Courtesy of Amy Vanderbilt's "Success Program for Women," today's installment of SheKos features some terrific tips on the role of women from How to Help Your Husband Get Ahead. Now Amy penned her helpful marital manual back in 1964, but not much has changed since then, right? I mean men are still men, and women are still women. And James Bond still prefers his martinis shaken, not stirred.
Welcome to SheKos! SheKos is a diary series for all Kossacks to explore issues related to feminism, women's history, and equality. We seek to find solutions within and beyond the Democratic Party to improve the lives of women -- and men -- regardless of race, sexual orientation, or economic status. We believe that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights.
BTW, I hope everyone knows how hubby prefers HIS martini. Priorities!
And you thought feminism was all about head-in-the-clouds, pie-in-the-sky, shoot-for-the-moon theory. Well, fiddle-dee-dee, as the feisty Scarlett O'Hara would have said...and she knew all about husbands. (Why, she had at least three of them, if I recall correctly!) Author Amy Vanderbilt (1908-1974) focused on practical advice. Her 700-page Complete Book of Etiquette, first published in 1952, remains in print today. She worked in journalism, advertising and public relations, becoming the president of a major PR firm in the 1940s. She wrote a long-running newspaper column, and hosted popular radio and TV programs.
So what values did this trailblazing career gal espouse in her popular "Success Program for Women" series during the 1960s? Program membership was akin to a book club; subscribers joined through local department stores, and regularly received the paperback books, illustrated with photos or line drawings, accompanied by Amy's chatty, product-pushing newletters.
Well, let's take a gander at some of the titles. Amy generally penned the books' intros, and farmed out the bulk of the writing to other authors. I've noted when that author was, ahem, not a woman:
How to Prepare Exciting Holiday Meals.
How to Give Parties with a Theme.
Serving Food Attractively
Okay, Amy: We understand that you also wrote cookbooks, and that the responsibility (burden?) of cooking has fallen almost exclusively on women throughout history. Me: I like to cook, but I hope some of these guides included tips for speed and efficiency--like how you managed to enjoy cooking while working full time, Ames. (Devouring the delectable offerings prepared by my staff of servants is not an acceptable answer.) And not just advice for taking hours to make food look purdy to please your man.
More steps for women to undertake on Amy's Road to Success!
How to Be Well Dressed.
How to Look and Feel Younger.
How to Be a More Interesting Woman.
How to Develop Poise and Self-Confidence. (written by a man)
Ruh-roh. Ummm...Okay, so it's all about the exterior package, Miss V? Not so much about what's on the inside? FYI, Amy, I was "looking and feeling younger" during the era. But that's because I was wearing diapers. I was developing poise by slinging finger paint in preschool. My mom must have missed the Success Series' How to Make Money in Your Spare Time, (written by a man), because she was busy making money working FULL TIME. While raising three kids. I was developing my confidence that I could do anything I wanted by watching her do it all--have a career, raise a family, try to make a marriage work.
So how was she supposed to fulfill the precepts you prescribed for her in How to Help Your Husband Get Ahead? She was practically a newlywed in 1964, so I'm sure she tried her hardest to live up to your standards. So what were you advising her to do, while she was juggling newborns, working towards her PhD and teaching at a women's college?
From Amy's intro:
Different husbands respond to prodding in diverse ways...With some men, essentially competent and ambitious, a wife who expects the best in life achieves it with him. The same design won't work at all with the man who has doubts and anxieties about his abilities in a highly competitive society. Such a man's wife must save him from pressures at least at home by never asking more than he can safely deliver, tendering him always the little balms that take the sting out of many a daily defeat...
The following pages do not encourage the nag. On the contrary, they encourage the loving culture of husbands whatever their infinite variety. Ambition is a shy bird not always entrapped but its pursuit can be sportive with the assistance of a wife who is cooperative, imaginative and carefully attentive to all the needs of the home base.
Before we deconstruct this, let's look at part of the main text's opening section, "It's Sensible to Be Ambitious:"
A wife asks her husband to invest years and years of hard work in an effort to push poverty as far away as possible. A dreary prospect for him? It need not be, for the competitive urge is at least latent in the average male, and once engaged in the contest, most men find it an interesting one. All the same, a husband needs encouragement and appreciation from his wife, and he can use a great deal of help and backing from her.
No wife need be diffident about expecting a normal healthy male to get out and earn a living. Furthermore, it is sensible to be ambitious and equally sensible to expect success...
But while a husband is out hunting wolves and collecting pelts, there's more for his mate to do than mind the cubs and tidy up the den. In most cases, it takes as much acumen and strength of purpose to be the wife of a successful man as the man himself requires for success.
There are some basic rules of married team play by which a wife can help her husband along. Once they are put into practice, most women find they have their own individual talents for helping--talents they may not have developed because they didn't know they needed them.
1964...a mere 45 years ago...and the caveman imagery was considered au courante!!!
I stumbled on this book years ago at a garage sale, and picked it up as a musty artifact of history. Doubt if I paid more than a dime. But I pulled it out a few weeks ago, after the passage of Stupak hit me with a thunderbolt.
So many questions began brewing inside me: Why is there such a large group of people DETERMINED to roll back women's rights? And why now? Why is there less access to abortion, for example, than there was 20 years ago? What is threatening or dangerous to anybody about equality between men and women? The book makes me wonder: Did these ossified roles that Amy & company preached--which once struck me as laughable--make others somehow feel safe?
When I was younger, sexism never made sense to me--I grew up thinking a girl could do anything, because that's what I saw all around me. I could choose any college, plan when I wanted to have children, pursue any career. It was only in my early twenties that I started to realize how hard women just a generation older than me had fought so that I could have these options. And that my own mother and grandmother did NOT have these choices. (A future diary will feature their stories.)
What strikes me most as I read Amy's words today is NOT how condescending they are toward women, but how thoroughly they demean men. She heaps sexist stereotypes and expectations upon the penis-bearers as well as the breast-blessed. How oppressive for both genders! How liberating to break free of the rigid confine of such ridiculous definitions!
And yet, maybe too much freedom confuses some people. Defined roles are, after all, familiar ones. Could some of the evils of the current sexist climate stem from just plain fear? And from the fact that we have barely scratched the surface of defining new roles? What are those "basic rules of married team play," for example? With a 50% divorce rate, it might be time for some New Rules.
Much to discuss here, ladies and gents. Have at it!
FYI: I plan to tap How to Help Your Husband Get Ahead for future diaries. It's a gold mine! How do you like this heading, from page 14: "Working Wife: Help or Hindrance?" Yowza!
SheKos is open to your submissions. Please email Angry Mouse at angrymouse.grrr@gmail.com with your ideas.