Journal: News & Comment

The semi-carefree life of the 1972 college girl

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One of my wife's co-workers found an October 1972 issue of Seventeen magazine and donated it to us. Reading the ads is a fascinating look at North American attitudes towards college-age women when I was three years old. Plus they're bloody hilarious:

My favourite for its sheer creepiness has to be this one, part of a two-page spread for a Helena Rubinstein fragrance called "Heaven Sent":

To wit: "A woman whose life is in the future should smell different from a woman with a past." That reflects the overarching message on many pages of the magazine in those heady post–Summer of Love, pre-Watergate years, which was, "You're a young, free-spirited, college girl, unencumbered by the creaky old mores of the past. You can be and do anything you want! But if you sleep around, everyone will spit on you."

Ah, memories.

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