From Fluffo to Sta-Flo

I've always had a penchant for magazines. I've enjoyed riffling through their pages since before I could read. They provide such a fun way to gather a bunch of visual stimuli, current events info, news, cultural insights and product news in one easy-to-digest format.

Nowadays most of my subscriptions are for fashion and shelter magazines; I use them as inspiration for my artwork and to keep abreast of design and fashion trends. During my childhood my mom and I read the standard middle-American women's magazines like McCall's, Family Circle, Ladies' Home Journal and Women's Day, but we also got every issue of Ms., the groundbreaking feminist magazine, from the very first issue. I enjoyed the monthly page of paper dolls included in every issue of McCall's, but from the time I was nine, I looked forward to Ms. magazine the most every month.

I was a little old for most of the nonsexist "Stories for Free Children" in every issue of Ms., but I liked the articles about women doing interesting, meaningful, courageous things, and fighting for legal and social equality. My favorite feature was the "No Comment" page at the back of every issue which featured some egregious bit of sexist advertising seen in magazines, newspapers, billboards or record covers. I'll never forget the photo of the giant billboard over Sunset Boulevard that advertised the 1976 album "Black and Blue" by the Rolling Stones. It featured a bound, gagged and bruised half-naked woman with the caption, "I'm 'Black and Blue' from the Rolling Stones — and I love it!" I found it revolting and ever since have been unable to hear the Stones' music without thinking of that or of the degrading, sexist and racist lyrics from their "Some Girls" album released two years later.

Mom also subscribed to Time and Life, Look and Smithsonian, and we enjoyed Vogue too, both for its fabulous fashion photography and also for its excellent articles on history and culture. For a time we even got a monthly magazine of sheet music. My dad and uncle tried to keep me from growing into a bourgeois suburbanite by sending me Ranger Rick children's nature magazines, but they were too young for me. Sweet as the photos were, captioned candid photos of raccoons at play couldn't compete with articles on the women's liberation movement or high fashion for this girl's interest. (The 1970s were particularly schizophrenic when it came to both objectifying and opening up opportunities for women.)

When my mom and I were at a hair salon I'd pick up magazines we didn't get at home, like Essence or Ebony, and enjoy the ads featuring black women advertising what seemed to white-bread little me to be exotic hair products. Most women's magazines of the time ignored black women almost completely, never mentioning anything about black hair care or makeup needs, nor using black (or Asian or Hispanic) models. When Iman and Beverly Johnson came along in the 1970s and their gorgeous African American faces started showing up in fashion magazines, they were groundbreaking.

My mother was a high school teacher and I attended the school at which she taught, so I often rode to or from school with her. While waiting for school to begin or while waiting for my ride home, I often hung out in the school library and sat near the long wall lined with bound issues of every issue of Time and Life magazine ever published. I plowed through decade after decade's worth of weekly newsmagazines, watching the progress of the Depression, World War II and the Cold War through articles and advertisements aimed at entertaining and uplifting those on the home front.

I enjoyed the ads especially: the breathless headlines; the startled faces of beautiful women in pearls and high heels deliriously caressing their new electric kitchen appliances; men in fedoras showing off their new Edsels and Studebakers; children attacking their ham steaks and tuna noodle casseroles with gusto. Products had names like Fluffo (yellow-dyed vegetable shortening) and Sta-Flo (liquid starch, to make shirts and aprons extra crisp, and extra scratchy).

Illustrations from the twenties were full of angular Jazz Age characters. Issues from the thirties show a wistful worship of the silver screen stars who gave Depression-era readers something pretty to fantasize about as a distraction from their difficult lives. Magazines of the forties showed women in wide-shouldered, thin-hipped coats and dresses that mirrored the military preoccupation of the time and made them look better fit to take on the jobs of the men who'd gone off to war. Vividly tinted photos of the fifties featured images of ecstatic family members gathering joyfully around whatever modern miracle was on offer. In contrast to these rosy scenes of perfect suburban lives were occasional disturbing ads found in less reputable magazines featuring bouncing disembodied heads of characters meant to grab one's attention much like circus sideshow freaks would. Recipes of the fifties were more imaginative (and frightening) than the straight-laced dishes of the forties; a photo of fluffy pink-dyed cakes with boiled-sugar icing and bits of maraschino cherries floating in mile-high shortening-based filling remind me rather sickeningly of the olive loaf so popular with school-lunch-making housewives of the period.

My delight in vintage magazines has continued over the years. I've checked them out of libraries in California and Washington and used them extensively to research daily life from the 1920s through the 1950s. Not only do I have an embarrassing number of magazines subscriptions to this day, I also have a small but delightful collection of vintage magazines dating back to the 1920s. Last weekend I hit the jackpot with a cache of magazines from 1961 to 1970 I picked up at an estate sale, and I've been poring over the articles, ads, recipes and other reminders of the cultural preoccupations prevalent during my early childhood. The 1961 magazines (which predate me) feature articles on Princess Margaret's private life, romance novel excerpts, how to avoid overworking your minister's wife, and how to "play it cool" by being "the girl who looks and feels like the frosting on a glass in clothes that are strictly care-free." There is mention in Good Housekeeping's May 1961 issue of an oral contraceptive for dogs available by prescription from veterinarians on the same page as an article about finding jobs for young women: pert young ladies of the time could train to be engineering aides, nurses or stewardesses, and the article mentions that, importantly, none of these positions required a college education. (Why should a young woman bother with that when she could just give up her job once she earned was referred to as her M.R.S. degree anyway?)

Over the upcoming weeks I'll be choosing some of the most entertaining, enlightening and disturbing articles from these vintage treasures to share with you here in my blog. Stay tuned.

Laura's Assemblages on Display in Seattle Till July 15

From May 7 through July 15, thirty-three of my assemblages and paintings and a number of paintings by abstract painter Mary Bennet are on display in the Wachovia galleries on the 35th floor of Washington Mutual Tower in downtown Seattle. If you couldn’t make it to the opening but will be in Seattle some weekday before July 15, do arrange to see the art on a weekday afternoon by appointment with the very friendly and helpful Diana Slater. Just call Diana at (206) 344-6532 and she’ll be pleased so show you around. Many thanks to Diana and Spring Song Petta for their support and kindness, and to Wachovia for their sponsorship of this show.

For a sneak peek at my art, click here.