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Hairy moments: The deep roots of women’s hair history
01.10.2018
12:09 pm
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I want what they're having
 
This is one of my all-time favorite photographs. I have no idea who took it, where it was taken, dunno who the hell these ladies are. But goddamn. I adore them all.

I’ve seen tons of people look at this photo and mock these women for unconventional hairstyles, awkward facial expressions, and what is likely a highly Texan aesthetic (my geographic guess). Fine, laugh. But there’s something so charming, so uniquely pleasurable about the way these women (probably family) are enjoying each other’s company, standing out in that ratty backyard. That yard of dead grass laid out in front of a patio overhang that seems to be one short storm away from crashing to the ground. And our youngest girl—the one with the flowing hippie hair and glasses—she’s wearing pink slippers! There’s this weird strength reflected here in this cadre of creatively-coiffed chicks. I bet they made great cocktails and killer cookies.

Women’s hair and beauty dynamics are intensely personal. Since the beginning of time women have invested spaces like beauty parlors/salons with the power of the personal in order to have a location to freely access aesthetic self-care practices. Generally, we do this for our own benefit, to impress someone else, or both. These spaces have also traditionally served another equally important function: they are community social zones and “safe spaces” for women to gossip, exchange intimacies that they would never do around male friends/family. Beauty parlors have always served a critical function for women.
 

 

 

 

 
The cosmetology world made huge advances in the 1920s. Thanks to the invention of the hair salon (and hair salon franchise) by Canadian-American business woman Martha Matilda Harper, women’s beauty centers shifted from “home visits” to the communal environment we are now familiar with. Harper sold many of the franchise models to lower income women and ended up profiting greatly as a result. With Harper’s floor-length Rapunzel-like tresses, it was hard not to take hair advice from this marketing genius. 
 
Martha Matilda Harper - Wouldn't YOU take hair advice from this woman??
 
With these advances, there are some unfortunate facts. These sacred communal spaces were structured for Straight White Women and they have never quite lost that flavor, even today. What’s unfortunate (but not surprising) is that there are women of color who helped establish this space and who should be far more famous than they are. Women like Sarah Breedlove Walker aka Madame CJ Walker was born to freed slaves and was an extraordinary businessperson. Employing some of the highest numbers of black women in the United States, Walker developed her own line of beauty products and became one of the first self-made millionaires in the United States.
 
Sarah Breedlove Walker
 

 
Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Ariel Schudson
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01.10.2018
12:09 pm
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‘All I eat is raw meat’: REALLY weird letters to Santa from 1920s rural kids
12.22.2017
06:55 am
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Some believe that today’s generation is perhaps the most spoiled and entitled in history,  which is certainly debatable, but if you want anecdotal evidence that kids were perhaps much less spoiled a few generations back, I humbly offer these unbelievably weird “letters to Santa” which were printed in South Carolina’s Abbeville Press and Banner in 1922.

These rural kids didn’t seem to have a whole lot of use for Santa and his promise of gifts—some, going so far as to call ole St. Nick a fraud and threatening him with violence. The few kids that don’t straight up call Santa out, ask him to leave presents for other kids who are worse off than them. Times were definitely different.

“I have a big dog in my yard to bite you if you come around this Christmas.”
 

 
Robert Jackson, the “Fighter of Church Street,” only eats raw meat. Abbeville, your kids are fuckin’ weird.
 

 
Maybe this kid was going for some kind of reverse psychology on Santa, or had some kind of martyr complex?
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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12.22.2017
06:55 am
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Erotic illustrations for Baudelaire’s ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’
12.21.2017
01:54 pm
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An illustration from 1935 by Italian-born artist Carlo Farneti for a posthumous edition of Charles Baudelaire’s book of poetry ‘Les Fleurs du Mal.’
 

“That heart which flutters like a fledgling bird,
I shall tear, bleeding, from his breast, to pitch
It blandly in the dust without a word
To slake the hunger of my favorite bitch.”

