When I want to take a trip down memory lane, I go to YouTube and watch advertisments from the 60′s.
Vintage television shows do not evoke 1960′s for me. (Sure, I watched Star Trek back then, but I saw an episode of the original just the other day, as my husband had tuned in to it.)
But vintage commercials do. Especially commercials for cosmetics and hair products.
I watched a batch yesterday, and, boy, when you see these ads all in a row, it’s blatantly obvious. It was all about sex, sex, sex, and the mating game. Kind of cruel, exploiting our sex drives to sell mostly useless stuff. (I have a suspicion that using shampoos and soaps increases the need for them.)
But enough cynicism..
Nothing brings me back to where I was emotionally in 1966 than ads for makeup and body lotions.
I was too young to lust after real-live boys in earnest so I lusted after the products that would eventually get me a boy. Garden of earthly delights, indeed!
I bought 17 magazine, long before I was 17, I can distinctly recall the feel of the big, glossy magazine in my hands and the look of the pages, filled with stunning, pungeant-looking ads. (I don’t recall the articles at all. They were classic “how to please boys” stories.)
Yesterday, I found this advertisement for The California Look line of cosmetics and the brown and red and yellow design hit my psyche like a tonne of lipsticks I recall using that brand and I recall the feeling (of hope and quiet desperation ) I felt buying it. Cornsilk, the face powder, was the promise of a pimple free complexion. Wildflowers, by whom I can’t recall, was my very favorite brand. I wanted to be just like that golden-haired girl holding the giant bouquet of daisies and asters out in the sunny field. (I wanted to be a fertility goddess, or my DNA did.)
Yardley ads, especially, appealed to me.
Me, in 66. I think I was trying to pose like a fashion model.
Yesterday, I ventured onto Flickr and found some sets of Yardley ads from the mid 60′s. My gosh, what a show.
Twiggy was ‘the face of 66′ and no wonder. She looked like a little girl. And the make-up ads from Yardley were clearly aimed at tweenage girls.
These splendid advertisements were sensual, but in a non-lascivious way (is that the word?). Some ads feature a young model with an approving ‘boyfriend’, who appears to be a few years away from acquiring a five o’clock shadow or even a 10 o’clock shadow. (Clive Owen wouldn’t have got the gig.)
The colours and scents were all based on nature, fruits and rainbows and such.
The company Sunkist, that sells orange juice and grapefruits, apparently tried to exploit this by putting out a line of lemony hair and body washes and even an elbow scrub.
So, in the mid 60′s, they tarted you up without making you a tart, while retaining your innocence. (After all, makeup essentially is ‘sexual colouring’ as it makes a woman look aroused which, in turn, arouses men.)
In one of my first chapters of Flo in the City, I have Flo and May visit Sutherlands and talk about ‘rouge de theatre.’ Sutherland’s doesn’t sell it, but I have May say pharmacies in Boston do.
In the 1906 Sears there is a listing for rouge de theatre. But not in the 1906 Eaton’s catalogue.
That catalogue has preparations for the teeth, hair, skin, etc, but no rouge, per se, although one product suggests it is to be used as a cheek reddener: Madame Rupert’s red rose paste. She also sells face bleach. (Purity, purity.)
Funny, the toilet waters and soaps are little different from what is sold today, especially in stores specializing in natural products. In the catalogue there is a cucumber and glycerine toilet soap. Gee, I just made myself up some of that yesterday. (I like to make my own facials.)
Now, in my story, I suggest that Edith uses rouge de theatre, but rather secretively. Rouge, in those days, was generally considered what only prostitutes used. (So once again the Social Evil informs the life of the Good Girl.)
I guess they called it rouge de theatre to imply only actresses used it. Actresses, it seems, in those days, bridged the gap between disrespectful and respectful women, much as they do today, with respect to ordinary sexually active women and women of porn. (I just thought of that.)
But whatever is good for business is ‘good’ and makeup is very very very good for business. It’s illusion, in so so many ways. One of the key illusions is that you are actually getting your money’s worth!
Today, the ads on TV are still aimed at us Boomers, all for huge-expensive anti-aging creams of dubious effectiveness.
