbies” for girls.
In other words, if you’re not tall and slim, you ought to dress like a maiden aunt who is at least in her forties. .
Back then, there was a real difference in the way clothes for heavier children were sold, Clothes for boys were termed ‘Husky’. Girls went to the ‘Chubette’ department.
The sewing tips were OK.
I agree with everyone here about “short and dumpy” though.
I guess if you’re not slim – even if you’re average-sized, you must be dumpy if you’re short.
I think Sears had “Pretty and Plump”.
It was “Pretty-Plus” in the 70s. Not that I would know anything about that.
HEADBAND MADNESS!!!!!
Don’t forget to wear your prettiest slip and your girdle to go clothes shopping. I guess I can never go shopping. Too much trouble deciding whether I’m short and dumpy or just bottom heavy.
And was this 1967 or 1867? Seal small bottles with candle wax for traveling?
Hint for whoever wrote that front-cover copy: “Hairdo” does not rhyme with “pro.”
Where would one wear white gloves embellished with rick-rack, etc.? They would not be correct.
My mother did make me matching “babushkas” out of leftover dress fabric, I am proud to say. Although we did not call them that. They were useful when I was forced to ride in my father’s convertible with the top down — he had a crew cut, what did he care?
Some of those suggestions — the candlewax one, for example — would be better executed by plastic baggies — I think they were around by then?
I don’t know… “dickey for you” is confusing to me.
A dickey is “a small fabric insert worn to fill in the neckline” (m-w.com). And I can’t find confirmation right now, but I think “just dickey” or “dickey for you” is a good thing. Things are just dickey! (Maybe sarcastic later on in the evolution of the word, and now it seems to be dead.)
Check out this ad for Chubettes clothing.
https://boingboing.net/2011/11/18/chubettes-the-badly-named-clo.html
Cut out that drawing of the cat with a woman at a sewing machine, label it a “vintage” illustration, and sell it to a sewist!