—a passage from Charles Baudelaire’s poetry book, Les Fleurs du Mal.

When French poet Charles Baudelaire first published his poetry book Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) in 1857 it caused quite the scandal. Baudelaire, his publisher Poulet Malassis and the book’s printer were all prosecuted for creating “an insult to public decency.” Baudelaire would eventually be convicted on two charges—obscenity and blasphemy. He was also forced to remove several poems from the book when it was republished in 1861. Below is a portion from Les Fleurs du Mal “Une Charogne” (“A Carcass”) in which Baudelaire beautifully romanticizes a decomposing corpse:

“The blow-flies were buzzing round that putrid belly,
From which came forth black battalions
Of maggots, which oozed out like a heavy liquid
All along those living tatters.

Then tell the vermin as it takes its pleasance
And feasts with kisses on that face of yours,
I’ve kept intact in form and godlike essence
Our decomposed amours!”

 
The controversy over Les Fleurs du Mal would eventually lead to the demise of Baudelaire’s career as a poet. Heartbreakingly, Baudelaire would pass away in 1867—ten years after the publication of Les Fleurs du Mal, addicted to opium, penniless and in a state of perpetual paralysis. Les Fleurs de Mal was published yet again in 1868 to include previously unpublished poems written by the poet. This publication would reignite interest in his work which would continue to grow in the years following his death. In 1935 Italian artist Carlo Farneti created a series of evocative illustrations for Les Fleurs du Mal for Parisian bookstore Gibert Jeune. Farneti had relocated to France in 1926 and quickly became a sought-after artist creating illustrations for books by renowned French novelist Émile Zola and Edgar Allen Poe (who Baudelaire referred to as his “twin soul.”) Twelve of Farneti’s exquisite illustrations for Les Fleurs du Mal follow—some are gorgeously NSFW.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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12.21.2017
01:54 pm
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Chilling images of Hitler celebrating Christmas & decorations inspired by the Nazis
12.15.2017
08:50 am
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Christmas ornaments produced in Germany during the rise and rule of Adolf Hitler.
 
In the 1930s as Hitler and his Nazis were coming to power in Germany, they began a war on Christmas, a quest to dismantle age-old Christmas traditions and replace them with Nordic/pagan practices and folklore. The Nazis wanted everyone to follow their lead when it came to their image of the holiday—which at some point included displaying swastikas on Christmas trees. In Germany, Christmas is called “Weihnachten” which the Nazis also took it upon themselves to rename Rauhnacht, which translates in English to “the rough night.”

The Nazis’ changes to Christmas included anti-Semitic activities such as actively avoiding doing business at Jewish-owned establishments during the holiday so that their celebrations would be “free of Jews.” Christmas carols were modified to reflect socialist Nazi beliefs and ideology including replacing references to the “Savior” with a nod to Hitler himself, “Savior Führer.” While many of the Reich’s changes to Christmas took hold, there was one aspect of the holiday that they could not do away with—the image the jolly old fat man, Santa Claus—even in Hitler’s Germany, Santa remained a fixture of the newly Nazified celebration.

Other changes inflicted by the Nazis during the period before their eventual fall in the mid-1940s was the use of Christmas decorations. If you were not already aware, the tradition of decorating a tree at Christmas time got its start in Germany in the 16th century. The most problematic issue for the Nazis was the gleaming star on the top of the tree—a six-pointed star signified Judaism and the Jewish community. A five-pointed star was associated with communism which was less than appealing to the Nazis as well. Instead, Germans were encouraged to replace tree-topping stars with, you guessed it, a swastika or the symbol for the SS (the “Schutzstaffel” or “Protection Squadron” formed under Hitler). Ornaments were transformed to contain Nazi images, slogans like “Sieg Heil!,” and glass-blown baubles in the image of their beloved leader Adolf Hitler. The metamorphosis took approximately six years to complete, though it would all come to an end in 1944 which marked the very last Nazified Christmas. Hitler would meet his maker four months later on April 30th, 1945.

