We Love Betty White Because She’s Blue

Betty White is my idol. I’ve been a fan my entire life — even when my beloved grandmother stated her dislike of Ms White (which was weird, because my grandma was sooooo like her!).
I thrill at every chance to watch her, especially when, in 2006, Family Guy included her as the book-on-tape voice of Peter’s [...]

Shopping For Awesome Toys In Retro Sexploitation Flick

Over at French blog Au carrefour étrange, a review of Joseph W. Sarno’s Flesh and Lace (1965).

Since the site is in French, you may be confused — but it’s apparently exactly how it looks: A film that starts at a strip club and ends up at a toy store, with a woman seduced by a [...]

Let’s Play, “Sick Or Sweet?”

I have very mixed reactions to this vintage figurine…

At this point, can we really view a figurine depicting a little girl with her skirt blown-up exposing her panties ala Marilyn Monroe as completely innocent?
Discuss.

Corsets Bound To Stay Suffrage

If you’ve been following along with my corset history workshop, you’ve read about the debunking of the science behind death-by-corset claims and seen some of the evidence why science and medicine was manipulated due to social hysteria; but what we are now left wondering is just how early feminists were swayed into backing the anti-corset [...]

Corsets Are Too Sexy?

While I do not suggest that women should whittle away our waists as we while away our days in the constriction of too-tightly-laced corsets, I do believe there is good reason to at least examine the claims and assertions made about corsets by the 19th century medical community and the suffrage movement.
But if the medial [...]

What If Everything You Knew About The Corset Was Wrong?

It’s fashionable these days for folks to denounce the historical use of corsets as akin to Chinese footbinding.
Corsets and tight lacing are said to have controlled women to their physical detriment; corsets have been blamed for breathing problems, broken ribs, curvature of the spine, hunchbacks, prolapsed uterus, miscarriages, hysteria and other mental illness, fainting spells, [...]

After Stocking Panic, Women Made-Up

I’ve researched and written a lot about vintage nylon stockings over the years because the history of nylon stockings is quite fascinating to me. I’m sure most of you have heard about the scarcity of nylon during WWII — just months after the new invention hit store shelves on May 15, 1940. Even silk stockings, [...]

Cheap Thrills Thursday: Discarded Stockings Go To War & End Up At The Hingham Shipyard

Awhile ago, folks working on The Launch at the historic Hingham Shipyard, contacted me about one of my pieces of ephemera, a page from Modern Woman Magazine (Volume 12, Number 2, 1943) with the article “How Your Discarded Stockings Go To War.”
They wondered about using the image in the series of panels which would [...]

Understanding Female Relationships With Greeting Cards

Greeting cards are primarily a female thing; I don’t think any sane person would argue this. But I feel the need to elaborate anyway.
First by boasting mentioning my past professional work in the greeting card biz with the fabulous Kat Caverly of NoEvil Productions (makers of Greetums), and so asserting my insider knowledge.
Second, by sharing [...]

I See London, I See France, I See Lessons In Barbie’s Underpants

Because my first Barbie dolls had been my aunt’s, I had a lot of the original stuff, including those (now highly collectible) palest blue whispers of chiffon pleated underpants. I remembered being struck by the incongruity of such angles — the square-ish lines of the boxy panties themselves and the triangular points of the [...]

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