Images of women as depicted in high-fidelity guidebooks circa 1960. These sort of publications generally deal in DIY advice, schematics, and ‘buyers guide’ segments. There is a lot of floor-sitting, demure outfits, and distant-gazing. There is an uncanny similarity to many of these photographs. Or as E puts it: ‘WTF. They all look like cats.’ Yeah that pretty much says it.
On rare occasion, we are shown women in more active (IE., less decor) roles. Here are a couple of examples: the (potential) technician and the shopper.
9 replies on “The Golden Age of Hi-Fi (ladies-of)”
Album covers from that era were always more “racier.”
Gotta wonder how well those lovely models aged!
This photo is particularly funny:
https://www.preservationsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/OnFloor_wCustomInstall1.jpg
The couple is gazing off wistfully into space while listening to … The 1812 Overture! That dreamy look is about to get blown off their faces by the cannon onslaught!
The photo of “Your Career in Electronics” doesn’t have anything to do with electronics. It is a general aerospace company shoot.
In the middle of this is an Australian electronic plant circa ’66 or so. Note the car that resembles a ’56 Chevy (wrong side wheel)-I’m guessing it’s a Holden, which sometimes used old GM starter dies and frames with an awful, but much loved inline six-and again all the women with soldering irons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR1CU8NjGW0
Uploaded by FILMAUSTRALIA on Dec 15, 2010
Made by the Commonwealth Film Unit 1966. Directed by Joe Scully. A picture of life in the New South Wales capital of Sydney in the mid 1960s.
Australia is, at that time, about ten years behind the US in general lifestyle and attitudes, from all appearances in the video.
By the way, the album cover you want is “Get More Bounce with Curtis Counce”. Smokin’ hot even today.
As Steve Sailer puts it: “the secret message of Mad Men: Our parents had it better.”
well… it’s possible that yr father had it better… yr mother, maybe not so much.
My father has passed on, sadly but my mom is 85 and she thinks life was better for most women even more so than for men. She was a working mother when that was not the norm and she says over and over if she had it to do over again she would have been a full time homemaker, not that any of us turned out bad, but that it was a good way of life. I have talked to many older women who feel the same way. The difference was the economics: you could get out of high school, male or female and get a job. A good job. Men did get paid more, but they had wives and kids to support. Women had a choice, motherhood or career girl, but no one told them that you-can-have-it-all nonsense. My mother was an industrial nurse and worked all but about six years of her marriage (until an empty nester) and had four kids. Dad got to be a pretty good cook and housekeeper too along with a diesel mechanic job. They both said it was a lot of work and wished they’d traded off having less stuff for a one job (outside the house) family.
On the whole, the post-WWII pre-Vietnam era was the best time to be an adult American in this country’s history. Perfect? No, but a hell of a lot better than today in most respects. People were much more civil. I was allowed to go anywhere in the city I could bicycle to as long as I was home for dinner. Every kid in my grade school lived in a two parent household. I’m glad I grew up when I did, even with the draft.
You had mentioned the television program Madmen. My only point here: plenty of dudes these days might think that Don Draper has ‘swag’ or whatever young people call it, but no one, NO ONE, wants to be Betty Draper. When more women, African Americans, and gays and lesbians start writing to this blog telling me that “the 50’s and 60s were so much better!,” perhaps then I will start to take these missives to heart. You don’t have to agree with me, but you can’t expect that a random personal anecdotal narrative will change my viewpoint either. I feel that the social advances that America has experienced in the past 50 years have made for a far more inclusive society with greater opportunities for non-white-hetereo-males, and it is this new society that I am happy to live in, despite the fact that yes I am a white hetero male. Anyhow. Not trying to shame any one or change anyone’s point of view; just trying to be clear. I did not post that series of images with the intent of celebrating that gender norms of that era; I simply took the time to find, scan, and upload them so that a factual account of female-representation withing 50’s hifi discourse was available. And yes while the women depicted are undeniably attractive, they also appear TO ME to possess a certain passivity and decor-like-quality which stands in marked contrast to the depiction of men in the same publications. You can draw your own conclusions. I am just making this stuff available online. Take care and thanks for reading the blog. c.
I like to talk to older people a lot because I’m a history buff. I very rarely talk to anyone of any description who lived in those days who thinks that, overall, things are generally better today. They like the technological improvements, the health care improvements, and so forth but the overall way people deal with other people in real life has gone downhill, way downhill.
And I’m now old enough myself I remember that in my own lifetime things have gone for the worse. Mass shootings didn’t happen, despite the fact everyone had guns. Illegitimacy was rare and shame kept people mostly in line, people today think that’s terrible but it meant single parent households were rare. I was into my mid-teens before I even knew there was such a thing as homosexuality, and looking back I knew a few people who were that way but they were discreet about it. Society was run so that most people were happy and the rare statistical outliers were tolerated, but not lionized or allowed to upend the social fabric. Most women wanted to be homemaker-mothers and most men wanted to be the providers, that wasn’t forced on them at gunpoint. If a woman wanted her own career that was possible, but there was no effort to make those who didn’t feel inferior as there is today. There was no AFDC, no affirmative action, no Title IX, no disparate impact lawsuits, or any other such corrosive liberal nonsense.
I guess that sums it up: I think liberalism has been a trainwreck. I’d go back to what worked in a minute, and more and more people are reaching the same conclusion. Despite some recent setbacks, I think history is very literally on our side.
No one wants to be Dan Draper. He’s a fraud.
Mad Men is fiction. Moreover, it’s fiction designed to appeal to a post 9/11 world. Gene Roddenberry once was asked why a show about 23rd century people was so appealing. He responded-correctly- that Star Trek was not about 23rd century people, but about 20th century people in the 23rd century, otherwise it would have had no appeal. He was right. It became, from a show canceled after three seasons, the most successful franchise in entertainment history. Basing an understanding of history on fiction is always dangerous.
All that said: Yes, mid-20th-century life WAS better for most people than life today, and not just for white males. We still had relatively expensive labor and cheap land, which s a prime condition for general prosperity. And the general zeitgeist was far more in accord with the biological order. Women were not passive playthings at all, they were more in control of things than now, and both sexes behaved better. You get a sense of that from watching old movies and reading the books and periodicals of the day, and as the above commentator says, from talking to older people.
Musicians and artists tend to get their sense of reality from other musicians and artists, and that’s dangerous too. Great art comes from people who are not good role models more often than not. Consider Frank Sinatra and Arthur Miller, great artists of that day, who were creeps in real life. Most rock stars are dysfunctional people, today. Actors too. This isn’t a recent phenomenon, but is probably true throughout history. Gauguin comes to mind, as does Van Gogh, Poe, dozens of others.