The images that follow are haunting historical documents of how the Nazis tried to change Christmas (and the world) and failed. 
 

 

 

 
More chilling Nazi Christmas images after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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12.15.2017
08:50 am
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Listen to Paul McCartney’s ‘lost’ experimental Christmas disc for his fellow Beatles from 1965
12.04.2017
10:27 am
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Christmas 1965, Paul McCartney secretly recorded an “album” at his home in London as a present for his fellow bandmates John, George, and Ringo. There were only three discs ever made of this special festive recording, which have since either worn out or disappeared. This is how author Richie Unterberger described Paul’s Christmas album in his mammoth book The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film:

Unforgettable

For years, it had been reported that Paul McCartney recorded an album at home around Christmas 1965 specifically for the other Beatles. Supposedly, it included singing, acting, and sketches, and only three copies were pressed, one each for John, George, and Ringo. In a 1995 interview with Mark Lewisohn, Paul confirmed this in some detail, explaining, “Yes, it’s true. I had two Brenell tape recorders set up at home, on which I made experimental recordings and tape loops, like the ones in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ And once I put together something crazy, something left field, just for the other Beatles, a fun thing which they could play late in the evening. It was just something for the mates, basically.”

Continued McCartney, “It was called Unforgettable and it started with Nat ‘King’ Cole singing ‘Unforgettable,’ then I came in over the top as the announcer” ‘Yes, unforgettable, that’s what you are! And today in Unforgettable...’ It was like a magazine program: full of weird interviews, experimental music, tape loops, some tracks I knew the others hadn’t heard, it was just a compilation of odd things. I took the tape to Dick James’s studio and they cut me three acetate discs. Unfortunately, the quality of these discs was such that they wore out as you played them for a couple of weeks, but then they must have worn out. There’s probably a tape somewhere, though.”

If it ever turns up, it might be the earliest evidence of the Beatles using home recording equipment for specifically experimental/avant-garde purposes—something that John and Paul did in the last half of the 1960s, though John’s ventures in this field are more widely known than Paul’s.

Barry Miles in his biography of McCartney Many Years From Now notes the former Beatle had been regularly making experimental tapes for his then grilfriend Jane Asher which pips Lennon to the post as far as pioneering the avant-garde. As McCartney told Miles:

I would sit around all day, creating little tapes. I did one once called Unforgettable and used the Unforgettable Nat King Cole “Is what you are ...” as the intro. Then did a sort of “Hello, hello ...” like a radio show. I had a demo done by Dick James of that, just for the other guys because it was really a kind of stoned thing. That was really the truth of it.

This stoner recording has popped up on bootlegs but thanks to DM pal author, biographer, musician, and all-around good guy, Simon Wells we can share with you the whole of McCartney’s Unforgettable Christmas recording from 1965.
 

 
Thank you Simon Wells!
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.04.2017
10:27 am
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Wearing a vizard kept women pale and interesting in the 16th and 17th centuries
12.01.2017
10:25 am
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01visard.jpg
 
The other evening round at DM Towers, Glasgow, as I lay reclining on the chaise longue in my plus fours, smoking jacket, and fez, quietly puffing on my Meerschaum and idly fingering Roget’s Thesaurus, an unholy apparition appeared at the library door. It was my girlfriend. Yet, I would never have recognized her, as her whole countenance had vanished into a grotesque black hole from hairline to chin.

“What infernal magic is this?” quoth I (we do a lot of quothing round our house) in my best quivering voice from behind the chaise longue.

“Why it is only I,” rejoined my girlfriend.

And it was. But that face—what had happened to it?

As it, fortunately, turned out, my dearest was merely sporting an antique item of fashion called a vizard. That is a type of mask once worn by posh birds to avoid unsightly contact with the sun which could result in the unfortunate bronzing of the skin and the worrisome fear of being considered a lowly working-class woman who spent her days toiling in fields under the sun. (“Tanning” wasn’t considered a “thing” until beach vacations were invented for rich people.)

