Beauties of All Races in 1922

When I saw this ad for Pepsodent toothpaste from 1922, on the Duke University site "Ad Access", which has a lot of fun old ads, I got to thinking about the concept of race, and how people thought about it back then, and how they still do.

Of course there's no such thing as different races of human beings, there's only one, the human race. But, like dogs, there are varieties, and if you're casting a movie and need a person to look a particular way, you need to use some kind of a label. Many times when we use the name of a nationality, it brings a particular look to mind, like the lovely maiden of Japan there on the left.

How we describe races has changed over the years, but of course these ladies aren't of four different races, in spite of what the illustration may lead you to believe. They may have distinctive looks, and all are attractive (although the Spanish beauty there on the right looks like she may have overdone it with the makeup!). This is advertising, you know.

Back when I was a kid, in the '60s and '70s, we had two sets of encyclopedias, once which was very current, and one that was printed right after World War I, which fascinated me. And there were three races listed. No, I won't write the names here, this is the internet, and it could cause confusion with the 'bots, but basically nowadays we would say "white people", "black people", and "asian people". I was learning to draw people at the time and I found it helpful to understand the different looks that people had.

During the last census, a good friend of mine was dissatisfied with having to identify himself as "white". He had a sense of humor about it, and told me that "he wasn't a white guy!" since he was born in Mexico.

By the way, apparently they called it "dentifrice", not toothpaste. And while I'm no expert on women's beauty products, I'm inclined to think that brushing your teeth will make you look prettier!

Images from the Duke University Library Digital Collections.

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more