Old instructional videos aimed at women are a comfort — they show how far we've come since the time when a woman asking something like, "I've always wondered about something: why is it called a revolver?" wasn't totally condescending.

Gun Safety Is Different For Women [Everything is Terrible]

The magazine is Cosmopolitan, from that almost unrecognizable halcyon age of women's magazines when Mademoiselle was publishing Truman Capote's short fiction and Joan Didion was working at Vogue. (That story about "modern psychiatry," grandma's common sense, and the vexations of motherhood sounds kind of familiar, though.)

Meet Tippi "Hedrin"! The best part about this page is that she is holding a lobster.

Do you hear that? Hedren loves everything about modeling. Even the scratchy-looking "removable dickey" on that sheath dress.

By 1953, Hedren had already gotten her first film role, in The Petty Girl. The Birds would come ten years later — and after her divorce from Peter Griffith, pictured. (Apparently the love of animals was lifelong.)

See what you can do with a good wardrobe of stoles?

I just learned that Tippi Hedren was apparently partly responsible for Vietnamese immigrants to California taking up the manicurist trade. Hedren met some Vietnamese refugees in the mid 1970s, and they remarked upon her nails. "I noticed that these women were very good with their hands," Hedren told the Los Angeles Times. "I thought, why couldn't they learn how to do nails?" So she organized training for that particular group of women. Their relative success motivated others, and now California nail technicians are 80% Vietnamese. The more you know!

The Model Life [ModernMechanix]
A Mix Of Luck, Polish [LATimes]

One of the greatest fallacies about history is the belief that what is commonly presented to us as our past is somehow a complete history. Somehow, the realities that millions of Americans lived were white-washed from history books and often do not return. B. Vikki Vintage's blog is valuable in that it reminds us that the American experience was broad and all-encompassing.


These students are walking to a Negro College Aid function, while still fashionable. Love the dress on the right.


I have nothing to say but: bad-ass.


Back when homecoming was an event.


This scene took my breath away. It belongs in a Turner Classic Movie.


At some point, petticoats came back in style.


We even had pulp comics (which I am now obsessed with).


Some things never go out of style. I'd put this on and happily walk out the door.


This type of pose - allowing the fabric to billow around the body - was super popular. It appears in many of the homecoming photos on the B. Vikki vintage site.


The caption reads "What a difference a year makes!" As we transitioned from the 50s into the 60s, the Afro began to be a popular hair style option.


Her look is part-Mod, part-Twiggy, all fabulous.


Fixed up and looking sharp in suits, gloves, and heels.


And of course, Coca-Cola got in on the action.


Sarah Vaughn was doing her thing.


And so was Dinah Washington.


All this happened while women were working on breaking down barriers in all aspects of life.


And while we were fighting segregation.


As Restructure puts it so well: "People of colour are not a story of suffering . . . Or resistance. We are multifaceted."


What is important to remember that only by finding all the pieces will we, as Americans, have a clear understanding of our whole history. There are many people who were here, living, breathing, loving, dancing - and their stories have been deemed unimportant. I'm most familiar with African-American history, but there is also an Asian American History, a Latin American history, an Indigenous history - all of which overlapped with popular culture and helped to create our American tapestry. To be written out of history is one thing - to do so in a way that the contributions of others are completely forgotten is another. As Threadbared points out, there's still so much more to find.