This was all rather serendipitous in a way, as I had, only that morning, been reading young Master Pepys’ diary about his visit to the Royal Theater where he had chanced upon Lord Falconbridge and Lady Mary Cromwell. As the public began to fill the house, Lady Cromwell “put on her vizard, and so kept it on all the play”. Pepys said the vizard had “become a great fashion among the ladies, which hides their whole face.” Meeting the fashionable Lady Cornwell encouraged Pepys to go to “the Exchange, to buy things with my wife; among others, a vizard for herself.”

Intrigued by my fair lady’s latest fashionable accessory, I decided to find some fine examples of the vizard from history with which to share. It would seem, the vizard was once very popular in England during the late 16th and most of the 17th centuries, roughly from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I to the Restoration. They were worn as sun protectors, and on occasion to keep a woman’s face wrapped from the biting chill of a winter’s wind. They were also a means to create coquettish mystery—just as the Venetians wore masks to flirt with each other. The vizard was large, spherical in shape, with a black velvet exterior and a silk lining. There was a small rectangular niche for the nose and two small oval openings for the eyes. The mask was held in by the wearer’s teeth, as it is described in The Academie of Armorie (1688):

A mask [is] a thing that in former times Gentlewomen used to put over their Faces when they travel to keep them from Sun burning… the Visard Mask, which covers the whole face, having holes for the eyes, a case for the nose, and a slit for the mouth, and to speak through; this kind of Mask is taken off and put in a moment of time, being only held in the Teeth by means of a round bead fastened on the inside over against the mouth.

Not everyone was so taken with the latest fashion, the writer Phillip Stubbes wrote in Anatomy of Abuses (1583):

When [women] use to ride abroad, they have visors made of velvet… wherewith they cover all their faces, having holes made in them against their eyes, whereout they look so that if a man that knew not their guise before, should chance to meet one of them he would think he met a monster or a devil: for face he can see none, but two broad holes against her eyes, with glasses in them.

The playwright John Dryden was similarly droll in the prolog to one of his lesser-known plays, The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards:

[W]hen Vizard Masque appears in Pit,
Straight every Man who thinks himself a Wit
Perks up; and, managing his Comb with grace,
With his white Wigg sets off his Nut-brown Face;
That done, bears up to th’ prize, and views each Limb,
To know her by her Rigging and her Trimm;
Then, the whole noise of Fops to wagers go,
Pox on her, ’t must be she; and Damm’ee no:

The vizard was fashionable among the higher classes until around early 1700s, when it became the preferred disguise for prostitutes to sell their wares.
 
010visardAhorsemanwithhiswifeinthesaddlebehindhim.jpg
‘A horseman with his wife in the saddle behind him’ circa 1581.
 
09visardPietroLonghi1751rhino.jpg
Pietro Longhi, ‘Rhinoceros,’ 1751.
 
More masked mystery ladies, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.01.2017
10:25 am
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Bizarre and amusing list of reasons people claimed they were fired from work in 1905
11.28.2017
08:34 am
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03yourefiredharold.jpg
 
An article in the Chicago Tribune, Illinois, on October 15, 1905, supplied a list of reasons given by people as to why they had been fired from their jobs. The list included such bizarre reasons as tearing a hole in an employer’s pants, having a nosebleed which stained a pair of socks, and perhaps best of all getting sacked for laughing at the boss when he was kicked by a cow—which is something worthy of inclusion in anyone’s resume.

There are also some of the usual no-nos like being drunk, running away, laziness, carelessness, and being impudent, as well as a few unexpected and definitely odd entries like “refused to marry boss’ sister,” “told ghost story,” “joined the wrong church,” and “too good for job.” This list shows how work was shifting from predominantly land-based agriculture to town and city industry/white collar employment. It also suggests work back in those days was very much dependent on the whims and prejudices of the employer. So nothing has changed?
 
