This really puts the debate over the term "plus-size" in perspective: Here is an ad for Lane Bryant, from the back of the September 1922 Ladies Home Journal. Hey, stout women! Lane Bryant has the hot fashions you want!
I love vintage lingerie. Vintage-inspired, authentic vintage, vintage catalogs…taking a past look at women's undergarments is interesting not only from a fashion perspective, but also from a social or cultural one.
It's time for another installment of Foods That Should Not Exist, and we're going back… way back.
It's been a big week for The National Enquirer (the magazine that I once got sent home for reading at school). The publication broke the news that Ellen's house is possibly haunted and alerted faithful readers to a big secret that Jimmy Fallon doesn't want you to know (he loves his wife and child!). And if that wasn't…
Few things are more luridly delightful than midcentury food porn—fishy Jell-Os, mayonnaise frosting, all canned everything, foods ground up and then moulded into the shapes of other foods. If you've ever flipped through your grandma's post-war Betty Crocker cookbook, then you know what I'm grimacing about. These are…
As previously mentioned, back issues of Photoplay have been archived online. A quick flip through of the January 1929 issue revealed a piece that feels chillingly current: It warns that women are putting their lives at risk when they try to be as skinny as Hollywood stars. We've been talking about this shit for 84…
In 1971, a toy called Baby Laugh-a-Lot was unleashed unto the world, to strike fear into the hearts of unsuspecting humans and hypnotise innocent little girls. Once in her thrall, unspeakable evil comes to all who hear her terrifying cackle. Be afraid.
Memorial day is almost upon us, which means it's time for a new swimsuit.
Do you like big, harsh-looking sequins and synthetic fabrics? You're in luck! These images from vintage Colorifics catalogs selling cheerleading, band, drill team and choir uniforms are dazzling. With these get-ups, no one will ever doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion. Go team!
While the William Shatner era of Star Trek isn't exactly the first thing that springs to mind as a predecessor of the "It Gets Better" anti-bullying movement, Buzzfeed's got an excerpt from the advice pages of a 1968 teen magazine called Fave displays Leonard Nimoy's sensitivity to the plight of one particular young…
Just like facts and flies, English words have life-spans. Some are thousands of years old, from before English officially existed, others change, or are replaced or get ditched entirely.
Inequality by (Interior) Design, a blog by sociologist Tristan Bridges, turned one-year-old last month and it is quickly becoming one of my favorites. In a recent post, Bridges featured a product that reminds us all why history is awesome: the "portable baby cage":
As I discussed in a , with industrialization came…
Yay for our foremothers (is that a word?) Alice Duer Miller! This baller piece of old-school Americana comes via @iRevolt. My favorite: "Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them." Zing.
Back in 1912, the New York Times declared Elsie Scheel the "perfect woman." Sure, she may have been a little bit of a dick about how perfect she was (a followup article in The Oregonian reported that "Miss Scheel feels that the average girl does too much of the wrong sort of thing - too many dances and not enough…
100 years ago, the New York Times declared Elsie Scheel of Brooklyn the "most nearly perfect specimen of womanhood."
Copyranter posted seven phallic ads in his column on Buzzfeed, and each one is worse than the next. It would be nice to construct some in-depth commentary about visual literacy and subliminal messages, but all I can think is They knew what this looked like, right? And someone still gave it the green light? I mean,…
We've posted before about how our changing collective awareness of homosexuality in the U.S. over the last several decades often leads us to see implicit (or even explicit) gay themes in vintage ads and photos that likely wouldn't have carried those connotations at the time. My colleague Gregory R. sent in a set of…
This commercial was taped circa 1993, although 9-year-old Mila Kunis's enthusiasm is reminiscent of an earlier, more coked-up era: the Eighties. Mila will never forget the day she got stuck on Lisa Frank, you guys. A simpler time, before Jackie met Kelso. Awesome! Bee tee dubs, Lisa Frank is back, so all of your…
Why is it that when people wax rhapsodic about the gritty New York of the '70s and '80s, they always manage to leave out the part about how waiting for the subway used lead to choreographed dance sequences with a variety of ethnic stereotypes? Knowing this, the nostalgia makes a lot more sense.
