Thursday, December 17, 2015

This is what 46 looked like, in 1962.



In 1962, the makers of geritol ran this ad featuring 46 year old women.

All of these women were born in 1916.  Thats right.  1916.  The year before the U.S. entered WWI.

Can you find the three women in this ad that take Geritol and are young and vibrant?  Can you find the three women who don't?  And can you chose the "career gal"?  (And I think one of these women loves her grandchildren almost as she loves her Johnny Walker black.  Almost.)

Read between the lines of the copy and there is a clear message - some of these women look their age, some look young for their age, but some women look sixty.

The average age expectancy of women in the United States in 1962 was 73.5 years.  Today, that average age is up to 81, however the U.S. has dropped in overall rankings, behind countries such as France, Germany, Japan and England, but also behind Slovinia, Nahru (A nation that currancy backed by the worth of bird droppings, its biggest export), Lebanon and Estonia.  

We have even dropped behind Andorra.  That's right ANDORRA.  A country where they let non violent offenders out of jail each Friday, if they promise to come back on Monday.  Do you even know where Andorra is?

I'll tell you where it is*.

It's IN FRONT OF the U.S. in life expectancy, that's where it is!

I post this, because the woman in the gold turtleneck and vest reminds me of my mother at 46.  She never took Geritol.

Mom's secret?

A pack of Vantage cigarettes a day and diet of BLT's and black coffee.

What's your secret?



*Andorra is the smallest nation state in Europe, in the mountains between France and Spain.  It's so tiny that Napoleon wouldn't invade it because he thought it was cute.  Don't believe me?  Look it up.

25 comments:

  1. Always entertaining and thought provoking, now informative, too.
    I admit I never heard of Andorra.

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  2. I'm 44, and looking at that is... depressing? I know I've aged in dog years over the last decade, (who wouldn't after running around after 10 yr. old twin boys?) but not THAT bad! I immediately went to the mirror to survey the damage, lol. Okay, feel much better now.

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    1. Cookie is 53 and let me tell you, though not in the best of shape, I am still younger looking than at least two of those dames.

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  3. Yikes! I need to get myself to the hairdresser's for a colour and cut, pronto!

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    1. Call Norma Desmond! He's well practiced at Pat Backs.

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  4. barry manilow's lola in "copacabana"?
    that's her in the green.

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    1. I just want to help her. But when the scotch smell is coming out of every pore, the only help there is is the Keely Cure.

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  5. Relative aging over the decades is fascinating - it always startles me that Gloria Swanson was younger than me when she made Sunset Boulevard, and of course its remarkable in retrospect to recall how the press fawned on the "youthfulness" of stars like Crawford (who to our eyes looks about like these ladies - especially Mrs. Bottom Right there - from the mid 1950s on). And then you look at someone like Cicely Tyson, who must have a pact with Satan to like the way she does at 90...

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    1. I still look in the mirror and say there is no way you are this old. By this point in his life, may father was on wife six!

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  6. how timely of you to mention andorra......it was just in the news tuesday. seems monserrat caballe or as she's known in my house, monsterfat cowbelly was found guilty of tax fraud. she'd claimed she was living in ANDORRA, but wasn't.

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  7. hair color and good DNA and a badass philly addytood!

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    1. But not a "Kathryn Knott badass" addytood. right?

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    2. HELL NO! I wanna kick that bitch in the taint and slap her ugly face repeatedly til she bleeds!

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    3. Now that is what I call badass philly addytood!

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  8. that lady in the green might be 42 if someone forgot the carry the 1.....twice over!

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    1. Do you think that they helped her along with bad make-up?

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  9. That's what a steady diet of wonder bread, crisco and sugar will do for you.

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    1. And they wondered why their husbands all ran to other women...

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  10. Yikes.
    But I think I can smell the nicotine and liquor from the gals on the right wafting through the screen.
    Or maybe that's just my breath?

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    Replies
    1. If you smell Taboo perfume trying to mask it, it's her.

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  11. Replies
    1. Endorra from Bewitched. Endura is a plastic used by GM to create plastic bumpers in the 1970s. Andorra is a nation state. Its all so confusing!

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  12. OMG! I'm 58 and all these gals look older than me! And I'm not some hot, botoxed babe. Glad I was born in 1957 and not 1916 LOL!

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    1. I know! Now imagine this is still how people aged. We'd all be wearing blue hair and ready for retirement homes!

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