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  • 2015-01-22 (xsd:date)
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  • Is This Advice from a 1949 Singer Sewing Manual? (en)
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  • Our modern attitude towards gender is sometimes a curiously paradoxical one. We're aware in the not too distant past our culture included some rather rigid definitions of the proper roles of men and women that we now pejoratively disdain as sexist — including the expectation women should be unfailingly happy and industrious caretakers of their homes, husbands, and children — yet when we're confronted with tangible expressions of those now-rejected attitudes from our past, we often skeptically reject them as being too ridiculous to be real. Such is the case with a popular online item, said to an excerpt of text from a 1949 sewing manual published by Singer, the leading manufacturer of sewing machines: That text primly weaves some practical sewing advice amidst instructions to women (because sewing is exclusively women's work) never to approach the task unless their vital housekeeping chores have been completed first (because housekeeping chores are the sole province and responsibility of women), and to be sure they are suitably groomed and dressed before undertaking their sewing tasks (even if they are alone in the house) lest a husband or visitor unexpectedly drop in and find them not neatly put together (because women are obligated to present a physically attractive appearance at all times). The woman who fails to heed these instructions runs the risk of not enjoy[ing] your sewing as you should. But wait, even on the cusp of the 1950s we couldn't have been as sexist as all that, could we? Nobody would really have ever printed stuff like that in a book — this must be a joke, a lampoon of sexism that greatly exaggerates earlier attitudes towards gender roles. Even today, there are people who think along those lines, as demonstrated by the following comment offered in response to a posting of this item: Nonetheless, the text in question was in fact printed in a edition of the Singer Sewing Book written by Mary Brooks Picken (a prolific author of books on needlework, sewing, and textile arts) and published by the Singer Sewing Machine Company in 1949. The passage from which the text was excerpted read as follows: Here's an image of that book's cover: And here's a snapshot of the page containing the now-infamous passage: (en)
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