Customer Reviews

Retro Housewife: A Salute to the Suburban Superwoman

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Do you love clip-art!!! No? ok well then this is not the book for you. When I ordered this book I was hoping for some insight to the things that were being taught to the housewives, and future housewives in the 50's. Sadly this wasn't what was in the book, instead the whole thing consisted of old ads advertising everything from washers to steak and drawings from books of that era, along with a fact or statistic. For example page 72 shows drawings of 50's women in various outfits and reads "In 1957, supermarkets welcomed frozen pizza to thier inventory." The next page shows a drawing from an advertisment for an oven and the text reads, "Diner's club issued the first credit card in 1951 to 200 customers for use in 27 restaraunts. Card holders could only use the card for meal payments." And this goes on and on for a whopping 127 pages. I was hoping for some text from home economics books of the era, or magazine articles. Something a bit more meaty. The book doesn't deliver anything more than pictures and factoids...which in my mind fail to deliver on the "a salute to the suburban superwoman" promise. Oh well there's always Donna Reed re-runs!

There was a time when people lived like this. I know it's gone now, and I know we are supposed to be more 'with it.' And it should be mentioned that nowadays in this nation, it is almost impossible for a middle class family to get by on one salary.

But that doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with this period of time in history. It's just the way it was. The best thing about this are the fabulous, color-illustrations. The fifties advertisements had flair, boldness, and connoted happiness in everyday situations. Life moved at a slower pace and there was more 'one on one' interaction with family and friends. The advertisements mirrored that fact.

We are way past those times today. In fact the advertisements of today can't hold a candle to their predecessors; Everything has to be 'in your face shocking.' Unfortunately there is a supreme lack of imagination in today's advertisements, which make some of us look back fondly at a time when people treated each other better, were more considerate and yes, life was really in color.

This is a cute coffee table book with reprints of ads from the late 1940's and 1950's.

The main thing that I found frustrating with this book is that the photos did not match the descriptions (or the text/narratives) ! I counted, and only 2 photos matched the descriptions even remotely.
I'm not sure why the author decided to write her book in this manner, but it was so frustrating ....for me.

So, if you are buying this book for the kitschy photos, then this book will delight. But when reading the text, you will have to use your imagination. Good luck.

This book truly shines and tells how things were and tough it was for a 1950s housewife to maintain her perfectly coiffed hair, immaculate home, pearls and high heels! Mom greeted her children with a smile and served her husband's dinner in a girdle and high heels. June Cleaver, who set the gold standard for mothers in that era, would have been proud!

I love all things kitschy and vintage (1950s especially) but this book was a bit off the mark. The pictures and things were really cool but the captions didn't correspond (now I know what the other reviewers meant by this). One would think they would edit it a little better, it seemed kind of heaped-together. Still fun to peek at once in awhile or to have as a cool coffee table book, it's a part of my collection.

Wished it described a little more detail. also price was not reasonable for hard copy cover.

I enjoy kitchy retro books, so I thought this would be something that would be good fun.

However, like some other reviewers, I was very disappointed when I realized the interesting pictures had nothing remotely to do with the text. Fun clip art, as was mentioned, but no connection to the text. It was frustrating, to want to learn about some of the products and find out how they were represented to the mid 20th century homemaker, but the confusing format, and lack of information about products presented in the book caused me to put the book down and not want to pick it up again.

After several pages of seeing an interesting old ad, wanting to know more about it, expecting some discussion, or a pithy, humorous crack, or social commentary on the ad, but then finding the text on that page completely irrelevant, I became very frustrated.

It appears that Ms Tillotson may have written the text, expecting that the ads she that wanted to illustrate and illuminate the text would be available to her, and either she couldn't find the original ads, or they were under some copyright law, and there was no budget for buying them. So, she filled the book with unrelated pictures, with her original text, which had no relation to the actually interesting ads, illustrations and photos. Sloppy editing, to say the least. This book should have been peer reviewed before it was published. (Which may explain it's quickly after release out-of-print status.)


I don't know if this entire series has their entire library of books in this confusing format, but I will not buy an other one, just to be disappointed once more. (The "Retro" series, by this publisher appears to have other books avaible, in a similar format.)

For fun, I would recommend anything by James Lileks (Interior Desecrations, Mother Doesn't Know Best, etc.) but one would want to dig deeper for more social commentary.

I'd like to "get something straight" as did the author of the first review. There happen to be more mothers staying at home, learning to be proud of the title, "homemaker" and finding joy in raising their families. Many women like myself have found that there is a great sense of self worth and satisfaction found in making our house a home for our loved ones. This book needs to be read by anyone who is confused about or ashamed of their longing to break free from society's image of what a "modern woman" should be. This book is a treasure and I'd give it more than 5 stars if I could.

The book itself is a lovely collection of images. Unfortunately, Tillotson spends too much time putting her misguided opinions into the text. Her revisionist history of the housewife is unnecessary and annoying.

Tillotson writes as if the women's movement did a bad thing by making housework and housewifery look unrewarding. Let's get one thing straight: feminism didn't do that. Feminism gave women their voices to problems that ALREADY existed. Had there not been a problem, there wouldn't have been so many women willing to make something new of themselves besides just being a stay at home wife. Feminism only wanted women to be able to make the choice to stay at home or not. (This excludes the radical feminists who are a minority, but whose inflammatory comments were focused on more intently by the media than the more mainstream feminists.)

The early issues of Ms. magazine, which people seem to think vilified housewives, are actually a housewife's biggest booster. It's somewhat alarming that Tillotson's revisionist history makes the era of the feminine mystique one that should be missed. It wasn't the idea of being a housewife, it was the images and ads like the one in this book that made women feel inadequate unless they were as happy and neat as in these beaming ads.

Tillotson, that fine social critic, seems to see a resurgence of longing for that "simpler time" in arguments that have been disproved since Faludi's Backlash:

"The trend once called cocooning was renamed "nesting" and continued to grow. So did, what some pundits called, "the domestic-bliss industry." Old-style home cooking was once again in vogue, a guilty pleasure loaded with carbohydrates, fat, and salt. The comforting accoutrements of the 1950s, such as Fiesta dinnerware and brightly colored aluminum tumblers, began appearing on store shelves once again."

It should also be noted that Tillotson does not cite any sources for her examples. One would think the reappearance of Fiestware owes more to the kitsch angle than anybody equating it with a return of the housewife.

Read this book for the fun pictures and laugh at the naivete that true bliss comes from a dishwasher; ignore the text and you'll have a good time.