Lunchtime reading...

[telophase]

Junior Homemaking, 1958, to be used in 7th-9th grades.

Caption of a photograph of a young blonde woman in a diaphanous gown, sitting in front of a roaring fireplace and brushing her hair with a thoughtful yet distant expression on her face:

Daydreaming of what the future holds is important. It can be the foundation on which the serious business of accomplishment is based. Unless daydreaming is so used, it is a waste of time.

Junior Homemaking, you are cordially invited to bite Mello's fabulous ass.

Comments

oh great

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

I'm channeling Drew Barrymore in Everyone Says I Love You!

Unless daydreaming is so used, it is a waste of time.

Yeah, she's thinking of tax accounting versus patent law.

Re: oh great

[telophase.livejournal.com]

That was the first thing I saw in this book - there's a whole paragraph elsewhere on the page about how pretending one is clever, beautiful, or popular is fun but should only be indulged in if it is part of a plan by which they may be achieved.

AAAAAGGHHHHH!!

[naturalfractual.livejournal.com]

I am so glad my dad was a Marine and my Mom didn't teach me that being female was handicap!!!!

In my day I had to take HomEc, couldn't take shop or drafting and back then girls could only wear dresses and skirt outfits to school.

I got SCUBA lessons for my 16th birthday (Thanks, Mom) and was allowed to compete with the boys on the obstacle course at the summer Marine picnics.

I enjoy my womanhood, but I'm as good a mechanic as my brothers and they can cook almost as good as our Mom.

I have read your comments with horror :) - and asn occassional urge to burn the thing - though I firmly do not believe in book burning.

Thank you for making me grateful for how my parents raised me - to be a uman being!

Re: AAAAAGGHHHHH!!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yup, this experiment is making me all-too-aware of the choices I have that others didn't.

Of course, I am cherry-picking the worst - there's lots of useful info in the books that would be good for everyone, especially if they didn't get it at home, from nutrition to how to sew a button back on, to the sorts of things one should look for when choosing a house, to best practices for infection control. But woven here and there into the fabric of the useful stuff are the cultural assumptions and attitudes of the time, and they leap out at me. XD

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

Oh lord. Now I'm remembering that awful 1950s home ec. book blinkytreefrog scanned back in...2005?...which not only said that daydreaming is bad because it takes your focus away from the real world, but that this reason is also why you shouldn't read anything that's fictional.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Oh Dear God.

I think I must get my hands on that one.

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

Aha! Found the entry where she posted some scanned pages (http://blinkytreefrog.livejournal.com/80660.html). And the FAQ (http://blinkytreefrog.livejournal.com/83487.html) with links to more scans.

It's...just as horrifying as I remember. I'm not sure if the potential amusement value would be worth reading through this one.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Thanks! :D

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

OH! I own that! It is, indeed, horrifying.