E. Thank you so much for being so kind and reinforcing. But yeah...I was just thinking about how they used to say, in the 50s, that lesbians were just like that because they never had a good man. Also in that group: something I never heard of. A "FLIP"....sounded by description like a loud mouth. Seen here making fun of a docent at an art museum???
From my well-thumbed copy of the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Volume 1: "FLIP (n.): a saucy, impertinent, or forward person, esp. a young woman." First documented in print in 1915 ("That little flip will give him a merry chase, I'm thinking").
Besides absurd, I see more postwar PTSD - anxiety if you didn't serve, piles if you did, worrying that you're being left behind in the new postwar boom, anxiety and confusion about sexuality, making sense of the worldwide sadomasochistic cataclysm that so recently claimed 80 million lives, rampant consumerism so you didn't have to think about it.
What makes it horrible now is the boomer in chief is stuck back there, in the same stupid loop, destroying the postwar alliances to reassert the old anxieties.
Genius. Thank you for your insights and your wit. I had a red hat wearing Vet of about 80 say to me a woman's only purpose is to have children. I laughed aloud but it was terrifying.
The Lesbian is hot. 🔥 Just great. I’d like to have that same shirt, jacket and pants and attitude and well wait I have the attitude. I may be able to throw together the rest of the ensemble. This would be a good look for me. Thank you for showcasing it Merrill.
I dont know if you can see it on that jpeg but each of the bad girls are labeled and the one directly next to the lesbian is labeled The FEEB….and is named MAVIS!!! Not a name that appears much in 50’s BS.
Many of us grew up with this culture, absorbed it without realizing it, and have been fighting it from within ourselves all our lives. And now, lo, the monster is back among us, mutated like an evil retrovirus and stronger than ever for being sanctioned by the men at the top of government and corporate America. Thank you for this illuminating analysis.
Absolutely brilliant read, thanks, Merrill. For International Womens Day (weekend) this is a scary look back at the 1950s and how men in MALE magazine saw ‘problem women’. The thing that is truly terrifying, is that I have just this week experienced some of these ‘attitudes’. Mysogyny is alive and well 70 years on and only going to worsen under Right- wing control.
FanTASTIC!!! OMG what a flashback (for some of us). I just barely recall my thoughts from 1958 but can remember a lot of these ‘get rich at home’ schemes still running in magazines (which btw girls & women were more obsessed with,
likely as comedy relief, in hindsight) right into the Kennedy years. I had no Dad but brothers 8 & 10yrs older, and I remember discovering Argosy laying around the house now and then-round about 1963/64. I learned so much in those pages 😵 but evidently, even at my tender age, mainly that grownups might just be rubes. Who would believe that stuff, I asked my precocious 6yo self as I then perused ads for Noxema and cold creams and perfumes that promised miracles in an issue of maybe, Women’s Day (I recall unironically). The diff?
A) Women didn’t denigrate men then, and have evolved
B) Men from then still denigrate women, have not evolved, even regressed.
There’s probably a sociology study here that expands on these ideas but what um, fun it was to revisit those times in print. Well done.
Even setting aside the bad/animal-like women, this puts enormous pressure on men. It's a very explicit message that if you're not rich, you're worthless.
I gotta think that all the hatred is some kind of misplaced rage in the brain of thwarted adult male desire/achievement, with no one to blame except himself and an old memory of Mommy-as-boss. Much easier to blame Mommy than self.
(And) This was the world I was born into… don’t think I was truly conscious of any it at 11 years old on March 1958 but now looking back at it through your illustrated lens of time it gives quite the perspective - lest we forget! And it sure didn’t take long after 1958 to emerge into the second wave of the women’s movement that lasted for 20 years. And really still continuing… The fight goes on.
While the get quick rich schemes for men are laughable, they also reflect that men were boxed in by 1950s societal roles in the same way that women were relegated to "being a housewife." Men had to be "providers," stuck in dead end jobs they didn't like. My 1950s mother wanted to get a job, but was told by my father that she couldn't work because it would reflect "poorly" on him as a provider. He might have made a better "housewife" and my mother a business manager!
Eventually my mother found some satisfaction in a whole series of crazy cottage industries - all of them involving humor which I have tried to honor on my Substack account. Also writing a novel about 1950s housewives who struggle to find a new identity in the more permissive 1960s.
I believe that today's joyfully sadistic, "continuously annoying ‘powerful men’ " read those C. Atlas comic book ads and decided to embody the bully kicking sand into the faces of women and nerdy men.
Merrill, thank you for your service.
This whole piece is brilliant. Staggering. Timely. True.
E. Thank you so much for being so kind and reinforcing. But yeah...I was just thinking about how they used to say, in the 50s, that lesbians were just like that because they never had a good man. Also in that group: something I never heard of. A "FLIP"....sounded by description like a loud mouth. Seen here making fun of a docent at an art museum???
From my well-thumbed copy of the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Volume 1: "FLIP (n.): a saucy, impertinent, or forward person, esp. a young woman." First documented in print in 1915 ("That little flip will give him a merry chase, I'm thinking").
Interesting! I never heard that term before.
Besides absurd, I see more postwar PTSD - anxiety if you didn't serve, piles if you did, worrying that you're being left behind in the new postwar boom, anxiety and confusion about sexuality, making sense of the worldwide sadomasochistic cataclysm that so recently claimed 80 million lives, rampant consumerism so you didn't have to think about it.
What makes it horrible now is the boomer in chief is stuck back there, in the same stupid loop, destroying the postwar alliances to reassert the old anxieties.
