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 11x8 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.
A "soft-soaper" is one who flatters another for gain. See here: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soft-soaper
Posted by: Jocelyn | 19 July 2010 at 02:24 PM