Research work over the past couple of days has taken me through back copies of some of America’s most renowned magazines. On my travels I came across some adverts that I thought were too good to keep to myself. Top of the list is this advert for Good Housekeeping magazine from the mid 1980s.
Now, is it me, or do women 18 to 34 look a hell of a lot happier than women 18 to 44? (I think the less that’s said about women 18 to 54 the better.) Do women with children under 18 seem a lot happier than working women? And are educated women the only ones to wear glasses?
It seems that in 1984 Metro-Suburban women were attractive in a Princess Di kind of way. High-income women would eat you alive. And women who owned residences $80,000 plus (a little-known social group) were fond of tying sweaters around their neck and then running onto a tennis court.
In fact, I think it’s safe to say that in 1984 if you were a woman aged 18 to 34, who owned your own home (preferably worth over $80,00) and were married. You were happy.
If you were aged 18 to 44, Metro-Suburban, had children under 18, and were educated, you were middling.
And god help you if you were 18 to 54 and worked.
And what about the other adverts you cry! Well how’s this for a portable computer?
And the less that’s said about this cell phone the better! Ooh 55 mins talk time! (Come to think of it, it doesn’t look much better than most phones you get in the US today.)
I had one of those Compaqs. It was my second computer, after my PC-XT with the dual 5 1/4″ floppies and the 10M fixed disk died. I didn’t get a cell phone until last year.