01whytheywerefired.jpg
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Thanks to Steve Duffy, via Vintage Blognook.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.28.2017
08:34 am
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Pre Ubu: The Cosmic Proto-Punk of Hy Maya, a DM Exclusive Premiere
11.22.2017
09:24 am
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Smog Veil Records’ ongoing project of discovering and exhuming Northeast Ohio’s lost proto-punk history is chugging along rather nicely. As a native Clevelander myself, I must confess to having skin in this game—this is the legacy of the scene that mattered most to me in my formative years, so every time another missing piece of that puzzle comes into play, it feels personal to me somehow, though the discoveries of long lost documents like French Pictures in London and Terminal Drive are good for everyone’s souls, really.

The latest item of interest to emerge into the light from this fabled grey city is The Mysticism of Sound and Cosmic Language by Hy Maya, an experimental collective that spawned future Pere Ubu founders Allen Ravenstine and Scott Krauss. Even among deep-digging cognoscenti of Midwestern proto-punk, Hy Maya’s existence has until now been hardly more than a rumor, a footnote in Pere Ubu’s backstory. But that footnote may be where much of the “avant” half of Ubu’s “avant-garage” strategy came from. Per CLEpunk historian Nick Blakey:

Hy Maya’s undeniable and pivotal influence upon Pere Ubu (and, for that matter, related bands that came in between such as Fins and The Robert Bensick Band) became merely an abstract reference. It seems no one had any recordings or photos of Hy Maya, no one could tell you how many shows they had played (if any), and no one could describe what they sounded like. Hy Maya’s legacy appeared to be nothing but some faded and blurry memories in the minds of a handful of witnesses.

 

 
The band/collective/revolving door was loosely “organized” around Robert Bensick, and its core also included bassist Albert Dennis. They performed six shows between 1972-1973, their sets mostly consisting of long freeform explorations inspired by Sun Ra Arkestra, Miles Davis, Islands era King Crimson, the Velvet Underground, and Krautrock artists like Tangerine Dream and Cluster. The Mysticism of Sound and Cosmic Language is culled from recently discovered recordings of live sets, studio tracks, and rehearsal tapes from various Hy Maya incarnations. Several of those incarnations are alluded to in an early Cleveland punk document called “Those Were Different Times,” written by Charlotte Pressler, a CLEpunk O.G. and also the wife of Pere Ubu founder Peter Laughner. The piece is quoted extensively in The Mysticism…’s liner notes, as it’s practically the only extant near-contemporary documentation of Hy Maya’s existence.

…I went in 1972 to a gala art opening at the New Gallery. Among other events there was an electronic band called Hy Maya scheduled to play. Natasha and I were walking along, looking artistic, when suddenly there was a blood-curdling scream from the floor above. We, and everyone else, stopped dead and stared at the tall, beautiful girl who then leaned over the upstairs landing and said in a quiet voice, “The Hy Maya performance will take place in ten minutes.”’

So we, and everyone else, went upstairs to hear them. I liked what they did: broad, free sound constructions flowing into each other. But…the main interest was Cindy Black, the girl who had screamed. I decided to find out how I could get in touch with her, and after the Hy Maya performance, went up to talk to the band. There were two members, one, a tall guy with a long black beard, looked too scary to get near, so I talked to the other one, whose name, I found out, was Bob Bensick. Bensick gave me his phone number, and invited me to get in touch, which I did not do.

Hy Maya seems to have been a very loose band. It’s hard to pin down the membership, let alone the dates. There was an electric and an acoustic Hy Maya; at various times, Bob and Allen; Bob, Scott and Albert; Bob, Allen and Albert were the members of the band. Perhaps it’s truest to say that Hy Maya was Bensick’s name for his way of doing music; and that if you shared his style at the moment, you also were in Hy Maya. It is certainly true that all these people were very adverse to tight formations. They were young, and still learning; Scott Krauss in particular was wary of commitments because he doubted his abilities. They preferred loose jams; they were not anxious to pin down things any further.

