Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Aah, the fluffy white bath towel...


...saviour of many a "lightly-clad" young lady back in 1953 - at least that was the case in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post.

Gentlemen seemed always to be dropping in unexpectedly back then, just when a girl was stepping out of the shower or lounging around in the "all-together". Very disconserting. I asked yesterday, what must the readers have thought of all this lascivious behaviour? Surely the editors and art directors were risking raising the ire of their audience in the less cosmopolitan regions of the country.

Check out these letters to the editor regarding a Coby Whitmore illustration of a bikini-clad girl from the late 50's. And consider that the first letter comes from Scarsdale, New York!

Its heartening to see the editor's cheeky response doesn't back down one bit. Hooray for the defenders of the lightly-clad ladies!

2 comments:

  1. Those are great letters from "disgusted and nauseated" readers complaining about Coby Whitmore's girl in a white bikini. Because I share their moral outrage I went looking for that illustration in your Flickr collection. I felt it would be a public service to take a long, lingering close up look at what the decline and fall of western civilization looks like. I was disappointed to see that it was not represented in your collection.

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  2. I have made it a priority to locate that vile piece by Whitmore so I too can scutinize its disgustingness in greater detail. ;-)

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