LizzieMaine
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I got an unexpected donation today to my vast archives from a librarian friend -- a large stack of deaccessioned bound volumes of "Life" spanning much of the 1940s. The volumes currently repose on my sun porch, until I figure out where to put them, but I've got a couple of volumes in the house for random thumbing. While I'm no fan at all of the Lucean worldview expressed in "Life" editorials and many of its articles, the magazine is always a worthy window into the fads and foibles of its time.
Picking up the volume for April-June 1945 I note in the June 11th issue a fascinating bit of pop sociology exploring the lives of teenage boys in Des Moines, Iowa -- who, according to the article, build their lives around rigorous conformation to a "pattern of sloppiness" in all that they do. The "classroom uniform" depicted on one boy shows an outfit that wouldn't be out of place on a modern hipster -- he's going to school wearing a baggy, loud, oversized flannel shirt with the tails hanging out, rolled "dungarees," heavy white athletic socks, disreputable moccasins, and what appears to be some kind of a knit hat. Stick a beard on him and a couple of tattoos, and you couldn't pick him out of a crowd in 2017.
This same boy is shown later on sprawled in bed drinking a Pepsi while eating from a box of Cheez-Its while reading a paperback copy of "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." This lad is also a member of a "teenage club" known for wearing a large letter "M" painted across the backside of their blue jeans, that M standing for the name of their society, "The Molesters." The club's main activities seem to consist of loafing in front of drugstore magazine racks, and peeking in the windows of girls' homes at night.
Turning the page, I expected to see the young fellow standing in front of a night-court magistrate with a couple of black eyes, but instead there's a long article about Harry Truman, so I guess we'll never know how the young man in Des Moines turned out. But if he went to school wearing dungarees, you can bet he came to a bad end.
Picking up the volume for April-June 1945 I note in the June 11th issue a fascinating bit of pop sociology exploring the lives of teenage boys in Des Moines, Iowa -- who, according to the article, build their lives around rigorous conformation to a "pattern of sloppiness" in all that they do. The "classroom uniform" depicted on one boy shows an outfit that wouldn't be out of place on a modern hipster -- he's going to school wearing a baggy, loud, oversized flannel shirt with the tails hanging out, rolled "dungarees," heavy white athletic socks, disreputable moccasins, and what appears to be some kind of a knit hat. Stick a beard on him and a couple of tattoos, and you couldn't pick him out of a crowd in 2017.
This same boy is shown later on sprawled in bed drinking a Pepsi while eating from a box of Cheez-Its while reading a paperback copy of "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." This lad is also a member of a "teenage club" known for wearing a large letter "M" painted across the backside of their blue jeans, that M standing for the name of their society, "The Molesters." The club's main activities seem to consist of loafing in front of drugstore magazine racks, and peeking in the windows of girls' homes at night.
Turning the page, I expected to see the young fellow standing in front of a night-court magistrate with a couple of black eyes, but instead there's a long article about Harry Truman, so I guess we'll never know how the young man in Des Moines turned out. But if he went to school wearing dungarees, you can bet he came to a bad end.