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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11.22.2017
09:24 am
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The terrifying Japanese demon festival that probably sends kids into therapy for life
11.06.2017
09:38 am
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A little kid running away from a man dressed as Paantu, a mythological demon/god who appears in a yearly festival on the island of Miyako in September.
 
The mythology behind the ancient, annual Japanese Paantu festival tells of how a mysterious and odd-looking wooden face washed ashore on a beach located on the northern shore of island of Miyako (or Miyako-jima). The arrival of the mask was the impetus for the festival which has been held over the course of several centuries. On other islands in the Miyako chain, the festival is closed to outsiders like many other religious ceremonies held on the various islands that make up the Miyako Islands of the Okinawa Prefecture, so not much is actually known about the gathering which is held in early September. However, details about the clandestine event are not a complete mystery.

Paantu is held in part to help drive out demons and removing any trace of bad luck that is hanging around on Miyako. In preparation for the festival, a group of local men are “elected” to portray the evil devil or god Paantu. The men then cover themselves with mud, leaves, and branches and finally the ceremonial black mask of Paantu. The menacing-looking group then rambles around visiting the locals smearing mud on folks, doors to homes and even police cars in order to ward off evil spirits. The popularity (and signifigance) of the festival has drastically faded in recent years as it has become increasingly difficult to recruit people willing to cover themselves in mud and scare the shit out of little kids—which I find hard to believe because all that sounds like a pretty fun time if you ask me. I’ve posted some photos taken at various Paantu Festivals for you to scroll through below and a couple of videos of good old Paantu terrorizing kids and covering them in mud.

If you need me, I probably won’t be anywhere near Miyako. That’s for sure.
 

PAANTU!
 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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11.06.2017
09:38 am
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A girl’s best friend is her automobile: That time Dodge marketed a car exclusively for women
11.01.2017
11:24 am
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Dodge hasn’t always been a man’s car. In fact, there was a once time when the manufacturer of such testosterone-pumping machismo machines as the Viper, Challenger and the Charger had seriously considered a woman’s role behind the wheel. This speculation came at a time when post war America was seeing a serious shift in gender roles, allowing more women to find their independence out on the open road. And with style, no less.

After receiving favorable feedback on Chrysler’s refined showroom model “La Comtesse” in 1954, Dodge began production on a new line of automobile that was marketed for the female motorist. Costing just an additional $143, the Dodge “La Femme” was a special option of the 1955 Custom Lancer, complete with a feminine twist. The hardtop two-door coupe came in a color combination of painted “Sapphire White” and “Heather Rose,” featuring blossoming rosebuds to decorate its elegant upholstery.
 

 
The most unique ploy on Dodge’s part wasn’t only that this was a vehicle of grace and class, but should also be seen as an everyday fashion accessory. Each La Femme came outfitted with a pink calfskin purse (bundled with coordinating paraphernalia), a matching rosebud-inspired raincoat, rain bonnet, and umbrella. The items could be conveniently stored in compartments behind the two front seats—so you never had to leave the house empty-handed. The American woman didn’t just drive La Femme, she lived La Femme.

Although the chichi cruiser returned the following year with a new orchid palate, the La Femme’s supposed fanfare wasn’t enough to keep Dodge from discontinuing the “project” in 1957. It is said that out of the 2,500 lady vehicles produced, only about 60 exist today. What a damn shame.

(This post on an unusual Dodge product comes by inspiration of pop culture humorist Charles Phoenix and his stellar new book, Addicted to Americana. If roadside attractions, cosmic kitsch, and wondrous cultural curiosities are your thing, it is without question that this is the book for you.

Some photos of the La Femme below:
 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Bennett Kogon
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11.01.2017
11:24 am
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