JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1062

A little while ago I wrote a post called What
Goes Into Making Human Robot Girls, 1941, which was a look at one of  a series
of
intolerably heavy eight-page pamphlets cementing the structure of female
social
intercourse at the hands of the magazine The
Ladies’ Home Journal. 

Continuing on this thread of “constructing” females come this publication—hardly a pamphlet per se, just a folded 11×8 inch
sheet of heavy
stock—from that same series.  It was offered without a title, presenting itself as a do-it-yourself cut-out  puzzle. The puzzle
pieces
are parts of two women, “Miss Popular” and “Miss Unpopular”: the reader
was to
take the publication, cut out the pieces, and reassemble them into
hidden role
models, with phrases describing each on the back of each puzzle piece,
all done with the with lost irony and  questionable metaphor.

The twisted printing makes the description conform to the puzzle piece on the other side of the paper.  The descriptions for the Popular Girl are as follows:

live wire, plenty of push, wide
awake, snappy
looker, dependable, genuine, secret keeper, on-her-toes, spick and span,
light
hearted, all-around-student, straight-shooter, gossip scorner,
sympathetic,
cheerer-upper, sparkler.

Miss
Unpopular’s phrases/descriptors:

glory grabber, sour puss,
cheater, sob-sister,
snooty-snob, wet-blanket, borrower, prissy prig, sharp tongue, gory
gossiper,
clothes dummy, iceberg, sly and slippery, jellyfish, sticky-sweet, soft
soaper
(?) and, of course, fast and loose.

And
so girls—or young women—picking up this publication in 1941 were
expected to
cut this thing up and piece together the proper (paper) role model using
the
reinforcing traits of meager acceptance printed on the back of the
puzzle
piece. Once together Miss Popular and Unpopular look pretty much the same, though in general Miss Unpopular seems a little darker than necessary, scorched I guess with her selfish sins. 

And so double-click for a big image, save it to your desktop, print out and cut up your own Popularity Girl.  Or not.