Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
debrak_2008_gw

Slightly OT: 1962 Womens magazines

debrak_2008
11 years ago

A friend gave my mother some 1962 womens magazines she no longer wanted. My mom passed them on to me.

What a treasure! I'm getting quite an education. I was born a few years after these were published so some of it is kind of eye opening.

Some of some articles...should girls go to college? Concerns about nuclear war. Sperm banks to perserve mankind (no mention of eggs). Should rocket launches should be televised or not due to the danger involved. McCalls advertised an upcoming article about the dangers of natural childbirth.

As for kitchens...

lots of canned and boxed foods advertised.

Electric ranges with another oven above it (like microwaves) but its an electric oven. Also Tappen ovens with the pull out cooktop and upper double ovens.

Congoleum vinyl floors that go up on the toe kick to make cleaning easy. Apparently this a was a new concept then.

Ads for Lenox china, Oneida flatware, and Tupperware.

Frost-free Refrigerators with the freezer on the bottom. One with a carousel shelves.

A McCalls had recipes for middle eastern foods which surprised me.

An ad for a new house in New Jersey, 2400 SF, land not included for $21,700.

A good food budget was $6.50 per week.

I'm saving these for my daughter.

Comments (12)

  • deedles
    11 years ago

    Wow. So different but yet so much the same. Now a 'bad food' budget is out of this world, forget the 'good food'....

    I recommend the video "Century of the Self". It's on youtube. Worth a watch and eye opening into the advertising/commercialism/tv/magazine culture of this century (and last). Totally worth the hour...

  • Iowacommute
    11 years ago

    I love this stuff. My minor in college was the social study of women. Fascinating classes. I took a Material Culture class my last semester and wrote a paper about how the history of the refrigerator intersected women's rights.

  • gsciencechick
    11 years ago

    What a great find!

    Interesting about women and college. In most of our programs, women outnumber men. One of my upper division classes last spring was all female.

  • Mur12506851
    11 years ago

    I have a collection of women's magazines from the 1940s -- lots of "tips" about how to manage with WWII rationing. Also have 1950s mags, when the big focus was convincing women to stay at home, be good wives, and not work. I love these magazines for what they show about how our culture has changed. Fascinating.

  • beekeeperswife
    11 years ago

    We've come a long way baby.....I just heard that women drivers now out number men for the first time ever.

  • a2gemini
    11 years ago

    Bee- way cool as my grand nephew would say!

    Debra
    My mother had one of those ranges - hers was GE - It actually had a MW full size oven on the bottom and a smaller oven above - and a range with a magic burner which my mom still says was the best thing ever made - hers was circa 1972 but saw my first MW at he NYC Worlds fair in 1963(I think)

  • crl_
    11 years ago

    The house we just bought has one of those ranges! The bottom oven is no longer working so rather than repair it we are replacing with an induction range later this month.

    Very interesting.

  • a2gemini
    11 years ago

    crl - maybe you bought my parents house! Wouldn't that be funny! - Their house was in Reading PA

    This post was edited by a2gemini on Fri, Nov 30, 12 at 21:05

  • CEFreeman
    11 years ago

    I've always felt I was old enough to understand and benefit from the much denigrated women's movement, yet young enough not to have actually be involved. Just to benefit.

    I have McCall's sewing patterns from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and my own from the 70s. Even that much was interesting to notice the difference in the sketch models.

    Kitchens I can't speak to. But I can tell you in 1964 my mom built a house with metal cabinets, that were a dark, slate/turquoise/cadet blue. Open to the dining area (seperate formal dining room,) Linoleum, a DW, built-in butcher block counter, a pantry with roll-outs, whole house pocket doors. My mom was always ahead of the game.

    I'd love to see the articles!

  • crl_
    11 years ago

    a2gemini, our new place is in California--I guess there is more than one of those ranges still hanging around. Lol.

  • debrak_2008
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Deedles, I will check out that video.

    a2gemini, the range in the mag is a GE americana. No MW but there is a special electric burner called a sensi-temp that is supposed to end pot watching forever as it boils a pint of water in 130 seconds. Maybe they started to use MWs to replace one of the ovens.

    A friend of mine just remodeled her kitchen and ripped out the old Tappen with the slide out cooktop. She loved it but so much that she wanted to keep it.

    I'm going to check to see if my mom's friend has any more. I would really like to see home decor magazines. Did they have kitchen magazines back then?

  • Donaleen Kohn
    11 years ago

    i remember the first time i saw a microwave oven in about 1967...we watched it boil water. also remember the first time i saw a color tv; it was at a tv station in the 1950's.

Sponsored
Davidson Builders
Average rating: 5 out of 5 stars1 Review
Franklin County's Full-Scale General Contractor