Yes. Absolutely on all accounts. Hi Quentin!
Genius. Thank you for your insights and your wit. I had a red hat wearing Vet of about 80 say to me a woman's only purpose is to have children. I laughed aloud but it was terrifying.
Our vice president has often said the exact same thing.
This piece is so enlightening. Being 18 in 1958, I had no clue about any of what you’ve so masterfully explained. Thanks for expanding my education.
I mean it. It would have been much easier if I’d known just a portion of this!
I knew God should have made men to give birth!
Sorry, I'm still stuck on Page's Palliative Pile Preparations.
Yes, very old term for them.
The Lesbian is hot. 🔥 Just great. I’d like to have that same shirt, jacket and pants and attitude and well wait I have the attitude. I may be able to throw together the rest of the ensemble. This would be a good look for me. Thank you for showcasing it Merrill.
As always, hilarious and engaging.
🌺Merrill🌺
I dont know if you can see it on that jpeg but each of the bad girls are labeled and the one directly next to the lesbian is labeled The FEEB….and is named MAVIS!!! Not a name that appears much in 50’s BS.
Many of us grew up with this culture, absorbed it without realizing it, and have been fighting it from within ourselves all our lives. And now, lo, the monster is back among us, mutated like an evil retrovirus and stronger than ever for being sanctioned by the men at the top of government and corporate America. Thank you for this illuminating analysis.
Absolutely brilliant read, thanks, Merrill. For International Womens Day (weekend) this is a scary look back at the 1950s and how men in MALE magazine saw ‘problem women’. The thing that is truly terrifying, is that I have just this week experienced some of these ‘attitudes’. Mysogyny is alive and well 70 years on and only going to worsen under Right- wing control.
FanTASTIC!!! OMG what a flashback (for some of us). I just barely recall my thoughts from 1958 but can remember a lot of these ‘get rich at home’ schemes still running in magazines (which btw girls & women were more obsessed with,
likely as comedy relief, in hindsight) right into the Kennedy years. I had no Dad but brothers 8 & 10yrs older, and I remember discovering Argosy laying around the house now and then-round about 1963/64. I learned so much in those pages 😵 but evidently, even at my tender age, mainly that grownups might just be rubes. Who would believe that stuff, I asked my precocious 6yo self as I then perused ads for Noxema and cold creams and perfumes that promised miracles in an issue of maybe, Women’s Day (I recall unironically). The diff?
A) Women didn’t denigrate men then, and have evolved
B) Men from then still denigrate women, have not evolved, even regressed.
There’s probably a sociology study here that expands on these ideas but what um, fun it was to revisit those times in print. Well done.
Even setting aside the bad/animal-like women, this puts enormous pressure on men. It's a very explicit message that if you're not rich, you're worthless.
Good god, This country is a bizarre hellscape.
Could it be the cannon fodder left standing with PTSD after WW2 were open to any and all bad advice and manipulation?
Also, why do all these dudes hate women then and now?
What cop is still using a fountain pen and inkwells in 1958 to write up " bad girls" who knew smoking cigs leads to free will?
And why is Machiavellianism just so damned appealing?
We had a wonderful female candidate with plans to help those under the meaty section of the bell curve but no, elect the sociopath.
Why? because that is how things work in hell.
Fantastic piece, thank you!
I gotta think that all the hatred is some kind of misplaced rage in the brain of thwarted adult male desire/achievement, with no one to blame except himself and an old memory of Mommy-as-boss. Much easier to blame Mommy than self.
Awww, Mr. m. Thank you for all that.
(And) This was the world I was born into… don’t think I was truly conscious of any it at 11 years old on March 1958 but now looking back at it through your illustrated lens of time it gives quite the perspective - lest we forget! And it sure didn’t take long after 1958 to emerge into the second wave of the women’s movement that lasted for 20 years. And really still continuing… The fight goes on.
While the get quick rich schemes for men are laughable, they also reflect that men were boxed in by 1950s societal roles in the same way that women were relegated to "being a housewife." Men had to be "providers," stuck in dead end jobs they didn't like. My 1950s mother wanted to get a job, but was told by my father that she couldn't work because it would reflect "poorly" on him as a provider. He might have made a better "housewife" and my mother a business manager!
My father said the same thing to my mother. And so she went on to become the angriest person I have ever known.
Rigid social norms hurt everyone.
Eventually my mother found some satisfaction in a whole series of crazy cottage industries - all of them involving humor which I have tried to honor on my Substack account. Also writing a novel about 1950s housewives who struggle to find a new identity in the more permissive 1960s.
The fragile white male ego and the blaming of women for all of their problems, runs rampant in those mags. Wow. How disgusting.
I believe that today's joyfully sadistic, "continuously annoying ‘powerful men’ " read those C. Atlas comic book ads and decided to embody the bully kicking sand into the faces of women and nerdy men.
Joyful sadism does seem to be the only point most of them are interested in. “Move fast and break things” has no other inner core.
Move fast and break people, too.
The brother in Napoleon Dynamite!
Though all but lost to history, in his time Old Leg Sores was a legend in gin joints and honky-tonks throughout the panhandle
He played a mean bottle neck guitar and not everyone is aware that was also amazing on the dobro.
It’s nice to come across another fan, helping to keep his name alive
Meanwhile, women's magazines were full of jello recipes. Because otherwise, you'd be like one of those "girls" in Male magazine.
If only they'd been full of "beat the hell out of the patriarchy" pieces.